Talking of ITV1+1, when it becamse obvious the BBC wasn't going to shift Strictly they should've taken a risk and thrown The X Factor back to 7.05pm timing an ad break around then so they could promote the show starting on ITV1+1 to those who switched over from Strictly Come Dancing.

The risk behind this is that they'll give away the momentum to Strictly Come Dancing while head to head. I do wonder whether ITV1+1 being more established now has led to the competitive scheduling from BBC One.

Jonathan Ross' rating is the poorest of the night IMO. Only 3.5m with 2 X Factor judges and Alan Partridge as guests, with a near 10m lead-in too!

Any prediction for England v France next Saturday morning? I'm going for 4 million with a peak of 6.5 million, as people try to shake off their hangovers around 10am. Again huge figures for the normally dead Saturday morning schedule on ITV where 500,000 is more typical.

A poor night from ITV1 which isn't usually said while The X Factor is on! The aforementioned show performed ok when +1 is factored in but it didn't provide any boost for The Jonathan Ross Show, which struggled considering The X factor crossover. You've Been Framed pulled in a very low set of figures and Family Fortunes struggled until Strictly went off air. TV Burp should do slightly better.

In comparison, BBC One will be satisifed with their night. Strictly Come Dancing recorded a low figure relatively speaking but the share is strong enough and it gave a boost to the rest of the evening. Doctor Who seemed to be the only show not to be effected by the weather and it should timeshift well. Merlin pulled in an admirable figure as always against The X Factor and Casualty stayed comfortably in the 4ms. Match of the Day seems to be good for around 4m each Saturday now.

Channel 5 will be pleased that Big Brother managed to saty above the 1m mark though the share seems low. That seems very low. The crime proceduals yet again struggled without a crossover audience and I think Channel 5 need to rethink their scheduling next year; maybe a few more shiny floor formats such as Impossible and The Bachelor to keep the already attracted audience.

The Million Pound Drop has settled at a consistent figure now but it doesn't appear to be boosting the programming around it with 8 Out of 10 Cats and Rude Tube struggling (I'm assuming they're both repeats?) Come Dine With Me hogged the early evening but struggled due to the heat wave. Do Channel 4 schedulers have no imagination for that slot?

BBC Two seemed to struggle with the weather and other channels catching their programming in a pincer movement. Even the ever reliable Dad's Army limped over the 1m mark and that was the highlight of the evening; I guess the channel will be pleased they managed to beat Channel 5 in the 9pm slot with an extended repeat.

There's only really one Hare left now, to be shown next Saturday. There's also a compilation edition in the can, but there's no need for that to see the light of day.

I wonder if this will be career-finisher for Jason Bradbury, in the way C4's athletics is worried to be for Ortis? I would love to know if the Hare effect has turned some people away from The Gadget Show.

Prediction Game: *Brand New Season*

If you're interested in TV ratings, then you are invited to play Season 16 of the long-running DS Ratings Prediction Game which starts on Tuesday and will run until the end of the year, including two bumper weeks for Christmas & New Year. As ever, the scores will be completely reset so everyone will be on a level playing field and new players are always welcome. It's a fun way to keep up-to-date with the numbers and also share your ideas on how you think shows will rate. In week 1 we are covering the following...

* The premiere of what could be the last ever series of Harry Hill's TV Burp;
* New BBC One drama Hidden;
* Sky1's big-budget US import Terra Nova;
* The return of Rab C Nesbitt, Extraordinary People, The Hotel Inspector, Autumnwatch and The Pride of Britain Awards;
* Saturday night giants Strictly Come Dancing and X Factor;
* The movie premiere of Transformers 2;
* Live football in Montenegro v England in which the latter could clinch Euro 2012 qualification;
* Plus much more!

Still with me? Great, then head on over to the dedicated thread to submit your predictions before 9:30am on Tuesday.

Thank you and good luck.

Daisies Up will be the final one.

Yes, ratings used to be much simpler!

Do broadcasters avoid repeat fees on +1 channels? If not, ITV1+1 must be costing a fortune.

It's more necessity than competition.The licence fee freeze is biting ITV on the bum here. The BBC frantically trying to get extra hours out of all shows, especially costly ones, has, for example, manifested itself with Celebrity Masterchef, getting shown in daytime and on Friday and Saturday nights, giving 5.25 hours-per-week, rather than the previous 2.5 hours-per-week.

The freeze also seems to be preventing them from making any content to air beween Casualty and the News.

Maybe a few people who were cartwheeling at the freeze, aren't cartwheeling anymore.

BBC One did well last night, as did X Factor, but some horrific ratings for C4, You've Been Framed and the pat-on-the-back exercise for David Frost.

How is the licence fee freeze affectinG ITV? It has nothing to do with them!

As far as Channel 4 are concerned, the rapid repeat of X-Men Origins was always going to do badly. Screening it up against the biggest show on TV and effectively closing it off to 10m viewers twice was a monumentally stupid scheduling move. It will probably rate better than that when it hits Film4 for the first time.

According to the voiceover man at the end of X Factor there is going to be a big twist next week. The return of Cowell or Cole would be big and could get big ratings?

Theyre doing the same for Star Trek and most likely Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which IMO would have done better had they saved for December or January.

I hope Star Trek does well, good film and I think ROTF will do well although it's pretty long and although I liked it, it got awful reviews,

It's an indirect effect. Arguably, SCD would be positioned slightly earlier in forthcoming weeks were it not for Celebrity Masterchef getting an hour-long Saturday night repeat.

I wouldn't be surprised if we get Total Wipeput repeats when CM finishes its Saturday run.

Dont blame the licence fee "freeze" for the BBC management believing like idiots. You could hose them down with £50 notes and they'd still make bizzare scheduling decisions.

Maybe the one time cheap and cheerful 3 million an episode of YBF has come to an end. The programme is very old now and would probably work pretty well in a Saturday lunchtime slot, where at least it would be more original than showing highlights of This Morning and would probably pull in an audience of a million.
Since when has a morning magazine show had highlights, it's a bit like showing highlights of Lorraine or Daybreak as there aren't any.

Well, the scheduling of Celebrity MasterChef has been a balls up, but the logic behind it (i.e. filling extra hours with extended versions and/or repeats of a show, especially on a narrative basis) is fundamentally sound. It's just that this hasn't worked out ratings-wise for CM.

If the licence fee had gone up this year, I doubt BBC One would be pissing around with an hour of CM repeat material on Saturday evenings. They'd have a new half-hour Hole in the Wall-type show at 5.30pm, with SCD at 6pm. And they'd probably have a new series of some sorts to run between Casualty and the News.

And, they probably wouldn't have relied as heavily as they have on Lottery quizzes in the first nine months of this year, to the extent where they now only have two extended lottery shows left for the rest of 2011 (one edition of Secret Fortune and the one-off Lottery Awards show).

If it's the return of Cowell or Cole (more likely the latter) it'll be leaked to the press before long to create momentum.

On the contrary. It should have been shown at 5.15 weekdays but BBC1 didnt want to drop Pointless in case ITVs The Chase got a leg up. So this bizarre scheduling is the result of having to show it somewhere.

If anything it suggests the BBC is wasting resources and producing shows it havent a proper slot for.

I'll believe the BBC are hard up when they continue to show full runs of shows in their original slots even when ratings drop. No sign of that yet as they still have the luxury to pull shows and leave shows unscreened.

Why doesn't he just announce he's coming back? However, this show is a big media circus and no doubt the rumours do it good.

My cousin just released some figures to me for a ratings test she did last week with 680 of her Facebook friends.

Here were the top 20 most watched shows from those 680 people:
(Week beginning Monday 19th September 2011)
1. EastEnders (BBC One, 7:30pm, Thursday 22 September 2011) 522 of 680
2. Coronation Street (ITV1, 7:30pm, Monday 19 September 2011) 503 of 680
3. EastEnders (BBC One, 8pm, Friday 23 September 2011) 497 of 680
4. EastEnders (BBC One, Monday 19 September 2011) 493 of 680
5. EastEnders (BBC One, Tuesday 20 September 2011) 492 of 680
6. Coronation Street (ITV1, 8:30pm, Monday 19 September 2011) 489 of 680
7. Coronation Street (ITV1, 8:30pm, Friday 23 September 2011) 452 of 680
8. Coronation Street (ITV1, 7:30pm, Friday 23 September 2011) 451 of 680
9. Big Brother Eviction (C5, Friday 23 September 2011) 432 of 680
10. Coronation Street (ITV1, 8:30pm, Thursday 22 September 2011) 401 of 680
11. Big Brother Eviction Interview (C5, Friday 23 September 2011) 400 of 680
12. Hollyoaks (C4, Friday 23 September 2011) 399 of 680
13. Hollyoaks (C4, Wednesday 21 September 2011) 398 of 680
14. Big Brother (C5, Tuesday 20 September 2011) 396 of 680
15. Hollyoaks (C4, Thursday 22 September 2011) 393 of 680
16. Hollyoaks (C4, Monday 19 September 2011) 392 of 680
17. Hollyoaks (C4, Tuesday 20 September 2011) 390 of 680
18. The X Factor (ITV1, Saturday 24 September 2011) 363 of 680
19. Big Brother (C5, Monday 19 September 2011) 362 of 680
20. The X Factor (ITV1, Sunday 25 September 2011) 360 of 680

These were interesting figures to see..... I was one of only 18 people to watch Emmerdale last week.....

I hope she's going to be working out the average age of her 680 friends before saying how much different they are to BARB figures.

Maybe they're going to ban crying.

I think you might be right that the 45-minute editions would have been planned for 5.15pm. No-one could have expected Pointless to have rated as well as it (Pointless) has.

But, the 5.15pm slot wouldn't necessarily have precluded a weekend catch-up, but even if, for argument's sake, it had, chances are there would have been an hour-long repeat of something else at the beginning of the Saturday night schedule. Or, failing that, a new series (five) of (hour-long) Total Wipeout, which would then be re-used in the same slot sometime next year i.e. only delaying the inevitable second showing of series four.

Which shows are they pulling, and leaving unscreened? Don't Scare the Hare? They're showing the final one next weekend. I can't recall a more badly-received and badly-rated BBC One show than Hare, and it deserved to be moved. Far better to hold their hands up and admit something's a disaster, than leave it in its slot out of stubborness (e.g. Born to Shine, Show Me the Funny ) or, worse still recommission it out of stubborness (Moving Wallpaper).