What is it with game shows going down the celebrity route all the while? Family Fortunes and Millionaire only ever deal with celebrities now. The Cube is going that way. Million Pound Drop dabbles.

Fair play to Noel Edmonds for telling Channel 4 where to stick it when they suggested Celebrity DOND.

Last year's 5th show was on a Saturday; this year's is on a Sunday, not comparable.


Indeed. But not a surprising move by ITV. It was a matter of time. I'm not Saturday, 6pm is the best slot for it though.

[quote=D.M.N.;52726954]Last year's 5th show was on a Saturday; this year's is on a Sunday, not comparable.

Oh i know that i just wondered if it was higher then last years fifth Show?

Okay, but yes, it is higher including +1/lower excluding +1.

Okay that's what i thought. As you said it's not really fair to compare though. But thanks for comfirming that to me

Anyway what a bad idea for the Celebrity Chase series. I Don't think it will do well though. Maybe 2m but thats all.

Cheers Robbie. Have enjoyed your banter on here over the years.

Cheers. I'm still trying to. At the Mail on Sunday's Live Magazine.

If they have the same trouble recruiting celebs as Bradley did persuading Phil and Holly to sign up they are in trouble.

They both seemed to think it would be too much like hard work as opposed to making up daft answers on All Star Family Fortunes. Being shown up as not knowing much about a range of general knowledge topics might be a step too far for all but the most eager to be back on TV celeb types.

It is one thing amusing folk with your family on ASFF and another looking dim in front of your fanbase.

As Phil put it to Bradley 'you are not really selling it to me'.

I didn't really understand where they were coming from. Will the celebrities be the contestants or the chasers? Its a good idea to have a celebrity series but not on a Saturday night. It would be better across 2 weeks at 5pm. It sounds a bit ill-thought out, as though they've just took any old format and stuck celebrities in it. As the poster above says, no celebrities will want to be shown up as being thick and getting a question wrong or being thick on that show isn't really entertaining because you get caught and eliminated pretty soon.

I wonder how many other tabloid editors have been lurkers on here for years...?

He claims to have and IQ higher than Einstein.

He also claims to have slept with 49 women.

I think C5 would be more interested in the latter, if either are true.

As I understood it a team of four celebs versus one of the regular chasers.

Bradley was trying to convince a sceptical Phil and Holly that by having a mix of interests amongst the celebs they stood a chance.

They seemed to suggest only if they could have two of the other chasers on their team.

From Broadcast:

BBC One
15:15 - Britain Remembers September 11th: 1.57m (12.4%)

BBC Two
13:30 - America Remembers September 11th: 770k (5.9%)

ITV1
06:30 - Rugby World Cup: Ireland v USA: 850k (19.3%)
* peak: 1.30m (19.9%) at 08:35
* +1: 15k (0.2%)
09:10 - Rugby World Cup: South Africa v Wales: 2.31m (24.4%)
* peak: 3.32m (32.2%) at 11:05
* +1: 32k (0.3%)

Both of those are existing formats rejuvenated (Upstairs Downstairs) or bought in (The Voice). Countrywise is virtually a direct copy of Countryfile, even down to Paul Heiney's introduction sounding for all the world like that of John Craven's (style, voice, inflection and all).

I'm not sure that pinning Big Brother's worries on a lack of intelligence among housemates makes much sense. And as for the age bracket, the show was at its peak for BB3 and BB5 when the age range was quite narrow. The "oldies" tend just to be a token gesture in recent years. I don't know exactly what they've put in this year but I've always felt mid to late 20's contestants are ideal (the teenagers often struggled, IMO).

X Factor's rating was a bit off - one of the better episodes as well (Saturday night was particularly good as well). Could just be that the scheduling caught some people out. Though I'd also look at the lead-in. Even big shows can be hit by extremely weak lead-ins (Red or Black was never that low and look what it did to Corrie).

Holding Out For A Hero ought to be straight out of the schedule, IMO. Another entertainment flop for ITV. How low must most of the show have been if it got a lift at the end for early arrivals to X Factor?

You've not been watching? I thought you were quite a fan of the show?

BBC1 did really well to win the evening considering ITV1 had the X Factor on. I'm not surprised George Gently wasn't affected by TXF, it has pretty much a polar opposite audience in terms of skews. I suspect Antiques Roadshow will be settling at that ~6m level in a few weeks time against TXF too. George Gently's done excellently this series actually, with the official average set to be about ~7.5m. It's now turned into a 'big hitter' drama (I consider 7m+ consolidated averages for scripted shows as big hitters).

Holding Out for a Hero started extremely poorly. It probably would've done worse than that without TXF airing after it! It should be pulled ASAP, ratings are only going to decrease once the SCD results air there, but we all know that ITV will just stick with it for some reason. I thought it was going to do okay with about 4m, so am really surprised it was below 3m. There is something fundamentally wrong at ITV at the moment with regard to entertainment shows, because in the last few months, apart from Red or Black which obviously had loads of promotion and Ant & Dec, it seems like people aren't even bothering to check out their new LE shows even for episode 1! TXF did okay-ish, but I was expecting it to have rated about 11.5m (inc +1) due to airing on a Sunday when it usually rates better. The auditions on the whole have done great so far, but I get a feeling that bootcamp and the live shows won't grow as much as last year. There doesn't seem to be as many controversies (which is good in a sense for the show) but reduces press coverage, which really helped the show around the bootcamp/early live shows stage last year due to the whole Gamu-gate and Chloe Mafia-prostitute stories. Appropriate Adult about the same as last week - I guess the c.-15% decline it would've normally have experienced for a second episode was balanced out by the 'boost' it got off airing after TXF this week.

Big Brother is struggling - only 1.5m for a week one Sunday episode?! The usual trends are that week 1 rates the best, so by week 7 or 8 it could potentially be down to 1.0m or even below if similar trends to previous years take place. It seems like airing CBB and BB together was a massive mistake as they couldn't give BB its own two or more weeks of promotion which it usually would've got, so the launch got far fewer viewers, and that's made it difficult for the highlights shows so far to stay at a good level. Disappointing really as the housemates aren't that bad, but a big scheduling error it seems.

I thought Holding out for a hero was a worthy idea in search of a decent format.

And Red or Black was a format in search of anything worthy.

Marry the two - ie using ROB to make a million for a great community cause and it might have worked.

As it was the big money went to the greedy without talent who did nothing except 'star' on TV and nothing went to two worthy causes set up by hard working communities without expectation of reward.

24 hours on ITV that sums up much of what is wrong with our society.

Added to today by their latest illustration of obsessive belief that sticking the name Celebrity in front of something means it will get bigger viewing figures (and, sadly, it probably will).

So Celebrity Chase will doubtless not be the last we see of this already overcooked idea.

It could do what Channel 4 have done to Come Dine With Me....kill off a decent quiz show by making it look as if it is only any good if Jedward are on it.

I was, but by last year my patience had long been waning. I still liked it but not as much as I once did and I kind of felt it had done everything it could (albeit some improvements were made in 2010 that were long overdue). So when it ended last summer, I pretty much checked out. Might have a look at the C5 version at some point now it's onto the normal series.


I'm not exactly sure how being bought in from abroad makes a show less derivative. The Dutch still do rip-offs! NBC specifically ordered it and rushed it out for that reason. Most of ITV's "rip-offs" are bought in from independent companies.

I really dont want to drag this out like the +1 debate but I understood Countrywise emerged from ITV regional country programmes and the first series was nothing more than those patched together by Paul Heiney.

You could of course argue that the BBC copied the existing format that regional ITV have been doing for 40+ yeards.

My original point to ronant was that in his eagerness to have a pop at evil ITV, he may have been overlooking some copy & paste management by an organisation with a remit to produce original programming freed from the remit of having to sell ad time.

Ch5 could give him a comedy spin off.

[quote=rzt;52727892]BBC1 did really well to win the evening considering ITV1 had the X Factor on. I'm not surprised George Gently wasn't affected by TXF, it has pretty much a polar opposite audience in terms of skews. I suspect Antiques Roadshow will be settling at that ~6m level in a few weeks time against TXF too. George Gently's done excellently this series actually, with the official average set to be about ~7.5m. It's now turned into a 'big hitter' drama (I consider 7m+ consolidated averages for scripted shows as big hitters).

Holding Out for a Hero started extremely poorly. It probably would've done worse than that without TXF airing after it! It should be pulled ASAP, ratings are only going to decrease once the SCD results air there, but we all know that ITV will just stick with it for some reason. I thought it was going to do okay with about 4m, so am really surprised it was below 3m. There is something fundamentally wrong at ITV at the moment with regard to entertainment shows, because in the last few months, apart from Red or Black which obviously had loads of promotion and Ant & Dec, it seems like people aren't even bothering to check out their new LE shows even for episode 1! TXF did okay-ish, but I was expecting it to have rated about 11.5m (inc +1) due to airing on a Sunday when it usually rates better. The auditions on the whole have done great so far, but I get a feeling that bootcamp and the live shows won't grow as much as last year. There doesn't seem to be as many controversies (which is good in a sense for the show) but reduces press coverage, which really helped the show around the bootcamp/early live shows stage last year due to the whole Gamu-gate and Chloe Mafia-prostitute stories. Appropriate Adult about the same as last week - I guess the c.-15% decline it would've normally have experienced for a second episode was balanced out by the 'boost' it got off airing after TXF this week.

About X Factor getting as much Press Coverage. I fully expect Some sort of controversie to happen to Rumors about Cowell coming back and that could help the ratings grow. I Still think it has done really really well. Is it up on last year at the moment or down?

The rugger has been a success for ITV in its morning slots and they were right to bid for it. 3 million at 10am is vastly better than the half a million who tune in for the Coronation St omnibus. Also the demos for rugby union- mostly ABC1s and males- will please the advertisers same as ITV1 bagging the Man U match on Wednesday means 6 million viewers who often don't bother with the station.
Although ITV;'s sports coverage will never match Sky, getting a few big tournaments has certainly helped them and makes money on what can be weak times for them. However, swapping the ECL to Tuesday and moving Corrie to Wednesdays again will really help ITV next year.

It was a 2 cup bid so they get 2015 RWC which is UK hosted as part of the deal. ITV have done every RWC since 1991 so it has a real history with the channel. They also have the weekly Premiership highlight show on ITV4 so more regular rubgy viewers will be aware if ITVs rugby coverage already.

Indeed, This Morning's two viewers in the same place.


This is the third light entertainment show on ITV in six months based around charity, after Sing If You Can and Born To Shine, which seems bizarre. And they do it all wrong as well, Sing If You Can was a case in point, as there was all that Keith Lemon mucking about and then Stacey Solomon came on and introduced a dull film about cancer. Clearly the idea is to do something like Let's Dance but that's a show that's relentlessly cheerful and upbeat and silly, even the aid films are introduced in an amusing way. I don't see why we have to be bashed over the head with the charity, Celebrity Total Wipeout gives a prize for the winning celebrity's charity and we don't have to sit through a five minute film about the charity.

It reminds me of William Phillips in Broadcast saying BBC1 were "rattling the tin too furiously for Comic Relief" as there were umpteen shows before it in 1999, all of which flopped, and so there's less of that now and the stuff they do like Let's Dance works in its own right. But why does everything on ITV now have to be so relentlessly worthy?