Next week ITV are keeping it very network friendly with X Factor's Gary and Tulisa appearing on the show, so expect another rally, only for it to sink again the following week when it's bumped to a much later slot. Erratic is definitely the word to describe this show.

I dunno if ITV will be happy with a base around 3m. It seems a little low coming out of their second most watched show of the week. O'Grady does better than that on Friday nights.

I don't know. There was what I thought to be a big drop across the 90 minutes last week, but how many of those switch-offs were due to diappointment, how many were due to the late finish, and how many were due to slow-to-react X Factor viewers is something I wouldn't like to guess.

Oh dear - as if reviving a beloved format and throwing celebrities at it wasn't enough...

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/...-the-star.html

Quite apart from Bleakley, did ITV not see what Louis Spence did to a 11m XF lead-in on Ross yesterday... :roll eyes: How does that man keep getting TV jobs?!

It shows what a good job Hole in the Wall was doing, particularly for its first series, before it followed the well worn path of the BBC's game shows: "Let's tinker with it, move it to Scotland, and balls it up!"

ITV have another flop on their hands, Christine Bleakley most be desperate to take this on.

I guess ratings for Ross always went up and down, depending on the guest, but 3 weeks in and the best they can do is Louis Spence?

I think he's okay at quiz shows, and viewer reaction must be favourable otherwise the BBC wouldn't keep giving him quizzes to present.

I thought Secret Fortune had potential when it began, but it takes too long to get where it's going, and the journey itself is a tedious one, stopping at "Confusion Central" along the way.

That was even worse!

Although, to be fair, there was a very good basic idea at the heart of 1 Vs 100, but all the excitement was sucked out of it by the way it was executed.

I'm going to do a Robbie Sykes and state that if JR doesn't get at least 5m next Satuday then it's an epic fail (and I was tempted to say 6m there.)


In Round 1 of Guess The Star the host comes on stage and before she talks the audience have to guess if it's Christine Bleakley or Alex Jones. That would be even tougher than trying to tell which is John and which is Edward. Or which is Ant and which is Dec.

Incidentally it's been scientifically proven that all the people who can tell which one is Ant and which one is Dec are the only people who can understand the rules of Secret Fortune.


Even if Dale Winton had remained as host, I think the novelty value of this series would have worn off very quickly.

I noticed Harry Hill was on the guestlist last night. No doubt Ant and Dec will be popping up as guests when I'm a Celeb draws near.

I wonder if we'll ever see the missing episode.

Just seen the Comedy Central promo for Friends, highlighting the fact its going to be in HD
Quite a good advert actually and will np doubt boost there ratings share when it begins.

Oh, you could bet your house on it. Trouble is, I used to watch it for the wide-ranging guests, including the likes of Michael C. Hall whom you never see on UK TV normally. Now guests wise it feels like just another ITV chat show. And with the ads the interviews feel just as rushed too, so it's probably a good thing the guests haven't been up my street so far. I wondered if there was a possibility of them doing an uncut version on ITV2 like they used to do for Piers Morgan's programme? That might improve things slightly.

Can't wait for Graham Norton's show to return. Anyone know when?

That's true, I'm reminded here of the autumn of 1995, when the Gen Game and House Party both returned in mid-October, and from the first week of September, the early evening line-up was a film a la Three Amigos or Ghost Dad at around half five and some leftover episodes of Big Break at 7.20 before the lottery turned up. In fact September always used to be a funny month for Saturday night telly, on boith channels, at least one Saturday night would just be back-to-back movies with maybe one new show.

Every autumn from 1995 to 1997, too, in the post-Casualty slot, BBC1 would normally show a crappy TV movie at 9pm, usually starring Lynsay Wagner, every week from September to December. They didn't do so badly for BBC1 either, they used to pull in a good five million or so, but looked a bit hopeless when ITV had An Audience With or a proper film, and it meant Match of the Day always started pointlessly late. In the end the Beeb promised they'd put Match of the Day on at 10.30 except in exceptional circumstances so they ran out of space for the TV movies.

Contradicts what I said the other day about how the BBC and ITV shouldn't be afraid to schedule the big hitters against each other but with the return of TV Burp and The X Factor beginning at 7.30pm surely it would make more sense to hold back new episodes of Family Fortunes for the winter to air along with Take Me Out (and probably more TV Burp) rather than air them at 6pm. Indeed ITV could probably just switch to repeat episodes and wouldn't lose that many viewers - or burn off Primeval against Strictly if they really wanted to throw the towel in.


And didn't Llewelyn-Bowen actually lose that before he was invited back because there were doubts over whether his answer was actually incorrect.


Yes, the final auditions seemed to end on a real low. Usually the last episode is packed with people who at best have featured in a montage or on ITV2 so far but then became more prominent at Boot Camp, so they throw them in last minute.

I think too the ITV2 Boot Camp episode last night seemed better than the ITV1 stuff - concentrating on the singers preparing in their groups seemed to get more of their personalities across than the approach ITV1 took.


What was the one Tess Daly did - that was pretty awful.


The first round is over two weekends - performances split Fri/Sat the first week then all in one on the Saturday the next, with the results on the Sunday. Still a better format I guess though than the five hours of so of Dancing on Ice back in January where we were told the celebs were competing to be on the show they were already on.


I doubt she gets much choice about it - that's what signing a multi-million pound deal when you have very little talent does to ones career. Indeed even when you have talent by the bucketload you get what you're given - see Graham Norton's first few years at the BBC!

Comedy Central could really be going places ratings wise. Recently they have been very successful with TAHM and The Roast of Charlie Sheen.

For once I'm actually right about something, I predicted it would be her in the thread about it . It will flop.

I don't see the harm in just bringing back Celebrity Stars in their Eyes and rework the format so its live and has a public vote. If its done properly and is a bit tongue in cheek like Lets Dance for Comic Relief it could be really good, but knowing ITV it will be all wrong.

That's not the first round, though, is it, that's the first two rounds. I makes sense that nobody goes out after the first week because it means everyone gets a go at both styles, and also we get to know the contestants a bit better. And they did that on series one, so it's not like a ratings-grabbing exercise for a bloated show.

she could do is all a favour and return the money.

Do you honestly believe there’s not a range of programming on British television? And do you not think it is somewhat hypocritical to bemoan a supposed lack of range or variety to programming and at the same time bitch about the BBC buying what they hope will be a big mass audience entertainment show? Surely The Voice, The Apprentice and Strictly Come Dancing airing across the year as the big reality/entertainment formats on BBC1 actually provides quite good variety and in turn allows them to focus on finding other more diverse programming?

And frankly I’d hate to think about what kind of trouble ITV would be in without The X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent, I’m A Celebrity… etc. These shows are incredibly important in terms of giving them the freedom to invest in anything else.


Which might suggest that Sky see better overnight results at least when they focus their promotion on their existing subscriber base.


Well there's the issue that a lot of the shows aren't performing but more than that its this schedule could actually be from any point in the year at this stage because the whole thing is just rinsed and repeated throughout the year. There's no imagination and excitement about it (which I suspect is just as much to blame for Doctor Who's overnights drop as the show itself). People don't feel compelled to watch BBC1 on a Saturday night when its basically the same schedule every week of the year.

I said it last week but I'll say it again the very best thing that can happen to BBC1 Saturday nights is for them to ditch the Lottery and dramatically reduce the number of Casualty episodes a year. They need to breathe some life into their Saturday nights. The Voice feels like a good start to that but if its just going to be slotted into the same paint by numbers schedule then I'm not sure what the point is.

Yes. The question wasn't researched properly and there were two correct answers. They gave them a space question upon their return but decided not to go for it twice and walked away


This Time Tomorrow. The second show to be recorded at Pacific Quay and the second show (first one was Jet Set 2012) to have an Olympic theme. I always remember The Voice of the Balls kept saying "going for gold"

Oct 14th or the 21st, I can't remember exactly, but it's one of the two, Graham likes his holidays...

"A few weeks", apparently: http://twitter.com/#!/TheGNShow

1988 and 1989 were very consistent: the first Saturday of September saw The Noel Edmonds Saturday Roadshow, Bob's Full House, Russ Abbot, 'Allo 'Allo!, and All Creatures Great and Small starting together, both years. And Sundays were consistent, too, with First of the Summer Wine, Howards' Way and Bread, although Bread started a week later in '89.

I remember those TV movies in the mid-1990s. Karl Kennedy from Neighbours popped up in one of them, crashing a plane.

Completely forgot that one.

Didnt Julian Clary present one too?-dont think that lasted long.

Cheers for that.