Apart from the obvious issue which is that the show is weak and has been badly received by the public, as I said yesterday, generally a light entertainment show on ITV which is scheduled away from TXF will drop about c.20% in the ratings compared to if they're scheduled adjacent to TXF (apart from the real big hitters like IAC which doesn't drop as much). Yesterday's episodes of Red or Black, according to those figures, were down about -25% so slightly more than the usual. So I was quite surprised to see people were still predicting 6-7m for Sunday's episodes after the launch figures were out as that kind of <10% drop would've been most unusual, and given the reaction it just wasn't gonna happen.

Most importantly, the show is flawed. It's not fun or engaging for the viewer, which is what you want for a game show at the end of the day. I'd much rather watch something as silly as Family Fortunes, with a much smaller prize, as at least I can play along at home and it can be quite funny. So, there was a big error of judgement with the RoB format, not only that, but the fact that each episode is standalone means there is no 'hook' for viewers to keep coming back night after night. Speaking of which, the scheduling has done it no favours: I can see why they wanted to go for 7 nights in a row for 'event TV' purposes, but the format of the show means that it just wasn't necessary and it's all just too much! People will follow a show if it's great but I do think having episodes up against EastEnders is a massive error on their part (even BGT was getting dented by EE), also it would've been wiser having TXF on the Sunday to help retention for RoB's second night.

The damage for Red or Black has been done. Nowadays you have to make a good impression on the first show, which this clearly didn't. They overhyped it and it didn't produce the goods. Even with front page newspaper articles and maybe some changes to the show in the coming days, I don't see how it can recover from this.

Not really, was Corrie going up against the Britains best rated drama last night?

much as I would be amused to see ROB prove less popular against EastEnders than cheap filler like The Lakes, it ain't gonna happen. The millions who will dutifully tune in for Corrie at half eight will bring up ROB's average.

Corrie will easily beat New Tricks, it won't lose nearly half its audience. Whether ROB can beat it now seems doubtful...

Have any international sales of Red or Black been confirmed yet?

ROB is looking like it could be ITV's very own Eldorado.

I agree with everything you've said, although I've enjoyed so far. The problem is that the public as no reason to care at all, with 99% of any other primetime quiz shows there is some form of interaction as you say (Millionaire) or some 'reward' for a next show as it were (talent shows).

I expected it to be a consistent ~6m, obviously dropping to about ~5m when clashing with EastEnders and New Tricks. The problem here is expectations, ITV expecting a lot higher than 5m and the budget involved. For any other show, getting 4.7m or 5.3m would be brilliant for ITV on a Sunday night considering their horrendous summer, if Red or Black was done on 25% of its current budget it'd be a resounding success (even if the audience hated it!).

I was expecting about 5.5m for last night, in my opinion the drop is bigger than what I expected which is never a good thing. The AI (Audience Appreciation) will be extremely telling, if Saturday's and Sunday's shows recorded low AI's, then that does not bode well for the week. ITV's fear tonight has to be if both shows are below 5m, its off air tomorrow night and that's any 'momentum' (if there's such a thing for it now) gone.

I really thought Appropriate Adult would have something like 8m watching.

And that... is why the young demographic is so crucial and why Big Brother is so valuable.

For Channel 5 to become the number one commercial channel for the most lucrative demo on a budget three times smaller than Channel 4's and at least 6 times smaller than ITV1's is pretty impressive.

It has had a bad press since it was first commissioned, and ITV have had to be very careful with their PR for it. Like "He Kills Cops" it looks like there was little stomach for this. It was never likely to get 6m or more. If anything, it did a bit better than I thought.

They're not the only channel to use such tactics.

BBcoughC1

Do you realize how insulting that is to the viewers who like the countryside?

I don't watch The One Show, but can chew my food, use a remote control, and hopefully enjoy my 68th birthday later this month.

I suppose. I think it might get more viewers next week as people say how good the acting is.

Does anyone have Channel 5 top 30 ratings for the week 15-21 August, I have looked on BARB, but nothing is there, does anyone have it/ know where I can find it??

They were never released, however the CBB ratings officials were released.

BARB should release the last week of August today as well I think.

While we're waiting for the overnights here's a look at BBC1's Christmas Eve schedule from 1979.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cx9GWGCJv_8

Where would I find those??

I think the stunts have been quite impressive, the motorbike one was excellent. But it just doesn't mean much to viewers when you have about 1000 people in each episode at the start and you don't know any of them or have any time to get to know them because within 5 minutes they might be given the chop. I can see why they wanted to have 1000 people in each episode to give it an "epic"/big kind of scale to it similar to TXF/BGT but this is a completely diifferent kind of show, so you don't need to have so many contestants. If they'd just had about 32 contestants at the start of each show, we get to know them, Ant and Dec could have some banter with them, a few jokes, a few games, it could've been better. But I think essentially what it comes down to, is that watching '50/50 down to luck' stunts/challenges is just not that interesting . At least with Deal or No Deal, there is some kind of additional element with the banker calling and the fact that the contesatnts have to make a decision of whether to carry on playing or not, bringing some kind of extra layer to the show. Plus, you get to know the contestants in that so you can root for people. In this, we see a VT of the final 8 contestants and within a couple of minutes, 4 are given the chop. Why should the viewers really care?

If it was up to me, I would've had Red or Black as a mix between the talent show and game show format, with Syco's expertise in that area it could've worked. Yeah, I know that would've meant that there would be some skill involved as well as luck, but as we saw with Heads or Tails previously, game shows purely based on luck just aren't that interesting especially if you don't have that additional DOND type element. So for example, the two guys who did the motorbike challenge - they could've been the actual contestants, we could get to know their back stories, there would be jeopardy and whoever won the challenge would progress through to the live shows. Essentially they could've had 3 auditions shows featuring people going head to head (one person being in red/one person in black) doing many different challenges: motorbike stunts, that wire walking thing, singing, dancing, big challenges you might not see in the other talent shows etc. There would be about 48 different challenges (the 3 audition shows would feature the best ones but skim through the others) so 48 people go through to the live shows, split 16 per show. That way, we could root for certain contestants. Then in each live show, the 16 contestants would be whittled down to 2 by the end, also incorporating the roulette wheel which is currently the best bit about the show (maybe give £100k to the person out of the two who correctly guesses the colour on roulette wheel, though both would progress to the main show). Those 2 would progress to the big final (along with the 4 from the other 2 shows) resulting a final 6 which through red/black challenges would be whittled down to 1 person spinning for £2m (billed as biggest prize in British game show history). So that way, viewers get to be entertained by the audition showdowns which have things people enjoy like singing etc, viewers can get to know and root for the contestants over the week, and it'd all result in one big final moment in the last episode, so everything naturally builds up to that big peak (in theory) rather than starting high and falling as will probably happen this week. All scheduled at 9pm for one hour post-TXF/Corrie. This is how I think it should've been done anyway!

http://www.insidebigbrother.net/ratings
Scroll down. They are:

Launch- 5.3m (5.2m)
Friday- 3.4m (3.2m)
Saturday- 3.2m (2.7m)
Sunday- 2.5m (2.2m)
Monday- 2.7m (2.3m)

In brackets are the overnights. Basically Saturday, Sunday and Monday timeshifted very well.

Sunday 4th September Overnights
BBC One
18:30- Nature's Miracle Babies: 3.81m (19.4%)
19:30- Countryfile: 5.62m (23.3%)
20:30- Inspector George Gently: 6.47m (24.8%)

BBC Two
18:00- Harry's Arctic Heroes: 900k (4.4%)
20:00- Dragons' Den: 2.98m (11.5%) inc HD
21:00- World's Most Dangerous Roads: 2.31m (8.8%) inc HD
22:00- Grumpy Guide To...: 1.97m (10.3%)

ITV1
18:45- Red or Black?: 4.47m (21.3%) , +1: 140k (0.6%)
* peak: 6.2m (inc +1)
20:00- Coronation Street: 7.82m (30.5%) , +1: 291k (1.1%)
20:30- Red or Black?: 5.55m (21.1%) , +1: 169k (0.6%)
* peak: 6.0m (inc +1)
21:00- Appropriate Adult: 4.53m (18.1%) , +1: 381k (2.3%)
* peak: 5.2m (inc +1)

Channel 4
19:00- World Athletics Championships: 990k (4.6%)
20:00- Back From the Dead: 1.19m (4.6%) , +1: 209k (0.8%)
21:00- Four Lions: 1.83m (8.1%) , +1: 415k (3%)

Channel 5
18:30- Spider-Man 2: 1.47m (6.5%)
21:00- Celebrity Big Brother: 2.5m (9.5%)

Primetime Shares
BBC One: 22.2%
ITV1: 20.3% (+1: 1%)
BBC Two: 8.5%
Channel 5: 7%
Channel 4: 6.3% (+1: 0.8%)

Ratings include HD and are tape-checked where necessary

Multichannel
5*
22:00- Celebrity Big Brother's Bit On The Side: 245k (1.3%)

ITV2
18:30- Xtra Factor: 778k (4.5%) , +1: 226k (1.1%)

Sky 1
21:00- Strike Back: Project Dawn: 496k (1.9%)

Sources: DS (1) (2)

I was very curious to see if they had topped 1million viewers on all top 30 shows, with fuigures like theese at the top, Im sure they must have...

Interesting to CBB bounce back from its series low on Saturday and benefiting from the anti drama audience.

Strong +1 audience for Appropriate Adult which suggests it would probably have done much better without GG.

Corrie over 8m inc+1..that's a fantastic figure for it! Out of its normal slot it beat almost every episode last week. If that was in its normal slot on Monday I think we would have seen a very high figure for it.

Wow Celebrity Big Brother at 2.5m, it's highest since the first eviction, up against very strong competition.

What strong competition? BB always does well when theres nothing on that will attract a similar audience.

A good rating for corrie but last night's episode was advertised quite a bit.
Not seen any for the rest of the week though

Not surpised at red or Black

Watched both showings on saturday and we all thought it was terrible and if that took Cowell and co 7 years to make id hate to see whats Next

X Factor is better without him imo

EastEnders could be dented by quite some tonight as Red or black will have a lead in from Emmerdale but Enders should do well

deleted, Corrie figure now posted...