The "slump" articles fed to the press are all part of the publicity machine, just like the "falling out" between Cowell and Cole. Her record contract commitments meant X Factor America was never going to be an option for her.

The two of them are really good friends.

Which is different to you as you bitch about The One Show very often yet when anything happens on it you always seem to "accidentally" be watching it.

Don't forget that George was Out Of The Blue's sole committed viewer...

Northamptonshire is in TV nomansland.

We used to live just across the border in Oxfordshire and on BBC Breakfast they would say "...and now the news where you're waking up".

It was from Southampton!! At least ITV did better with Central South. I believe that's gone now.

Re Five News


If I read that correctly there should be a weekend lunchtime programme, and 2 Saturday evening bulletins. But there isn't, at least not on a regular basis. So there must be some room for change. The 7pm bulletin is just there to please Ofcom, not because there is any demand for it.

With regards to primetime news hours, if they actually provided a longer weekend bulletin again, that would go some way to meeting the quota. 5 News weekend bulletins used to be better, and often longer, than the BBC/ITV, back when Channel 5 knew what 'hard news' was and very successfully mixed that in with human interest stories. Used to be about 8pm on a Saturday, and often got up to 25 minutes. Lets say Channel 5 added an extra half hour of primetime news each weekend, cheaply using repackaged Sky reports, then thats 26 hours a year of primetime news

Additionally maybe Channel 5 could add some occassional primetime news specials to help meet the requirement


The Wright Stuff means Channel 5 exceed their Current Affairs quota by some margin, so extending that quota, as well as adding Milkshake to their PSB commitments seems like a very reasonable settlement to drop the 7pm News.

Take that back! I loved that show.

I agree with this.

Channel 4 News got rid of the lunchtime news and replaced it with a shorter bulletin as did Channel 5. The 5pm News rates well and is the main bulletin, they dont need the 7pm News as news watchers are already catered for at that time with Channel 4 News. Extending other bulletins would be an option, I think before Neighbours came to the channel, they considered extending the 5pm News to an hour.

Apparently, Celebrity MasterChef is a 30-part series, so it might have been a job to fit it into primetime. I wonder if it was planned for 5.15pm before Pointless took off.

Then again, with the endless Come Dine With Me in the 5pm hour on C4, and ITV's Best Dish programme often cropping up, too, maybe 5.15pm wouldn't have been a good idea?

They also stopped simulcasting Sky News Sunrise last year, so that was 2 hours per week less that needed to be made up.

It used to frustrate me that Sky would not even acknowledge those watching on Channel 5 at all, so I was glad when they dropped it. They have been a pretty useless news partner IMO and I can only imagine they are keeping them because it's the least costly option.

Wonder why Celebrity Masterchef didn't get the revamp the parent series did and also when is Masterchef: The Proffesionals going to air as it would be overkill to have two Masterchefs on at once.

I've looked at the listings for last year's series of The Professionals, and it started on September 27th, so maybe it'll be later this time around.

I'm sure this is the latest the Celebrity version has started. I seem to recall it being on in the summer in previous years.

Boo can't believe this is being moved to daytime, U was really looking forward to it too! Will have ti series link the series I guess

The contract runs out in 2012 so they'll either renew it, go back to ITN or find another news supplier like CNN.

Surely they should have realised beforehand that a 30-part series was not a good idea?

Channel 4 actually isn't required to provide a news bulletin - or wasn't initially at least.

So 100 hours a year in primetime - so basically just short of 2 hours a week - so not quite sure updates would quite make it (2 min updates on the hour would be 8-10 mins a day). Perhaps switching to 7.30pm might boost news ratings - away from the flagship BBC/ITV bulletins, and not much else picking up the anti-soap audience there on the main channels as BBC2/C4 are usually half way through their 7pm output and BBC1/ITV1 in cheap anti-soap mode themselves if not airing Corrie/EE.

They are required to do 208 hrs of news in peak-time at present, more than ITV1!

Not sure if moving to 7.30pm would boost the ratings and I would think they exceed the quota with the 7pm News totalling almost three hours. Given that they axed it back in 2009 only to reinstate it a year later and they cut it for cricket, I don't think Channel 5 would mind getting rid of it and running new factual or repeats.

Actually ITV tended to counter the BBC's repeats with quality mini series from America like Rich Man Poor Man, a decent film and quiz shows. Usually in summer the BBC was a sportsman's paradise so ITV knew how to attract people who weren't that bothered about athletics from Prague.
However, Auntie usually had an ace up her sleeve on Saturday night ( as always back then) like Seaside Special.

The 9/11 documentary is trending on twitter (after a fashion, I'm not sure twitter trends can cope with /'s), should mean some well deserved good ratings.

It should rate well - above 4m - but difficult to say if it will.

I think that and Celebrity Juice will take viewers away from Celebrity Big Brother tonight, won't be surprised to see that under 2 million tonight.

Once Celebrity Juice begins to gather steam again and CBB is over, Celebrity Juice could well find itself being ahead of Big Brother.

Anyone like to hazard a guess at which show is #1 in the August iPlayer chart?

http://www.doctorwhonews.net/2011/08...tler-tops.html

First time I've watched ITV in ages tonight for the 9/11 doc. They did well to get such high profile people to contribute for something that I don't think will air in the US (I saw the endcap mentioned NHK and a French broadcaster as well as ITV though).

Watched it at the expense of Cowboy Builders though


6x2 minute updates on weekdays, 6-11pm would be 60 minutes per week. If 6pm isn't primetime another bulletin may have to be longer. Then if they had a full bulletin at weekends in early primetime the quota would be met. Extra weekend evening headlines could give them some scope to cut back elsewhere some weeks if required for scheduling reasons

So would it be worth Five investing in 30 minutes of weekend news, mostly repackaged Sky reports, to be able to dump the 7pm news. It would appear to be possible?

But on the other hand I suspect the 7pm news is very cheap using most of the same staff and reports as 5pm, and is probably why Five aren't trying to get rid of it. Clearly full weekend bulletins would increase staffing costs, even with repackaged Sky material