your having fun arnt you?

ROB has been a bit of a gift frankly.

It's George's fault. He said I'd be all quipped out by Saturday, yet I've posted more quips this week than I have all year....

Can you explain how the link posted above means that the show has failed?

Why is the low rating for Big Brother not being discussed at length?

Is it because it isn't on ITV so therefore doesn't fall under this thread's remit?

well I think there is still a bit of a sympathy or maybe pity for Channel 5 which really just re-inforces that its not playing in the big league.

After all nobody wants to be to accused of bullying


I dont think you really want to bother trying to get inside his head on this

ratings are way below expectations*, and the press is all but running pictuers of Simon Cowell watching a guy beat up his wife, then giving him £1 million.

* some of this thread have been accused of over predicting, something ive never knowingly done.

As for why we are not slagging of Channel 5, well simply becasue the ratings for Red of Black are lower than expected, and the ratings for Big Brotehr are better than expected. Also Dancc isnt here so where would be the fun?

Shameless went lower earlier in the year, so 1.6m this week compared favourably with 1.8m last week considering a First Look episode has already aired on E4. It really is crap though this year and Shameless USA is just illustrating how far the main series has fallen.

Hollyoaks is having a pretty big week (indeed that's been the case most the summer) with Later, a new batch of characters and the interlinked Silas storyline. We know someone won't make it to the end of the week, but nobody knows for sure who is getting killed off.


I think most sensible fans realise it's not an option on TV - but it's an option online for sure. If BB Albania can have a live feed surely BBUK can afford one too.


It's not about watching the live feed though, it's about the constant news a live feed generates - and that is reflected in the daily show ratings. At the moment the press are simply reporting on last nights show - so stuff that happened two days ago, rather than events which happened yesterday that'll be aired tonight.


It's because firstly 2m isn't that big a disaster compared to the 2.2/2.3m it's been getting often, and secondly because it's about the level where many people expected it to be anyway.

Funnily enough, I'm here. Momentarily anyway. Andy up to his usual tricks I see, trying to create stories that are not there. He only ever discusses CBB when its ratings take a dip. Red or Black will steal the headlines and dominate the discussions this week and rightly so. But as for last night, I'm a bit confused as to why he thinks CBB's rating was so low. Lower end of expectations maybe, but at 2m it was still the second most popular programme at 10pm. And Channel 4 couldn't even get close with their flagship drama series...

Celebrity Big Brother 2.0m / 10.7%
Shameless 1.45m / 8.1%

Source: DS.

Well it's a bit like Man United and the opening game of the premiere league...ITV's autumn programmes are kicking in. ITV gets people talking.

I think with Shameless, cutting the episode to 8-10 episodes would help the show immesenly, Channel 4 could be making 2 6x60m drama series saved from cutting down Shameless.

I dont if Channel 4 is to blame for extending the episode order from 16 to 22 or Paul Abbott for not making sure the episodes of this series was of high quality.

And another Ratings Thread Favourite returns next Tuesday at 9pm on ITV1, so that'll keep the thread moving, too.

In case any newcomers are wondering, a Ratings Thread Favourite is a programme generating loads of posts before it begins a new series, and during its run. Ratings Thread Favourites can be very successful (e.g. X Factor/Talent), but more often than not they're ratings turkeys (e.g. He Kills Coppers/Lost in Austen/Whatever Degrees North).

And they're almost always on ITV1.

sorry are you talking about 71 Degrees North being the Ratings Therad Favourite, or the Tuesday ITV 1 9pm Flop Zone?

So will Red & Boring see another freefall into ratings abyss ?

Also, Downton Abbey was a Ratings Thread Favourite and turned out to be a big hit. It'll be interesting to see how the next Ratings Thread Favourite, The Voice, will perform next year.

It's called 71 Degrees North by the way . I wouldn't put its ratings for series 1 in the 'ratings turkeys' category like those other two shows, as it ended up being one of the most popular series in that Tuesday 9pm slot for ITV1 in a couple of years. That's not saying much admittedly (!), but I suspect that's why it's been brought back. Without TXF to launch off from this time, however, and tougher BBC1 competition coming up than last year, it may well struggle this series.

I detect the whiff of pre-planning, too.

71 Degrees North.


I can never remember the number of degrees! I keep thinking 70 or 79, for some reason. Or 90.

BBC explain Spooks vs Downton Abbey clash: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...-downton-abbey


...and an explanation I agree with, I can't see either taking masses of viewers away from one another, a bit like Outnumbered/WILTY vs DCI Banks starting a week on Friday.

It's because Robbie and Charnham seemed to have taken over the thread as their own personal banter area, exchanging wisecracks into the early hours!

We don't often see the figures for Northern Ireland or Wales matches on Sky, because I wonder what sort of value they have for them. The argument is always that the Welsh and Northern Irish FAs have to sell to Sky as nobody else can offer them enough money, but what do Sky get out of them? I understand why they nabbed the Scotland rights as for a long time they didn't have the SPL and so needed content to get Scottish fans to subscribe, but surely Welsh and Northern Irish fans subscribe first and foremost for the Premier League and Football League? How many subscribe just for the Wales and Northern Ireland games? Not many, I'd have thought. And as the qualifiers are always played at the same time as the other nations, it's only a few exceptional games that garner any decent ratings.

And it also means you get the situation where last night people in Northern Ireland had to get Sky to watch Northern Ireland or could watch England for free on ITV, which surely doesn't help Northern Ireland. I've said this before but it would be good if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had a deal like England did in 2001-04, and Ireland do now, where Sky have the lot but home qualifiers are free to air as well, so Sky get plenty of content and sell themselves as the one place to see everything, and the nations get exposure.

I know al this is moot given that Northern Ireland match was an away qualifier they bought off their own back rather than part of their contract, but the point remains, I think. I dunno how pleased the Northern Irish FA can be with 32,000 viewers. I know it's opposite England vs Wales but they're almost all opposite England matches.


I note in the trailers that they announce it's on Sky 1 HD and then in small type "Also available on Sky 1", which I've never seen them do before, normally they just refer to the HD variant everywhere and ignore the SD version. I'm not reallysure how much of a selling point it is anyway, given loads of other channels are also in HD and Sky viewers get it automatically. It's like when they advertised the Election Debate as being on Sky News HD, which confused casual viewers as to whether it was on normal Sky News, and the other two were in HD as well anyway.


I don't think it's normally gone up against the actual match, though, has it, normally the football's either on a Wednesday or is an 8pm kick-off.


What I want to know is where they're advertising for contestants for this show, there seems to be a larger than average amount of ex-cons. Still, at least it's proving it's completely random.

Isn't there 7000 contestants in RoB?

Do they need to explain it? Given that there was drama vs drama more or less every Sundays for the entire eighties and nineties.

Of course, Media Guardian will happily take any opportunity to slag off BBC scheduling because they swallow any guff the ITV press office feed them, hence all that Strictly vs X Factor stuff the other year, and they even ran an article when Casualty went out on Sunday last year because it was up against The X Factor (for the first time since, er, the previous week when they were both on Saturday). Yet funnily enough they failed to do an article when ITV put Corrie up against EastEnders two weeks later. Funny that.

Andy, I have to ask given you single out Robbie and Charnham, what do you think of Red or Black's ratings?

Yes, but funny how they've already had one ex-con winner, and now two more contestants from the studio sections have been removed. The odds on that must be quite long.

my comments have been in reply to many in this thread, not just Robbie

for example like a few other people on the forum I had something to say about iaindb Missing Millions comment.

Some of this thread need to stop seeing my posts as anything specail, when in reality most of them are in line with the general tone of the thread.

In theory tonight should be a good night for Red or Black. Its got next to no competition on BBC1 for the 8PM hour and Who Do You Think You Are isn't anywhere near the same league as New Tricks especially not when its first half will be up against Corrie.

If the ratings drop noticeably tonight then it really is a disaster for ITV.

I'm more interested to see how Channel 4's Bin Laden doc does at 9PM. They've pushed that pretty hard and the 9/11 themed stuff has been performing fairly well so far.