i think i'll just take a break for XF

Might as well just ditch everything else and run it 24/7

Alarmingly, though, as you say such a ham-fisted move will probably work wonders for the ratings!


The fall probably won't be much fun (aside from Sunday Night Football). There looks like quite a number of candidates to flop spectacularly - and a few dodgy returning shows that are going to struggle in their timeslots. Tuesdays and Thursdays will probably never descend into complete failure thanks to established shows - but Mondays and Wednesdays look very vulnerable indeed. Clearly the fate of the two comedies that premiere tonight is very important.

To be honest, mid-season is really where its at for NBC. They'll be hoping The Voice can stabilise or grow thanks to a Superbowl premiere - and they've then got their best looking pair of dramas in Smash and Awake to place into the schedule. If we're going to see any sort of NBC revival this season, I think it hinges on those three shows.

Yeah, I think they've probably accepted Sep-Dec as a bit of a lost cause, I'm a little disappointed they've put Parks & Rec against X Factor, as I believe it could grow in the ratings again this year, personally, I would've sacrificed Community (the lowest rated of Thursday Nights are funny, or whatever it's called these days ).

I'm a little worried for The Voice, the ratings fell towards the end of S1 (which can probably be attributed to it running over into summer) the Superbowl launch should help it though.

With the returning shows I can't actually think of any (bar Voice) that are on solid ground. Office will drop this year, 30 Rock hit new lows last year, Harry's Law will probably fall. It's gonna be an interesting ride . CBS are looking the strongest overall this season as usual, but will be topped by Fox's 16-34 giant, Idol (and X Factor?).

FOX has two gambles, the first is The X Factor which is a test whether FOX can dominate the Fall Season as Idol always helps them and the other is Terra Nova which is a hugely expensive drama series which needs to be big if it is justify its budget but its been plagued with problems.

CBS' big gambles are the revamped Two and a Half Men which I think will open big but the following episodes have to work and the other is Person of Interest which has great creative credentials and CBS' so confident that it put it on Thursday and displacing CSI from its timeslot after 10 years.

I've always wondered what the lowest rating ever of recent history is?

Has anything ever received close to zero viewers? or at least under 40,000 or something?

Loads of things I'd guess. 10 years ago when Film4 was a pay channel I remember there were films listed with 0.0 million viewers in their BARB top 10.

Channel 5 was close to zero on the day of the Royal Wedding. Some reports actually rounded it down to zero. So the chances are some channels did hit zero on that day.

Monday night's newspaper review on Sky News

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HzYM_qLEnQ

lets face it, nothing good ever comes from assocaiting with a dominatrix, and they are never that good looking.

If NBC can get a solid Monday going from midseason then this season will have been a success for them. It might have to be a long term plan - tackling one night a year and building up a decent schedule.

Football has been massive so far - another all time high on Sunday with 25.8m. With The Superbowl as well, that's a huge boost for NBC. Of course, they'll need it in the fall. I think The Playboy Club is a strong candidate to be one of the first cancellations of the season. It's hard to guage how well The Sing Off will hold up against DWTS. And Wednesdays look really weak. In fact, NBC's biggest shot at a hit show this fall is probably the ITV Studios produced Prime Suspect. But with a lead-in from a (potentially weak) sitcom and stiff competition, even that is in for a difficult ride.

ABC's male comedy block has all the makings of a total disaster. But DWTS and Body of Proof should hold ensure Tuesdays stay respectable (albeit they'll be 4th). Wednesday should be OK - 10pm may be an issue again, though (as it has been for a decade). But perhaps Revenge can squeeze out an audience between CSI and Law Order: SVU? Sunday is the big night for ABC - 2 new shows and both fairly risky. I give Pan Am more hope than The Playboy Club, especially with the Desperate Housewives lead-in. But Once Upon A Time doesn't seem like hit material. I think ABC could be in for a difficult season.

CBS have their big 9pm gamble with Person of Interest. I'm not really sure what it will do - it seems like one of those shows that could be a big hit or a total bomb. And How To Be A Gentleman at 8.30pm looks poor so if they both fail, Thursdays are going to become an issue (and The Mentalist will feel the pain as well). Unforgettable seems like the kind of thing that ought to go over well on CBS with a nice slot as well. I'm guessing that Two and a Half Men starts up from last year but ends up losing quite a bit by Christmas.

FOX are the most interesting for me. Glee is likely to start down from last year. But I'd imagine New Girl will do better than Running Wilde so the 9pm hour on Tuesdays ought to be stronger. But it's all about the big shows - Terra Nova and X Factor. They don't even need to do anything too big to ensure that FOX win September-December. Of course, history tells us that no matter how lofty the ambition, there's every chance that they could both be down at 2.0 by November sweeps if they don't connect with audiences.

It was nowhere near 0. Newsround Lizo got his figures wrong. It was about 80k, and that was for one 5 minute slot which contained commercials. And bear in mind this also coincided roughly with the peak of the TV event of 2011. A total non story that got a few on here a bit overexcited.

CBS only has one midseason drama and currently no midseason comedies although I think they'll commision one in the next few months.

It'll be interesting how American Idol does in the aftermath of The X Factor, ideally FOX would want both show to do 20m each although I think X Factor will cannibalise it a little.

I wonder how Ghost hunting with the only way is essex will do?
as its TOWIE I think it may get better ratings.

About 75 percent of multichannel programmes I would say get under 100k. Some channels get a * on BARB in the lower Top 10's, meaning the figure is too low to be recorded.

Indeed, loads of channels on Sky most have a rating of 0 most of the time.

Does anyone have a record of the overnights for previous Waterloo Road series premieres, so we know what to compare with when the ratings come out tomorrow?

Here's the series averages if that helps - http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...&postcount=269

has anyone worked out how those channels make money yet?

NBC:
8pm - It's Worth What? - 4.78m (1.2)
9pm - America's Got Talent - 13.67m (3.8)
10pm - Parenthood - 6.29m (2.2)

CW:
8pm - 90210 - 1.61m (0.9)
9pm - Ringer - 2.84m (1.2)

America's Got Talent was down 2.5% from last seasons final performance show. NBC stuck with It's Worth What? all summer despite it being a total flop. Parenthood was adjusted down. Preliminary ratings showed it shed a large amount of the AGT lead-in over the hour.

90210 was moved up in finals to match last year in adults 18-49 although it was down 18% in total viewers which could potentially have an impact on the numbers in the A18-34/W18-34 ratings.

As a non-viewer to me it seems to be the same storyline the beginning of every series - a new head coming in to shake up things.


That is where the live feed came in - at the moment the storylines are those C5 think people want to see. With the live feed (and it's not so much people watching the live feed, but the reports, forum discussion and articles they generate) people push other talking points to the forefront and help put the show into context.


I'm not sure it deserved too - it was another weak exposee episode promising to out a big name and then it being somebody you've never heard off.

I do think next week though they should have moved it to 9pm and renamed it something like My Big Fat Gypsy Eviction.


We've seen in the past though, especially in BB10, at times where they needed to deliver something they just failed to do so - and when they finally do it's just new housemates again.

I was wondering about Sat or Sun going sub-1m but with it's 11pm slot and probably nothing more than the eviction interview of a first evictee it could well hit that low on Friday. The same applies to C5 as it did to C4 - put it all in a 90-minute show at 9pm and BB would certainly on average rate better - and I doubt the show pushed from 10pm to 10.30pm would rate much worse.


Really they should have ditched the 9pm "winners story" and had the launch 9-10.30pm then The Bachelor - or just held The Bachelor back to start next week rather than launch it at a time when promo efforts were concentrated on Celeb BB.


Kind of a shame as the first series wasn't bad, but last night did kind of feel like we'd seen it all before. I guess there is little they can do to vary the challenges set in the icy wilderness.



The so called "die-hard" audience is the one most affected by the axing of the live feed - and the ones who will not watch regardless as has been shown in BB10 and now in BB12.

BB has always had a core audience and a casual audience - and for the first few years that core audience remained very stable at around 3.5-4m, with the casual audience then basically determining whether a series was a hit or not. Inevitably around BB8 the core audience began to drift away slowly - and then in BB10 I'd say around 30-50% of them turned off completely - partly due the live feed issue, partly down to the very weak start to the series and partly because that core audience was expecting the series to undergo a much needed overhaul that simply didn't happen.

Those three issues were addressed to some extent in BB11 and the core audience rose back to around the 2.5m mark - but those three issues have returned now with BB12 - and although the live feed is a factor for many the biggest problem is the show has no identity on C5 - they've pretty much picked up from where it left off and done nothing of note with it. And the "Golden Swimsuit" twist was just too damn predictable - immunity is the most obvious twist of all. I remember the days when BB fans would spend months speculating about the twist BB would come up with - and never even come close to guessing what they were.


I really don't see how C5 could save the series now - it's far easier to relaunch it from the beginning of a series than part way through. The big problem is though even if they did come up with the most amazing twist ever, people clearly don't care about the housemates - and if they don't care about the housemates, they won't care about how such a twist affects them.

The series premieres have rated as follows (all overnights):

Series 1 (Mar 2006) - 5.2m
Series 2 (Jan 2007) - 5.0m
Series 3a (Oct 2007) - 5.1m
Series 3b (Jan 2008) - 5.2m
Series 4 (Jan 2009) - 4.6m
Series 5a (Oct 2009) - 5.0m
Series 5b (Apr 2010) - 4.5m
Series 6a (Sep 2010) - 5.0m
Series 6b (Feb 2011) - 4.6m
Series 7a (May 2011) - 4.9m

It's worth noting that the first 3 series aired on Thursdays after EE which boosted it a bit. Series 4 aired in one 20 week block rather than 2 separate runs.

I think it'll have been at the top end of those launches tonight, if not the highest ever premiere. It was a very good episode too and set the series up nicely. I like the new head already.

Should it be axed then on the basis "ITV doesn't do oldies"?

Perhaps they should let BBC1 pick it up...

(wouldn't be the first Clunes hit series where that had happened!)

I'm not losing faith in Big Brother yet. Tonight's episode was the best since it moved to 5. Can only hope it's reflected in the ratings tomorrow.

In others news I see former 5 News / Sky News / GMTV presenter Helen Fospero is the latest presenter to find work on the National Lottery Draws. Such a shame she doesn't still have a mainstream news gig.

is it really bad, that when I think of her, I think of Look North?

Probably. She's had at least 3 major TV gigs since then. I wasn't even aware she did Look North until you said.

Based on that I'd predict It'll get 5m!

The Autumn series starts seem very consistant even though the scheduling isn't as those launches are across a 9 week period.

In the old days you knew exactly when Autumn favourites like Noel's House Party were going to start every year. It is the same now with the likes of Strictly.

With Waterloo Road though series 6 in 2010 actually started so early (1st Sept I think) it finished in the same week as series 5 in 2009 had begun in the previous year (last week in Oct), which itself was so late it had to run across Christmas. This year's start is much more ideal. It nicely avoided Red or Black week (yes I know) and probably avoids I'm a Celeb.