Bit disappointing for the rugby, frankly.

I see we're back to reporting "twin aggregated peaks" for ITV shows....

Robbie! rzt reported the peak excluding +1 too which was 11.9m.

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Anyway as usual, excellent for TXF. It should do even better tonight. SCD returned well, and DW increased from last week, and will timeshift about 1.5m-2.0m. Low for BB, but expected really for a Saturday highlights show. RoB got a slight boost and that 5.8m for the results show is really good considering how things have looked all week.

Since you brought the topic up once again - don't forget that a normal peak which is reported isn't just viewers who watched at that exact time. It includes hundreds of thousands of viewers, sometimes 1m+, who watched at a later time during that particular day. So I can see why those sources have reported the "twin aggregated peaks"- as you've called them- as it's effectively the same thing as VOSDAL (Viewing-On-Same-Day-As-Live) which is included in the overnights anyway.

Do we have to go over this all again? There's basically no right or wrong with this - people will choose what they want to. I posted both the figures anyway

How can you say that the rugby was a disappointing rating. If it was on the BBC And got over 3m we would never of heard the end of it.

Bit of a lurker on this thread, wonder if someone could answer a query? As I understand it the overnight figures aren't simply how many people with a BARB box were watching Channel X at time Y. They are however many watched whatever programme was on Channel X at time Y at any point that evening?

Therefore, peaks will be established by mapping the people that watched that particular part of a programme to the time it was originally aired at, even if they watched several hours later via PVR?

My big question is then how can we honestly be judging who won "head to heads"? If I had a BARB box and watched something on BBC1 at some time and then two hours later watched the programme from ITV1 that was on at that time via PVR I would count as a viewer for both - even though in "head to head" BBC1 won my viewing.

I just don't understand how anyone can say somebody managed to beat the other in these circumstances - yes, more people watched and therefore they have better viewing figures - but who's to say they actually had more people sat in front of the TV for live viewing as a number of posts on this thread seem to convey? I'm easily confused so might just be picking things up wrong.

Come on it's England in the Rugby World Cup. Just over 3 million is not exactly spectacular, it is disappointing.

But crucially, VOSDAL picks up people who consciously chose to timeshift view, only counts people once, and doesn't include people who just happened to catch a repeat airing later on another channel....

No doubt you'll be updating that Strictly overnight tomorrow once this afternoon's "timeshift" figures are in....?


because it's a poor rating for the rugby WORLD CUP?!

Surprised by the Rugby - and considering Argentina was probably the biggest road-block for England, I wouldn't be surprised to see the other group matches (bar Scotland) rate far lower. That's way down on Australia 03 isn't it?!

Incredible looking at that BBC1 schedule from 2009 - Jay Hunt still passing off the Weakest Link as Saturday night entertainment. Good to see BBC1 improving year-on-year.

Although we won't see most of Danny Cohen's commissions until Christmas/2012 you can already see some good things happening. The scheduling is much improved. The move of Waterloo Road to 7.30 was good, moving Have I Got News for You back to Friday's was sensible, moving New Tricks from Friday back to Monday meant it saw a big jump in ratings. And there are little sensible decisions like having the News before the Proms last night to make sure MOTD doesn't start at silly o'clock.

QI back to it's natural home of BBC2 was his decision also, and personally i'm in favour of the Celebrity Masterchef move.

Oz 2003 was played later in the day - games were around lunchtime. The opener got 4.75m in the officials at 1pm on a Sunday but with a shorter programme than yesterdays 180 minute programme for an 80 minute game which means 100 minutes of non-game.

But then on the other side of the argument, you could say that had ITV1+1 not been around, the vast majority of the 500k would've watched TXF's main showing. It's just, that extra option of watching on +1, gave viewers an opportunity to miss the 8.15pm showing. They consciously chose to miss the original showing and watch on the timeshift channel. Had the +1 channel not been in place, they'd have watched the main showing or PVRed it and watched later on the same night and would've been included in the overnights anyway.

I'll give you an example: last week when Appropriate Adult had 400k on ITV1+1. Do you honestly believe that if ITV1+1 wasn't in place, the main rating of 4.5m would've still just been that and not higher? The majority of people who watched it on +1 wouldn't have just stumbled across it on Sky channel 131 or Freeview channel 33 and just decided on a whim to watch a gritty 90-minute drama. I believe people would've consciously made the decision beforehand to watch it on ITV1+1 so that they could watch another show at 9pm. Had ITV1+1 not been available, they either would've watched it the main showing (and been included in the overnights that way) or PVRed it and watched later on (and be included in the overnights that way). If anything, the ITV1+1 probably helps boost ratings for the competition quite often. If +1 wasn't around, let's say about 200-300k of the 400k of AA's audience would've watched the main showing boosting its ITV1 raw rating to 4.8m, then the obvious show that would've been dented would've been GG and it probably wouldn't have rated as highly as it did the other day (maybe down to 6.3-ish instead of 6.5m). And that sort of thing would apply other times too.

As for someone watching it twice, as trickytree79 posted a few months ago, the no. of people who do that according to the data he/she has is negligible. Also what difference is it compared to someone on the BARB panel who watches a show live, while recording it for someone else in their household, and then watching it once again later in the evening with that other person - wouldn't they be included in the overnights twice too?

I'm not saying that either method is correct, but that you can see both sides of the argument. And that's why some people will request, analyse or report the numbers which include +1. I don't see the problem, as long as both sets of numbers are posted (which they have been today), everyone should be happy.


Overnights are for 'same day' viewing only though, which PVRing and +1ing is.

Is it normal for there to be a 30 minute delay between The X Factor (finished at 9.15pm on ITV1) and The Xtra Factor (started at 9.45pm on ITV2)? Maybe a way of encouraging some viewers to stay for Red Or Black results last night?

yes its only for RoB. But Big Brother seem to be observing it too, which is nice of them!

I think C5 thought Red or Black was going to be this major hit that would dent everything - how wrong that has turned out to be.

C5 should have waited until launching the normal Big Brother. As i sat and watched Friday i just didn't feel the excitement that BB fans should feel on a launch night. Also was it stated before auditions that producers only wanted 30 and under? If i was over 30 and auditioned i'd be pissed off that i went through all that when there was no chance at all. I'm 24 but i don't want it wall to wall 18 - 30.

I'm not sure it's so much overexposure (it's been off air since May) - more that it's a show easy to drop in and out of and at the moment TV on Friday and Saturday nights is pretty strong, so MPD just gets lost. I wonder if a return to the stripped 10pm scheduling say 4 times a year would be for the best.


I think 1.5m or so is about where it's going to settle on Saturdays (and perhaps Sundays too considering Downton and Spooks). Saturday has always been tough for BB in the summer when there has generally been zero competition - so even though C5 are scheduling around The X Factor I'm not sure viewers want to sit through an hour of BB having sat through two hours of TXF.

C5 obviously though willing to take the hit on Saturdays rather than drop the episode, so I think Monday to Thursdays is where whether BB12 flops or (in relative terms at least) succeeds for C5. I do think it will go sub-2m regularly, and I do think whatever way C5 spin it that will be less than they expect, but time will tell.


God, it's been ages since the old +1 argument. Indeed it's possible we've got to Page 74 of this thread without it being mentioned!

For some reason I don't think BB will go sub 2m a lot this series.
Yes, the Saturday shows will, but there is some sort of good energy, vibe and strength about the house mates this year. If word of mouth spreads it could be quite a success.

To be honest 2m daily would be a success for Five anyways.

I don't know, ESPN's games tend to be far more interesting than most of Sky's. Maybe it's because it's not Sky... They do need two channels though. They hold the rights to Serie A, German Bundesliga, Dutch football and only show one game at the weekend if not one game a fortnight from each league. And now that Serie A is back, Bundesliga coverage will suffer and I'm especially aggrieved by this since I think it's a much more exciting league to follow. Likewise football on ESPN surrendered last weekend when Aviva rugby came back. ESPN needs another channel to take advantage of all its rights.

Great ratings for the rugby, in the early morning...it'll be expected to go up if England get further in the competition but it's the time-zone that is causing this competition to suffer in the ratings. If 7m people watched England's 6 Nations opener v Wales earlier this year, if rugby was on in primetime here it would perform very strongly against it's competition. You'll see in four years time

Red or Black should not have a second series. It's beyond dire. Ant and Dec will come back with the celebs in the jungle and post ratings of 8-10m. It's not their fault the show's crap.

Also last night's Doctor Who was brilliant, one of the best in a while.

And Downton Abbey is back next Sunday and that should bring very high ratings for ITV going by the popularity of the first series.

It's been a poor year so far for new light entertainment shows on ITV1. Here's the overnight series averages:

1 - 5.0m (22%) - Red or Black
2 - 4.1m (21%) - Sing if You Can
3 - 4.1m (16%) - The Biggest Loser
4 - 3.4m (16%) - Penn & Teller: Fool Us
5 - 2.4m (10%) - Born To Shine
6 - 2.3m (09%) - Show Me The Funny
7 - 2.0m (10%) - The Marriage Ref

Ratings include HD, +1, and generally are tape-checked

Some questions have to be raised at ITV Headquarters about how poor those sets of figures generally are. Pretty much all of them underperformed or flopped. 20% is the mark they ought to be hitting - more than that for something as expensive as ROB. I can now see SIYC returning due to all those failures, but even that was boosted by airing before BGT. So if you consider TBL's renewal as a 'success' even though its numbers were nothing to shout out about, it's been a success rate of 1/7 (maybe 2/7 at a push with SIYC). Simply not good enough.

I Know Red or Black hasn't done well but i think it will come back as a weekly show after the X Factor.

Ignore.

The Biggest Loser is returning to ITV1 early next year.

Could be tabloid logic, I guess. Or it could be bold facts staring you in the face.
Some people do struggle when invited to look at those though.

Looking at the breakdown for last night highlights the real problem Red or Black has - it bleeds viewers throughout the second/'results' show. That it can't keep a casual audience around to see if someone wins £1 million there's problems.

Having said that both ITV and BBC1 had a good night last night. That's rare.

I agree, that's a really poor hit rate. I haven't been impressed by Elaine Bedell at ITV at all. The other new shows she has commissioned for ITV since she joined in 2009 are: Odd One In, Magic Numbers, The Whole 19 Yards, Push The Button, Take Me Out, Popstar To Operastar, Paul O'Grady Live, Marco's Kitchen Burnout, Michael Winner's Dining Stars, Comedy Rocks, The Door, 71 Degrees North and It's Paul Burling. Of those, only Take Me Out can be described as a success, with 71DN doing okay for the slot it was in. So she's had a hit rate of 1 or 2/19 so far, which is diabolical. The Biggest Loser was actually commissioned by the factual department so she wasn't even responsible for that. I think they need to get rid of her as she's not done well in the role at all. She has 2 new commissions airing this Autumn: Holding Out For A Hero and High Stakes. Of those 2, I think High Stakes will definitely flop as the format sounds dreadful. I do think Holding Out For A Hero could be a small hit but it isn't exactly going to be the next big thing.

As for Red or Black, I doubt it'll be back. A 5.0m average for a new entertainment show looks pretty good on paper but it isn't really good enough considering the huge budget, the critical mauling and the fact that the ratings dropped throughout the week. They might just take a punt and bring it back weekly next year but Cowell shouldn't bank on it. The format just wasn't good enough.

Thinking about it, a better format for Red or Black would be to begin each show (airing weekly) with 8 contestants live in the studio. Each contestant would begin the show with £50,000, and would have to guess red or black on 4 separate challenges. In the first challenge, they could 'bet' anything from £1,000 to £10,000, and up to £20k in the second, £30k in the third and £40k in the fourth. If they guess correctly they'd win the amount they bet, but if they bet incorrectly they'd lose the money they bet. So say a contestant with £50k bet £7k on red on the first challenge, if they got it right they'd have £57k, but they'd have £43k if they got it wrong. Each contestant would be able to abstain from one bet only if they choose to, but they'd have to use their abstain wisely. At the end of the fourth challenge the 4 contestants with the most money would go through with the money they have left, and the other 4 would leave with nothing. This format would mean the contestants would actually have to do something, as they'd have to play the game wisely when deciding how much to bet on each challenge (and whether to bet at all).

In the next round the 4 remaining contestants would have to bet red or black on another challenge. This time however they could bet up to £100,000 on the challenge (if they have that amount after the first 4 challenges). At the end of this, the 2 contestants with the most money would go through, whilst the other 2 would leave with £5,000 each for getting to that stage of the show (or less if they had less than £5k in their pot).

Then there would be 2 contestants left. The absolute maximum amount they could have in their pot at this point would be £250k, but obviously that's very unlikely. They'd then both have to decide whether to go for the final spin or not. They'd decide individually on a keypad or something, and here is how it would work: If both contestants decided to do the final spin, then one contestant would have to pick red, and other would have to pick black - one would win £1m (or perhaps £500k if ITV don't want it to be £1m again) and the other would leave with nothing. If one decided to do the final spin and the other decided not to, the person who decided not to spin would take home the amount of money they have in their pot, and the person who decided to spin would pick either red or black and win either £1m or nothing. However, if both contestants decided not to spin, both would leave with nothing. This format would mean the contestants would have to decide whether to risk spinning for £1m or nothing, or opt out and take home the money they've won throughout the show, but again there is the chance they could end up with nothing.

It'd probably run for 75 minutes and would have to be weekly. I think they'd have a bit more success with that than the current format which has too many contestants that do absolutely nothing.

I think I'd still prefer Red Or Black on my CV to the News Of The World or The Mail So I'll pass on your lecture about facts if you dont mind.