With that terrible rumoured line up
No
And if Alesha Dixon is on again i shall turn off

She will returning so you might as well watch the other channels or don't bother at all.

If that line up does become true then it's clearly visible they've spent the shows budget on getting Wembley Arena for one night.

I shan't be then its on too early aswell

Must be one of the highest audiences Jonathan Ross has ever had for his chat show.

Wembley is paying for itself. Costs come out of tickets before Children in Need get profit. Arena will get it's cut just as for any event.

Towards the higher end certainly, but he often broke the 4m barrier on BBC1 - and that was an hour later without ever having a 7m Cowell light entertainment lead in.

I thought Ross would be nearer 5m last night, but I expected a 9-10m lead in. So he did well and the show was ok.

[Edit: actually, what was his actual figure, just realised the 4.3m includes +1?]

The underperformance and critical mauling for ROB is the main story today, but the underperformance of BBC1, DW aside, is troubling. Casualty tanked, with TXF still at an early stage and rating identical to last year, and the premiere of Ricky Gervais in Ghost Town was utterly wasted in a slot that Ross was obviously going to win easily for his debut show. Would have been a good late Christmas Night movie.

I think its going to be a difficult autumn for BBC1 even if Strictly and Merlin hold up.

Some way below my own personal predictions for Red and Black, but seemingly in line with others', so probably too early to call either way just yet.

I did watch it on ITV Player last night - to be honest, I thought it was OK. A bit daft and way over-hyped, but thats never stopped shows being a hit before. My main concern was that it basically shot its bolt last night and subsequent nights might wind up feeling like watching it all over again. You don't tune in for the personalities, nor for the decisions the contestants make - but for the process itself. And barring a few new arena games, thats going to be the same process every night. We'll have to see where it goes, but you'd think the answer would be down...

Aside from that, well XF did just as we've come to expect from it and Jonathan Ross did reasonably well. BBC One struggled all night (aside from Doctor Who) which is pretty problematic for the start of September. They mustn't be able to wait for Strictly and Merlin.

That rating for Red or Black proves we will never see a game show featuring members of the public reach the dizzy heights of 8-10 million viewers. Unless Red or Black has a massive surge in the ratings next week, then we will never see a show reaching high numbers in the light of day.

Shows featuring celebrities (I'm a Celebrity, Strictly Come Dancing) and reality/talent formats (The X Factor, Britian's Got Talent and The Apprentice) are here to stay and is still the way forward. I know people on here want Blockbusters, 3-2-1, Bullseye etc... to come back but it will never happen on a major terrestrial channel since it wont get the viewers the networks want. There is a reason why ITV have stuck with All Star Family Fortunes year after year rather than bring it back with normal famillies.

Tape-checked rating from 21:20 to 21:45 is not actually that much lower - 6.93m (29.9%).

I'm interested the 5-minute breakdowns for Red or Black. Although the 15-minute breakdown...

21:15 - 7.3m (31.0%)
21:30 - 6.7m (29.1%)

Shows quite a decline over the half hour, the second quarter from 21:30 to 21:45 had a 4 minute commercial at the start, followed by the spin and then the reaction, so in actuality the 5-minute breakdown may well show a peak for the second breakdown at 21:35 and a general gain across the time it was on air whereas the 15-minute breakdown shows a plunge across the half hour.

EDIT - in fact is the tape-checked rating 21:20 to 21:40? Because it clocks in on ITV Player at 17 minutes....

I think Red or Black did fine - 7m was about what I was expecting. I can understand why people predicted higher as it was promoted a lot compared to other shows, although strangely I didn't notice any billboard or newspaper advertising, but I just think it was always going to be a big ask for a brand new light entertainment show to begin with 8/9/10m figures. I suppose if anything could've got those sorts of ratings, this show was the best bet of it happening out of any programmes to have launched in the last couple of years, given the talent involved and slots it had. But no matter how much you promote a show, there's going to be a limit as to how many people will initially be interested in watching a game show with repetitive 50/50 challenges, which I think is always going to be lower (significantly so in some cases) than other shows like TXF/BGT/SCD/DOI. If it had launched with 8-10m, it would've been the biggest or second biggest debut for a new light entertainment show in the last decade: I just couldn't see that happening.

The main problem that Red or Black faces over the next few days is that frankly, it's just not that exciting from a viewers perspective. A lot of people were disappointed last night and surely there will be a pretty big switch-off over the next few days, particularly as it has no X Factor lead-in/out and it'll face EastEnders. We've seen programmes in the last two years get ratings of about 20% more when scheduled next to TXF than when not scheduled next to TXF, so with that in mind as well as the fact that some viewers will switch off anyway because they didn't enjoy the show at all, the feeling I get at this moment in time is that it's not looking good. As we discussed a few weeks ago, some of the scheduling is quite bad, I don't think a new show like this should be up against EE so soon. But at the end of it all, it's down to what the actual show is like: will people want to watch effectively the same sort of thing for another 9 hours this week? If the reaction on every website I've seen is anything to go by, the majority would answer No. So all in all, while I think it did launch decently , it's going to lose steam over the next few days. At least with other shows like BGT, even if it was poor in its first series (which it obviously wasn't), each episode was important to watch and genuinely became 'event TV' as it all built up to one big finale at the end of the series, but with this the standalone aspect of it will play against it.

BBC1 was hit hard as you'd expect, but Doctor Who at least held up well and that'll be another 7m+ figure in the BARB officials. With the Strictly Come Dancing launch show next week as well as probably lower ratings for Red or Black, I suspect the whole lineup will experience some kind of boost in the 7 days time. MOTD coming back will also help the shares as the late-night movie last night didn't do well. The X Factor is doing very well so far this series and doing a great job yet again. Pretty good start for the Jonathan Ross show, the breakdown shows that it was stable throughout (4.1m in the beginning, 4.0m in the end) so it seems like it went down well with viewers which I'm not surprised with as it was pretty much his BBC show on ITV. I had a feeling CBB would do badly last night due to being squeezed out by other programmes - it's not quite the lowest ever overnight rating for BB but it's very close to it. Channel 5 seriously needs to think about what they're going to do with BB on Saturday nights because not only is it doing badly, but other shows like L&O SVU are rating low too because they're getting poorer slots than they would've if there was no BB.


Red or Black finished at 21.44 so the tape-checked rating is for 21.20-21.45.

Okidokes. Just watching the second part on ITV Player and they've cut out the competition, hence why it clocks in at 17 minutes.

Agree with what you said regarding Red or Black, the question now surely is how far it will go down more than anything else.

Consolidated Doctor Who rating from last Saturday was 8.10m (33.3%).

Gain of 1.87m from the overnights. Fair chance it may beat last night's earlier ROB? programme in the officials.

First off, XF is holding up incredibly well proving it doesn't need Cowell or Cole and it's gone back to being more about the talent atm. It probably got a slight boost from ROB viewers who don't normally watch XF too.

As expected for ROB. I watched it out of curiosity because of all the hype, but if it was a weekly show that wasn't live, without much hype and without Ant & Dec it would be getting 4-5m tops. It just shows if you hype a show and give it a strong first night slot then anything can succeed. I didn't really like the fact that half of it wasn't live and it didn't really add to the tension. It's the sort of show that you'll watch if there's nothing else on, but it isn't really event TV. I reckon it's really going to struggle up against EE, but it should get a huge boost in the 8.30-9pm slot on Monday. Corrie however is a different matter. You've got two shows which get 8m+ on Monday going up against each other. Corrie has a huge episode, but it's out of its regular slot. I also reckon the ITV schedule could struggle tonight.

Finally, the last of ITV's big new shows Jonathan Ross, I was quite impressed with. Only slight changes from the BBC series and decent guests and it flowed pretty well. Should see stable figures each week I reckon. I still think POG should move to Saturdays too where he would probably capture more of the XF audience.

CBB really struggled, but that was expected starting half way into MPD and against Ross. But considering the celeb version normally rates higher than the normal version, it could really struggle in a couple of weeks on Saturdays. The Friday launch will struggle too against tough competition and following straight on from the celeb version. It's not the best week to end it. Could they not have waited a couple of days?

Red or Black seems to rely on the publics appetite to see people win a vast amount of money. I can remember when there was tension watching people winning The Golden Shot when the prize was just £1000.00. However Millionaire has stolen the novelty forever and I for one am not partial to watching someone win or lose a ridiculous amount of money especially as it is not based on any kind of skill.
Only poor opposition will see the rating rise imo.

Doctor Who fair enough, not the best episode of the series. I do wish Moffatt could pull off a second good self contained episode this series, so far the only good one of that type has been "The Doctors Wife" and thats largely a massive amount of fanwank. I agree the rest of the BBC 1 line up seemes down. Not sure why Secert Fortune and Casualty normally do better.

Nice rating for the Prom.

now Red of Black, before I go on im going to defend myself (feel free to ignore it if you wish)



So enough about me and on to the ratings, ITV will be pleased that the results show increased on the main show, but both are still down on some of the hype my 8 milliion ratings prediction makes me look like a Syco fan now. Its an ok start, but as stated previously we need to see how the ratings trend during the week. As it stand if those ratings continue across the week it could be considered a hit.

Ross started well whilst Big Brother continues to under preform on a Saturday. 11 mililonf or the X-Factor pretty much as expected.

As for SCD if there are any more articles about him posted on Digital Spy, the BBC is going to have to get Chers son to make an apperance on the show this year.

As a musical countetrpoint to TXF, the Proms did quite well on BBC Two with 2 million viewers. It just shows there is a considerable audience for something more challenging.
As for Red and Black, I reckon it will start to tank as it is just an overhyped pile of garbage with no skill.

It gets that on Wednesday when it's on against Village SOS - less than 3m against a repeat of Lewis last week. Never mind Village SOS, more like programme SOS. Send for Nick Knowles. He'll soon sort out those posh types with his mockney stagger.

A big prize is not enough to turn a programme into a hit. In 1995 Bob Holness hosted Raise The Roof for ITV which gave away a new house and Shane Richie hosted a show where couples competed for a lavish wedding. Both shows had rubbish formats so both shows flopped in the ratings.

In Millionaire it is very very rare for someone to get anywhere near the £1m question. This programme could generate real edge-of-the-seat entertainment from the prospect of someone dropping from £16,000 to £1,000 because it was a brilliant format. Obviously, it's not now - not since they introduced the time-limit, the muppets!

Its the Last Night of the Proms next Saturday so presumably they will be hoping for 4 or 5 million.

Casualty is down this week because it practically all clashed with TXF last night when previously it only half clashed with it.

for what little its worth, the fact it has no skil, does not mean it will flop, Deal or no Deal whos only skill or tension comes back to when you make a deal, is (or was) a massive hit for Channel 4, despite lacking skill.

Now I have an image of his truss in my mind!

Although DOND is daytime on Channel 4 rather than primetime on ITV1. IIRC C4 tried some DOND in Saturday peak and it didn't do particularly well.