Demographic Information for BBC1 and ITV1 for the period of Saturday 27th August to Sunday 4th September: http://i51.tinypic.com/24opmd5.jpg


463,800 (1.9%)

Amazing to see how well New Tricks held up with Corrie opposite. We knew its got a resilient old audience, but I did think it would be down well into the 6m region last night. Amazing that Corrie apparently demonstrated no ill-effects, either.

For Red or Black?, well thats OK and it should mean they're able to see out the week with steady numbers. It's not a crisis, but obviously doesn't look like its become the latest 'event' to add to the schedule like they were hoping/expecting. Actually, the one thing it apparently does seem to be able to do is attract a casual, floating audience (like at 8.30pm yesterday) which ought to bode well for a decent rise on Wednesday.

Enough repeats for a decade though...


A £15m Cowell show trailed for months and hyped as the next juggernaut to lead ITV's "fightback" taking up 14 hours of primetime, getting a critical mauling and tanking with 3.5m to 6m viewers, beaten by Countryfile and only a million ahead of University Challenge?

That's a TV event of the year for me. lf not the decade!

yes for what its worth for a cheaper less hyped show, those numbers would be accpetable but for Red or Black? they are not.

TV event of the year it is not.

One day im actually going to watch New Tricks.

Over 50% of the George Gently audience over 65. Nearly 1/2 of the Countryfile audience over 65 too.

Appropriate Adult doing poorly in the 65+ age range. Clear that the older ages aren't taking to RoB and thats hurting its gross numbers.

In the 5pm game show battle yesterday: 2.6m (18%) for Pointless, 2.1m (14%) for The Chase (new episode) including +1 and HD.

Source: Paul Brassey

Here's how the shows had done thus far:

.....Pointless...The Chase...Difference
1/8....2.20m.....1.16m.......+90%
2/8....2.39m.....1.14m.......+110%
3/8....2.31m.....1.24m.......+86%
4/8....2.66m.....1.46m.......+82%
5/8....2.31m.....1.40m.......+65%
8/8....2.51m.....1.48m.......+70%
9/8....2.47m.....1.31m.......+89%
10/8...2.42m.....1.50m.......+61%
11/8...2.38m.....1.60m.......+49%
12/8...2.48m.....1.65m.......+50%
15/8...2.62m.....1.60m.......+64%
16/8...2.34m.....1.67m.......+40%
17/8...2.22m.....1.69m.......+31%
18/8...2.55m.....1.78m.......+43%
19/8...2.08m.....1.42m.......+46%
22/8...2.33m.....1.62m.......+44%
23/8...2.41m.....1.62m.......+49%
24/8...2.58m.....1.64m.......+57%
26/8...2.51m.....1.71m.......+47%
30/8...2.75m.....1.71m.......+61%
31/8...2.51m.....1.64m.......+53%
01/9...2.29m.....1.50m.......+53%
02/9...2.47m.....1.64m.......+51%

Everything rated pretty much how I expected it to rate expect New Tricks. 7.6m up against Corrie is an excellent result. I expected about 6.5m for NT. Corrie did well under the circumstances and I'd expect it to increase on Wednesday, 8.5m-9.0m in the overnights. Emmerdale also did very well in the 7-8pm hour as expected.

With regards to RoB, pretty much what I thought would happen. Got a big boost when EE finished and held onto a decent amount of the Corrie audience at 9.30pm. I think it bodes well for the rest of the week that it will pick up 5-6m viewers a night, which is alot less than ITV expected, but its solid enough. Personally I gave up on it after Sunday's episodes. Dreadful show and I would prefer it flops more just in case ITV decide to bring it back. Biggest disappointment of the whole year so far..!

Not too bad for The Chase, I suspect that gap will close over the coming weeks as viewers realise The Chase is back to new episodes.

The only thing that puts me off the chase is the adverts but i always record it and i dont bother too much with pointless.

She's definitely taking over at a good time. Hollyoaks has had some decent storylines over summer although it does seem to be getting very cast heavy and I hope that's not to the detriment of some of the longer standing cast members who've effectively kept the show alive when it was on life support!

seems like a strange time for a new producer, Hollyoaks has had a few of those recently

Well done H&A!

Your comparing Panorama, a low rating, low costing, PSB, filler show against a multi-million ITV/Cowell, promoted to the moon gameshow with a Corrie sandwich. There should be something there that says the two arent comparable.


As long as people are talking about it then what else matters? Bar ratings, advertising revenue and keeping shareholders happy.


Thanks for that quote.There have been many posters in this thread that have tried to make out ITV were never expecting 8-10m figures every night, I think that quote sort of disproves them, unless 5m a night is event TV?

yes this show has been really good bait for the pro ITV and anti ITV folk on this thread, but that alone is not worth £15 million.

the press isnt getting any better either

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...irlfriend.html

It is interesting that New Tricks has this viewer loyalty (which I concur that it has) and is well respected by the BBC for that.

Whereas Heartbeat had a similar depth of viewer loyalty and was not so treated by ITV because it had the wrong audience profile for advertising purposes.

The difference, of course, is the fact that ITV is a commercially driven channel so has to make such decisions.

Presumably this shows the world we would have without the BBC where they do not have to worry about advertising or viewer profiles and can nurture a popular series.

Would such a series as New Tricks ever work elsewhere? Otherwise you have to wonder why such an obviously massively popular series which appears to appeal to a surprisingly wide age range (when you would expect it to skew pretty old) has not been remade in the USA, or anywhere else so far as I know.

The equivalent ratings stateside would make it an NCIS type success, but no commercial channel there is thinking about recasting this massively popular UK show. Presumably worried that it would get the right kind of audience for ads.

If you think about population sizes programmes that get 8m viewers plus over here would be the equiviletn of a programme getting about 40m over there, that's a fuigure only beaten by big series finales and superbowl!

we have looked at this before, New Tricks USA would not get 40 million viewers, there is alot more cable channels with alot more new programming in the US, so network ratings always seem low compared to UK channels.

Heck NBC would be quite happy with 8 million full stop.

Well, of course they're going to say a new show with Ant & Dec over a week is going to be a "one of the biggest TV events of the year". They're saying it to hype the show up, to make it sound big. As someone else said, they're not going to hold a press launch and then say "hmm... it' going to be quite a decent show" etc. What they said, doesn't mean that they were actually expecting 8-10m figures every night, which would be unprecedented for a new light entertainment series this century (none of TXF/SCD/BGT/DOI or any other show managed 8-10m figs every episode during their first series).

Ok maybe i failed to include other cables, but it would still be an incredible success, at least 12m then shall we say,

Anyone know what XFUSA is expecting? More or less than American Idol??

Red or Black seemed to pick up some floating viewers although it was clearly hit by being on against Eastenders. It may give some hope to ITV that it will at least hold up to decent numbers through the week although I could still see a few very low numbers come Friday. Regardless, the breakdowns indicate that it's not an overly strong stand-alone format and that's what ITV would have wanted out of this.

rzt, quoting you from your post yesterday:


An average of 5.82m watched on Saturday and Sunday (full slot ratings). An average of 1.37m (23%) were in the 16-34 range.

IF they have an average of 5.0m watching between tomorrow and Saturday, the series average will be about 5.23m. Now, if the 23% skew remains the same then the average for 16-34 will be about 1.2029m, which means that it will bang on even. It's absolutely critical for them that it remains above 5.0m for the remainder of the week otherwise it will fail to break even.

not sure what what the ratings are for Idol, but I assume Cowell is looking for X-Factor to do better.

I could see New Tricks USA doing over 10 million on CBS.

As a general point the US networks can only dream of the kind of audience share our TV channels have, and shows that can do 7 million +, 4+ times a week (im talking about the soaps)

and D.M.N. the figures may or may not add up (and well done for doing them) but you dont spend £15 million to break even.

I wouldn't call them floating viewers, I'd call them viewers looking for Corrie and wondering why it has been shunted to 9pm.

BGT was event TV even in its first series without the big figures. Going daily for almost 2 weeks had never been done before for such a format. The ratings started fairly average but gained momentum and quickly got the highest rating in years. Subsequently almost every reality show benefitted and ratings shot up across the board. I remember a big fuss because the final peaked at 13.5m viewers yet these days thats pretty standard or even an underperformance for the big reality shows. Thats probably what they were hoping for with Red or Black but its notoriously hard to recapture such magic. They need an innovative show to do that, and Red or Black simply isn't unique enough.

A US remake of New Tricks would heavily depend on casting, NT has the nostalgia factor with its cast and guest stars. Its a shame Tom Selleck is in Blue Bloods as he would ideal for a NT remake.