got to say I think its very unlikely Downton Abbey will "go tits up"

Considering the massive investment Channel 5 has made, billboards nationwide, major advertising, daily press coverage on at least one newspaper, I doubt they will be happy with the show averaging about 2.5m, especially as CBB has had no impact on the rest of the schedule.

They should have been expecting within 0.5m of what the last Channel 4 series was getting and higher ratings for other prime time programmes.

I wonder how the Daily Star's readership will be effected if they run with BB stories for months on end, if nobody is really interested.

I'm sure it will be seen as a flop in this thread. Presumably anything less than 10m will be a flop due to a range of external factors (lead ins, money spent etc)

See the figures in my post on the last page. The gap year-on-year since it moved to 5 is flatteringly small. I think they'll be thrilled actually.

But carry on Andy, whilst respected publications like MediaGuardian are declaring it a hit, it doesn't really matter what you say. How's Red or Black going, by the way? Is the daily front page domination paying off yet?

Why is everyone predicting that tonight's final won't get anywhere near that of Channel 4's last final, if the gap has been small?

I will have to look up the S1 ratings, but I am actually exepcting some growth in the ratings for S2, but I wont declare it a flop if its up to 2 million viewers down on S1,

Also I think 2.5 is the most Channel 5 could realistically expect from Big Brother, and they will not consider it a flop.

I think given the relative lack of competition (excluding Corrie) on the main broadcasters tonight there's every chance the Celebrity Big Brother final will pull decent numbers. I don't expect it to be up there with the launch show last month though.

I am however much more interested to see how the launch of the 'regular' series does tomorrow night.

Yep, very unlikely.

Err, well actually the first part of the UBB final only averaged 2.4m, rising to 3.6m for the second part. So there's a good chance tonight's final will fair quite favourably compared to that. It won't beat it of course given this doesn't have the extra appeal of being the "last ever", the 11pm finish is late for a work night and there has also been some confusion over the start time due to a late change to the schedules. At least Red or Black won't cause it too many problems, although it should fair better against it than Single-Handed three Thursdays ago.

One positive for Channel 5 with regard to tonight is Channel 4 won't be competitive at all. The Killing and Undercover Boss will be lucky to average 700k across the two hours. Channel 5 should be looking at an audience at least three or four times that size, with an even bigger dominance in the demos.

I'm not sure what to think with CBB. It's on at 9pm so that's a good thing, despite having Corrie has competition, and RoB (not so much a competition). The ratings have really been like a yo-yo. You can never expect anything from the ratings. It went from 1.6m on Saturday, 2.5m on Sunday (in the 9pm slot), 2.3m on Monday, 2m on Tuesday and 2.1m last night. It is when you compare it to other Five shows, we see how good it's performing. On BARB, CBB took up the 6 top places for the channel, with the Saturday polling #9.

I reckon it will average around 3m tonight for the 2 hours, it will start with around 2.3m and rise to around 4m peak in my opinion.

The ratings in general have been great for Five, and decent for BB, in the end we are looking at around a 2.8m-2.9m official (which beats BB10 and matches BB11).

It is the main BB that I worry about, despite the great ratings for the show. Two words that are very important. Live Feed. This is not back. And yes, Five could have faired well without it for the Celebrity series, but what about when 14 strangers enter the house? The ratings will REALLY struggle these next couple of months UNLESS there is an unbelievable twist and the housemates are incredible BUT even then, we would need Live Feed to fully appreciate it, and not get a mere 4 clips on the website a day.

As for RoB, it is getting to dangerous territory, I reckon it will average 4m tonight, maybe under. Corrie will damage the shows surrounding it, which is worrying.

As for the SCD lineup. Pretty decent. I reckon a 7.2m start.

The 24/7 live feed would be back if it there was money to be made from it. Unfortunately there isn't.

What I would like to see though is a slow introduction of Big Brother Live into the Channel 5 and 5* schedules. A couple of hours a day would be great, say 1 hour at 2:15pm and 1 hour at midnight.

Thanks for that. Yes, although it is a positive they're above 1m consistently now it is quite sad to see people talk about ratings of 1.2-1.3m as being a "hit" when they were consistently getting a million more than that not so long ago.


Have they axed The Beat Goes On then - and is that the documentary series rather than a film?


Yes, ITV (and the BBC - the BBC more so actually) need to be finding new talent but to suggest one flop and Ant and Dec are past it is ridiculous. Of all the criticism of Red or Black very little, if any, of it lands and the feet of Ant and Dec. And they're not exactly over exposed - generally speaking they have their two regular gigs (I'm a Celeb/BGT) and a series of their own each year. I think this is their first autumn series other than I'm a Celeb since 2007.




A nice anlaysis - puts things into perspective. Ultimately it doesn't matter where ITV find their next big hit from and we should be grateful they've realised that they need to look beyond ITV Studios to find it.


Sounds awful. I'm sure nowadays when looking for new game shows they just begin with the word "celebrity" and make it up from there.


Hardly - the hard earned reputation of RTL's Five went through the gutter as soon as Northern and Shell bought it and bought in Big Brother. They've told their long term viewers of the US crime shows to piss off - and pissed off most Big Brother fans too.

The figure you really should be comparing with is what Five was rating in the BB slots last year - as the extra million or so viewers is almost certainly not worth the £40m that is being shelled out for it.


Exactly - it's not helping the channel at all beyond it's own slot, and if anything is just highlighting the dross that C5 has to offer. And that's what they get for going for casual viewers.

86,000 people bought the LF last year, costing around £14 each for the series. That is quite a lot.

I've been loving Torchwood: Miracle Day and hoping for another series. I know ratings have been "respectable" rather than earth shattering.

What have they been like in the States? Cause thinking that's where the recomission hopes lie

Nonsense. Channel 5's reputation was no different under RTL as it is now. As Jeff Ford put it at MGEITF this year, it's the channel that people like to "give a good kicking." That was as true 2-3 years ago as it is now. Nobody really cares who owns it beyond the likes of your good self. Most people won't even know, let alone have a view. And the arrival of Big Brother has only displaced a handful of shows, in some cases such as that of L&O Criminal Intent leading to a better timeslot, so it's not the great big drama you make it out to be.


Yeah, they've pissed off to 5USA which is currently enjoying record high audience shares.

Seriously, this is rubbish as well and you know it. Only L&O SVU has been knocked out of its usual timeslot, partly out of necessity to protect CBB on tricky Saturday nights. CSI: Miami and other shows remain regular fixtures in their usual slots. Most of the US shows finished their seasons in May and are off air anyway, so you ain't half talking twaddle there.


2.6m is about three times the slot average at 10pm. It's a big increase. And the increase in the all important demos has been even bigger. So yep, it was well worth shelling out.

It's really not when you take into account the costs to maintain it.

I'd like to see it back but I respect the decision to focus investment in other areas like dedicated multiplatform apps and voting via social network sites, which will reach far more people.

As I said I think the reintroduction of Big Brother Live into the schedules would be a good compromise. It wouldn't please everybody obviously, some will only be happy if the 24/7 feed complete with tweeting birds and HMs snoring returns, but I think most would quite happily settle for some live coverage, even if it isn't a great deal. Sometimes less is more...

Preview in the London Evening Standard of telly to look forward to. (Wasn't number 1 previously going to be called 'Undisclosed'?).

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/lifest...this-autumn.do

Talking of Philip Glenister, "fire up the Quattro" because writers Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah confirm that there will be Life On Mars books...

http://twitter.com/#!/MonasticProds

Two programme on the "missing" list for Channel 5 - Celebrity Big Brother:the Inside Story (9pm tonight) isn't there, and The Beat Goes On (2 of 6 shown so far, but wasn't shown last night) has been replaced again by another Banged Up Abroad next Wednesday at 11pm.

With regards the last bit, I think most people can see that Desmond owns Channel 5 - or at least can see that the Daily Star and Channel 5 are owned by the same company given that Celebrity Big Brother has been on the front page of the Daily Star for the majority of the last month.

Big Brother was on the front page of the Daily Star for the majority of its last run on Channel 4 as well. That publication has actually been very consistent. Maybe it knew something we didn't.

But seriously no, if you did a straw poll tomorrow in the street, who owns Channel 5? 99% of people wouldn't have the foggiest. And why should they, because it doesn't matter!

Scene 1: Dame Maggie Smith enters the drawing-room and holds up a clenched fist. "I hold in my hand a piece of coloured paper. If you can correctly guess whether it's red or black, I'll give you £1 million."

And Downton Abbey slumps to fifth in its timeslot.

I wonder if there are currently more people watching Watchdog than Red Or Black.

I agree completey


lol, it could happen.

Last year though every other day it was "fix" this and "fix" that. This year they haven't invented any imaginary "fix" scenarios. (i.e. taken the opinion of one person on Digital Spy who everyone else disagreed with!).

SCD line-up ought do very well this winter.

Alex Jones - the BBC1 glamorous contestant
Anita Dobson - the former BBC1 soap star
Audley Harrison - this season's Joe Calzaghe
Chelsee Healey - the current BBC1 soap star selection
Daniel Lobb - this year's Andrew Castle
Edwina Currie - the random politician
Harry Judd - the present day popstar choice
Holly Valance - the ex Aussie soap/popstar
Jason Donovan - as above different gender
Lulu - someone famous from the 1960's
Nancy Dell’Olio - the person who is only famous by association
Robbie Savage - the ex footballer
Rory Bremner - someone who was famous from 1990's tv
Russell Grant - this year's Ann Widdecome.

A nice mixed bag - but no surprises, there will be a finite number of celebs to go around these types of shows. Not many BBC employees though.

Not great.

But it airs on (and is co-financed by) Starz a premium cable network so the raw numbers actually aren't as important as they might be. What will be more important is data we don't really see regarding subscription bumps and whether or not Starz feel the series has increased their awareness with larger audience. I suspect its probably not been successful on either of those fronts and the folks at Starz have walked back talk of a second series during the course of the run.

The fact that Russel T Davies is setting up a new series elsewhere in the States probably isn't a great sign for the shows future. Unless the rumblings that Starz brought Jane Espenson in to replace him are true but even then I don't think its done well enough to come back. We'll see though.