I can say that the reaction is generally negative, and that compared to the hype its flopped in some peoples minds.

Dont forget a show can be a flop in more ways than ratings, it can flop creatively as well as in the ratings.

Anyways im going to step away from the keyboard now, nothing I say at this point, will be helpful, plus I need an early night.

Simon Cowell did not invent the VT

How much did the contestants win tonight?

The contestant won the £1m, the last 5 minutes were good, shame about the 100 minutes that preceded it though

I'm not sure having the top prize won in the first day is good for the show's future!

Joathan Ross, the Million Pound Drop, CBB and Xtra Factor all on at the same time tonight, the overnight figures for them will be an interesting read.

Now that's a good point. Have viewers seen all there is to see already in night 1?

It's good that the ex Big Brother contestant didn't win though. That would have reflected badly on the show I think, rightly or wrongly.

Not expecting much from CBB to be honest. It was low for its standards last week with more gentle competition, so it's a safe bet that it will be down to a series low tonight for an episode that played too heavily on fauxmances.

I think most channels and programmes will be down week-on-week except for ITV1.

It's on nights like tonight where CBB will get completely lost in the shuffle - with X Factor, Red or Black, Doctor Who, Jonathan Ross, Million Pound Drop all on.

I think it will help with word of mouth, 'a normal bloke guessed his away to 1m'
It would have been worse imo if we had sat through 100 minutes of complete drivel and then seen him get nothing.

I think the reason they've dragged it out to 90 minutes a night is to break even, the show looks like it cost a bomb to make and thats before the 1m prize money is considered.

It did beat Million Pound Drop last night though, albeit not massively. I had expected a more convincing victory I must admit. But earlier in the week I thought it would lose to Shameless and it didn't, so it's shown some resilience as well.

That's the thing with Big Brother though - you can get it off to the best possible start with the launch scheduling (as they did) but they can't protect it every single night. There is going to be the odd clash with high profile programmes at the weekend to contend with. As long as it recovers to a good level, as it did after last week's low, then it's fine.

Fortunately on weeknights they only really have to worry about Channel 4 as both BBC One and ITV1 are committed to news at 10pm. And eviction nights tend to perform well whatever the other channels are doing. It's only really Saturdays which pose a serious difficulty, and will continue to do so when X Factor enters live marathon mode.

As discussed at length last week, it doesn't really help that the rest of Channel 5's Saturday schedule does not complement CBB at all. Other channels are chasing that 16-34 audience more convincingly as there is a clear thread running through the schedule on the likes of ITV1 / ITV2. It's all a bit half-hearted with Channel 5 when you have a US crime drama rerun or a 15 year old Jackie Chan film leading into your flagship show.

Overall not impressed by Red and Black. It was OK, but I dont think it will work stripped over every weeknight (Except Tues when its not on)
I think it will beat Doctor Who by some margin (2m+) though.

My guess at tommorows ratings
Family Fortunes- 4.2m
ROB- 8.0m (To me it could easily be between 5 and 10.5 million, so a hard one to guess)
X Factor- 10.2m
ROB- 6.0m
JR- 4.0m

CBB will also be dented tonight due to the strong competition.

I will guess

BBC1
Dr Who 4.7

ITV1
Red or Black? 6.9
X Factor 10.7
Red or Black? 5.7
Jonathan Ross 4.6

Five
CBB 1.1

it might have helped if he'd been the very first person to win £1m on British television, but he isn't.

Some say the reason Millionaire's ratings dropped was because the million pounds had been won so the novelty of playing for a million pounds wore off.

From January-May, Channel 5 are fine as they have CSI: NY although if they'll hold that back until CBB9 finishes or run them together because CSI:NY tends to get moved around to avoid Casualty but they could easily have CBB against Casualty and CSI: NY afterwards. But the rest of the year its repeats of the crime dramas and now NCIS is on 5USA and performing brilliantly, they need to rest it both on Wednesdays and Saturdays when not in new episodes.

I think the night needs a revamp, maybe make it a comedy night with panel shows and US sitcoms running before and after CBB and CSI:NY.

Just caught up with RoB, X Factor, Doctor Who and Wossy. At first I wasn't sure about Red or Black but it came good later on I think (and luckily for ITV those were the bits that'll probably get the highest ratings due to the scheduling). If it does well tonight I think it should hold enough viewers tomorrow. Wossy got off to a really good start actually. It felt fresher than the last year or so on BBC1 and the set is very swish. Doctor Who was pants unfortunately, which is a shame as it looked really good. TXF wasn't as good as last week but it was still a decent show. Now for some predictions:

Total Wipeout - 3.6m
Doctor Who - 5.3m
Secret Fortune - 3.7m
Casualty - 4.1m
John Bishop - 3.2m

Family Fortunes - 3.4m
Red or Black (1) - 6.5m
The X Factor - 10.7m
Red or Black (2) - 7.9m
Jonathan Ross - 3.7m

The Million Pound Drop - 1.4m

Celebrity Big Brother - 1.8m

One more cheeky one from me with some predictions for tonight. Revised slightly from my original DSRPG predictions...

Doctor Who- 5.2m
Secret Fortune - 3.5m
Casualty- 3.6m

RoB? Launch- 6.9m
The X Factor - 10.0m
RoB? Result- 7.4m
Jonathan Ross Show - 3.9m

Million Pound Drop- 1.3m

Celebrity Big Brother- 1.4m

Xtra Factor- 0.8m

Everything (Bah one, and then their still from ITV) trending on twitter in the UK right now is to do with ITV-

#redorblack
#jonathanross
#JedwardtowinCALL*****161704
Luke Lucas (X Factor)
Jade Richards (X Factor)
LOVE Adele
Downton Abbey
Bourne Ultimatum
Sarah Jessica Parker

Also everyone above thinks the second ROB will do better than the first. I'm not to sure, it wasnt eactly the most thrilling show so I thought people would tune out after seeing the first episode.

I was looking forward to Red or Black but it was terrible. I had no interest at all.

Jonathan Ross was better than expected. Good set, interesting interviews.

But there's not mass hysteria. Are you aware of mass hysteria? I've seen a TV ad once or twice (admittedly I don't watch much ITV) and the menu that Domino's put through my door had a little bit on the bottom of it.

Red or Black is a big deal... in this thread. The general public don't care about ITV Studios push to develop more formats for international sales. They don't know or care about fictional £15m budgets. They have no interest in the scheduling and ratings implications for ITV.

We've seen ratings posted on here in recent days - The Cube launched after X Factor (10m+) and got 5.6m. The Colour of Money - which shares many attributes with ROB - was a total flop out of the gates.

I think there's a big leap from "being a subject of discussion on the ratings thread" and actually generating "water cooler conversation". And Red or Black hasn't (and won't) do that.

As for All Star Family Fortunes - it's a returning and successful show. Of course it does well.


Nelson Mandela sends his warm support in your continued crusade.


If anything there was a lack of background. There were moments where I was impressed but I think it might be difficult to get viewers invested in the process and the competition (to the extent that they'd watch 90 minutes a night for a week). The producers made decent attempts at trying to bring out personalities and so forth - but it never fully worked for one reason. They didn't actually do anything! At points, they didn't even get to choose the colour. They were a bit irrelevant to the whole process, really!

The £1m spin at the end worked far better than I ever thought it would to be fair. But that's it - it won't work as well tomorrow night. And if we're crowning our 4th millionaire in a week by next Saturday...

It also confirmed a few other things - absolutely no need to strip this show over a week (perhaps beyond cost issues). And certainly no point in a "results" show.

And pretty firm proof tonight - it doesn't cost £2m per show!

Brilliant.

It definitely doesn't. I doubt they're paying as much per hour for it as they are for TXF. They don't need to either. It's no coincidence that it improved significantly when they got into the studio, with the (probably) more costly Wembley and Battersea rounds really not working as well for a few reasons, mainly that they slowed the pace of a live show and there were too many contestants. Losing 15 minutes on Monday should help them there.

The spin did work really well though - they've got a great endgame at least. With the Corrie lead in I suspect the results shows will consistently be significantly higher than the first show each night.

Didn't watch the show but is £1m the only prize or is there consilation prizes of lower amounts of money? like Millionaire, I cant see £1m given out loads of times in the coming week.

I think that's likely, although don't know that Corrie will gain out of this arrangement.

But then again, will that spin still work as well on Friday when we've seen it several times already and can't even remember the name of the bloke who won £1m in the first show? When the show was first announced, I didn't get why it was stripped...

BGT was stripped because it was a "story" over a week - auditions, semi finals, final. It built momentum.

Even Pokerface had a reason - they played 6 times and then the 6 winners came back for the final to play for £1m.

With Corrie, I'm guessing there's some kind of story that will play out across the week with some kind of conclusion at the end?

Same for something like Collision - a serialised drama following one story from start to finish over a week.

Stripping Red or Black over a week is like stripping a procedural drama. It's self-contained. My guess is that they save some money on studio/staff costs which is why they're doing it.

It's £1m or nothing. They've got insurance in the event that they do end up paying out a lot.

So £3m/£4m in payouts this week - per production hour that's either £272,000 or £363,000.

Definitely an expensive gameshow. But the £15m idea suggests that there's around £11m in production costs for the rest of the show (£1m an hour) and that's definitely not true.