Some stand out ratings last night - very high for EE, The Body Farm retaining a healthy rating - ought time-shift well also. TGBB doing incredible numbers for BBC2. Emmerdale bringing in healthy numbers also. Premiere for Two and a Half Men very decent for a multichannel - Comedy Central ought keep the episodes running weekly from now - to run episodes until the Friends relaunch - if they wait until October as planned ratings will drop more than expected.

Glee is an expensive show due to recording sessions and choreography but I think song sales, merchandise and concerts make up those costs. I do wonder if it has syndication value as a lot of the songs are current and that will date it.

Fantastic for Eastenders last night and the Great British Bake Off last night. It's Very Embarrassing that the main commercial channel is beaten by BBC 2 But i suppose its good that 71 Degrees North didn't fall from Last week.

Tonight Coronation Street should get some very good ratings but it might catch people out as it's out of it's normal slot.

It caught me off guard when mentioned at the end of Emmerdale

Very strong rating for EE last night (8.8m). It always seem to get a good share in the Tuesday slot. Emmerdale posted a good rating too. Looks like the soaps are finally climbing back up now.

71DN did OK (up from last week), but its still poor and could do so much better in a decent slot, rather than been lumbered in the Tuesday "flop-zone". TBF did well to retain alot of its viewers from last week, but I predict it will fall further. TGBB also posted a very high figure. As for Shameless, I dread to think how low it will go next week for its 100th episode with a 105 minute run time!

...meaning True Blood is pushed back to the ridiculous time of 11:45pm.

Like the characters in that show, Channel 4 sucks. Still waiting for those chumps to show TBBT finale.

I hadn't even thought about True Blood. Looks like it's dead after 2 episodes then. Personally, its one of my favourite shows. I've seen Season 3 already anyway.

So after the joys of Red or Black earlier this month Simon Cowell will be serving up another show for ratings fans to obsess over tonight - The X Factor US launches on Fox and then on ITV2 Thursday night.

Anyone want to be brave and predict numbers? For reference sake the last season of American Idol (and for some reason that's become the bench mark for this) launched with 9.7 in the demo and 26.2 million viewers.

Link (TVbyTN): http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/201...d-down/104472/

NCIS (4.3) and DWTS: Results (2.9) were adjusted up a tenth. Body of Proof were down a tenth (2.2). Speaking of DWTS, why ABC airs some recap or "meet the cast" at 8pm is very beyond me. ABC must have very little confidence in the new Tuesday comedy block that they are opening up. I'm not sure if that should be worrying for Revenge, which premieres after a one-hour season opener of Modern Family tonight. They promoted the heck out of that show over the summer.

Here is the quarterly breakdown of how The New Girl (their last minute ratings also) and Unforgettable did, via Travis Yanan.

I do wonder whether the next series of Shameless will be the last because its only time before it falls below 1m.

It'll be interesting how Fresh Meat does but I don't have high hopes for it despite it being from the writers of Peep Show.

I think the Dancing with the Stars recap made sense last night given the big (and expected) competition from CBS on Monday night. In theory it gives viewers who watched the CBS comedies a chance to catch up on what they missed. Whether that works in practice is another matter. Why they continue to do this for weeks on end I have no idea.

Revenge is awful. At least I thought it was. It has some tough competition tonight though. CSI will have increased interest with the new lead and timeslot and SVU has basically an entirely new cast debuting tonight as well. It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

A quick bit of Christmas TV news that I don't thinks been mentioned - Lenny Henry, Jasper Carrott and Griff Rhys Jones will have one-off specials on BBC One with old characters and star guests. Along the lines of last year's One Ronnie apparently. This is according to the Radio Times.

Edit: Also info here - http://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2011/0...ns_to_stand-up

Is it just me or does that sound horrific?

I think though the off-screen stuff gets less important as time goes on - the novelty quickly wore off.

Having seen season 1 & 2 on E4 reading the snippets on Digital Spy about season 3 and seeing the couple of promos/sneak-peaks doesn't really make me care that it's on Sky now - and even if it does improve in terms of quality this year, I think the decline had already begun last season in terms of how the show is perceived and ultimately ratings will catch up with that.


Fresh Meat wasn't bad - a better first episode than Sirens IMO, but it's been a long time since a drama series launched on C4 with a healthy audience. Indeed Shameless and No Angels, which both launched in 2004, could well be the last time a potentially returning drama series launched around the 2m mark rather than the 1m mark.

Shameless hits 100 next week but the extended run time will surely knock off any benefit to be gained from that. It needs a season 4 style reboot (when the Maguires were introduced) next year to have any chance of making 22 hours of watchable TV. It used to be a cut above any UK drama, but now it's as mediocre at best.

Shameless hits 100 the same night as CSI Miami hits 200 I think. Funny coincidence. Both shows past their peak, of course.

Will be massive I think, over a 10.0 in the demo. The amount of PR into it will only be justified with a huge number like that.

Good return for Rhod Gilbert, but a shame he was dumped in the later and post Lotto show 10.45pm slot. He did really good business on Mondays for series 1, so this is a demotion.

It's a really funny and entertaining show, and informative too. Instead of grasping around for new Saturday evening shows, they should be grooming this one for Saturdays.


Quite a coup to get Carrott back doing comedy. Henry and Rhys-Jones perhaps less so.

Seems odd to use "The One.." tag when that was obviously derived from The Two Ronnies. The One Carrott etc doesn't really work (confusingly there was once a BBC1 Carrott Christmas special called "One Jasper Carrott").

Maybe it's because the dotty old females from the shires who make up much of the Downton audience can't understand why it has to have ad breaks when no other BBC1 programmes have them....

The demographics are fascinating. I bet even Loose Women doesn't skew as heavily female as Downton does. We now know why ITV was so keen to bag 3 weeks of blanket coverage in the Daily Mail Saturday magazine - most of the audience is made up of Middle Britain retired females, there will be a real drop in the nation's home made jam output on Sundays between now and Christmas I suspect.

Looking at those breakdowns, Downton looks like the TV equivalent of Cliff Richard playing to a packed house at the Womens Institute National Convention.

Haven't been on in a while but this post is one of your best ever!

I remain unconvinced there's any genuine interest in The X Factor US. Fox have reportedly spent tens of millions on promotion but have seen very little mainstream splash for that money and that whole Cheryl stunt was a complete bust in the US. I'm going lower than expected for X Factor. A 6 in the demo is my upper limit right now.

I see the BBC are going to court over a Strictly rip-off in Italy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-14989646

Why didn't they take action against ITV over Dancing on Ice?

Seven announce 2012 highlights including new project from Kath & Kim creators and new Bevan Lee drama series:

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2011/09/...ighlights.html

After hyping it up for almost 2 years it has to deliver something pretty amazing.

It will be interesting to see how it does on ITV2. I can see it launching with around 1.5m but dropping off quite dramatically.

Seven
18:00 Seven News 1.19m
18:30 Today Tonight 1.20m
19:00 Home & Away 1.05m
19:30 World's Strictest Parents 1.00m
20:30 Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior 0.88m
21:30 Law & Order: L.A. 0.61m

Nine
18:00 Nine News 0.92m
18:30 A Current Affair 0.82m
19:00 The Big Bang Theory (R) 0.71m
19:30 Ocean Giants 0.69m
20:35 RPA 0.59m

Ten
18:30 6:30 with George Negus 0.34m
19:00 The 7pm Project 0.69m
19:30 The Renovators 0.75m
20:30 New Season: Glee 0.76m
21:30 Eric Stonestreet's Modern Love 0.34m

ABC1
19:00 ABC News 0.91m
19:30 7.30 0.60m
20:00 Poh's Kitchen on the Road 0.56m
20:30 Spicks and Specks 1.07m
21:00 Series Finale: The Gruen Transfer 1.16m
21:30 At Home with Julia 0.77m

Eleven
18:30 Neighbours 0.36m

What a difference a day makes for Nine. From their best Tuesday performance all year, to what is probably their worst Wednesday. Nothing above 1 million and it looks like they may have even fallen behind ABC1 in the primetime shares.

Nine can take heart, it isnt Ten

ABC 1 is great.

Whatever "Eric Stonestreet's Modern Love" was, it should never have been on TV.