ABC press release still has some kind things to say about Charlie's Angels by stating that the viewers grew 40% from last year (also boasting how the viewers grew from first to second half). That doesn't matter as much, but it seems to me that ABC is giving more chances to a new struggling show than NBC explicitly did. Still no axing news yet. At this rate, How to be a Gentleman might get a faster pink slip than Charlie's Angels! CBS cannot afford such below average performances! Person of Interest is on wafer thin ice alongside Charlie's Angels (for CBS' performance). Gifted Man might just escape the chop, for now.

The thing is Charlie's Angels grew from a Grey's Anatomy repeat.

That's true. In ABC's eyes though, any increase is better than no increase at all. Because Revenge and Pan Am did well so far, they are at least encouraged to find little reasons to keep CA for a few more weeks. ABC did have a crap run with their new shows last season. If Charlie's Angels is staying, next week will probably be their final chance.

That's terrible for Charlie's Angel; ABC are spinning more than a merry-go-round to get any good news out of that. Grey's Anatomy did reasonably well considering and Private Practice didn't overly disgrace itself at 10pm.

How To Be A Gentleman and Person Of Interest will be pulled by CBS if both hold those kinds of figures; I'm sure the channel could find better. The Mentalist did well at 10pm and Big Bang Theory pulled in a good figure.

The X Factor rated low at 8pm but reasonably at 9pm. It could do better but Fox will be relieved it's not a complete flop.

The Office performed very well for NBC and Whitney at least held above 2 in the demo. Community and Prime Suspect struggled especially.

Link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/liv...ow-be-a-245717

CBS has moved How to be a Gentleman to Saturdays, swapping with Rules of Engagement. The Big Bang Theory will air in HTBAG slot for the time being and ROE will debut on Thursday 20 October.

And only a few months ago Sony TV were upset about RoE going on Saturdays - seems CBS were almost betting on How To Be A Gentleman flopping. Especially by holding RoE's season premiere back a few weeks.

I liked the idea posted about having:

8pm - Rules of Engagement
8.30pm - The Big Bang Theory
9pm - The Mentalist
10pm - Person of Interest

A bigger change (and one that won't happen) might be:

8pm - The Mentalist
9pm - The Big Bang Theory
9.30pm - Rules of Engagement
10pm - Person of Interest

I'm not familiar with The Mentalist so I don't know if the content makes it necessary for it to be on later (although CBS don't really care about "family hour" anyway). CBS' best performing drama is NCIS which airs at 8pm on Tuesday - but for all they love procedurals, it's the only one to air in that slot (comedy on Monday/Thursday, reality on Wednesday). On a Thursday it would be against X Factor (not much overlap there), NBC comedies and Grey's Anatomy repeats.

And I think that given a 9pm slot, The Big Bang Theory would be clearing 5.0 every week. Rules of Engagement would probably do mid 3's. The only issue is The Office. But I don't think there's that much crossover in terms of audiences.

Person of Interest might struggle at 10pm but it's not doing great at 9pm anyway.

Link: http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/201...easons/106564/

Surrounding the news of voice actors getting salary cuts, negotiations and so forth, FOX has decided to renew The Simpsons for another two seasons. This brings The Simpsons to 25 seasons and 559 total episodes.

Strong night for BBC1, Eastenders has had a good week with every episode above 8 million so far. Watchdog continues to do well at 8pm and Hidden debuted quite well. I expect Hidden will settle in the mid 4 millions range. Over on ITV1, unusual to see the 2nd Emmerdale rate lower than the 1st and Coronation looks poor compared to Eastenders. Billy Connolly has had a good run and remained well above 4 million; ITV should be able to come up with another Billy Connolly show along these lines. Channel 5 also put in a strong effort at 9pm.

I expect the England football match on Sky will have hurt the main channel's offerings tonight.

I agree about TBBT - but I don't think it'll happen until they have enough sitcoms to launch a full 2 hour block on Thursdays, which presumably will have to be next season.

There is an opening in that big 9pm slot now, and you can see why they tried to exploit it with POI. What was once the most competitive spot on the schedule has become a bit of a retirement home for the ageing Office and Greys. I think TBBT could do superb business there - and one of the Monday comedies could easily be drafted over to hold down the 8pm hour.

Thats probably all in the future, though. As much as they'd like to do it this season, I don't think they'll have the shows for it - and I just can't imagine them splitting crime procedurals around an isolated 9pm hour. Does beg the question what they will do if POI really fails, though - The Mentalist didn't go all so well when they switched it with CSI a few years back as a bit of a tester, IIRC.

I get the feeling they're going make this the final two seasons of The Simpsons, it'll live on in repeats and occasional films. Kinda surprised there hasn't been a sequel to The Simpsons Movie as that was a success.



The Mentalist is quite similar in tone to NCIS, it's would probably do better at 8pm as it seems that people record the show as it has a high timeshift.

I get the feeling that Rules was going to used as a slot filler not only as a replacement for one of the comedies but also just in case TAAHM was a flop.

I still think Thursdays will become a two hour comedy block, CBS seem to developing both multi-camera and single camera comedies.

I do see a glimmer of hope in the BBC cuts that Newsnight and Radio 4's PM will no longer be presented from the party conferences, thus saving money on staff and resources.

Am interested to see the early morning sport ratings this morning and tomorrow morning, I bet there is an unusual high level of Sky+'ing going on as well as it is a rare occurrence having two sporting events clash at an early hour on BBC1 and ITV1.

Cant see massive savings there. This stuff should have been pooled years ago between BBC, ITN and Sky. Its all cheorgraphed anyway so why waste money on duplicated coverage.

I'd be amazed if qualifying F1 beats a rugby quarter final. The Wales/ Ireland game was fantastic and the pitchside prez is really stepping it up a notch now.

The F1 in 2009 from 5am to 7:45am had 830k (44%); last year had ~650k from 5am to 7am, however that's not really comparable as no action occurred last year during that hour.

There's another extra Coronation Street on Wednesday 26th October with Midsomer Murders afterwards.

looks like England could be heading home from the RWC if they keep going as is with only Wales remaining as UK interest. Still Wales vs NZ in the final would be a quality game if not the big ratings event that a turgid England might deliver.

I Think they are going home now

As a matter of interest - BBC Parliament gives hours and hours of coverage to the party conferences where the most outrageous claims are made by politicians but never challenged by BBC journalists. Surely this is in breach of the BBC Charter to be fair and balanced ?

Parliamentary privledge if spoken in the Commons. The purpose of BBC Parliament anyway should just be to be a liv feed of events without any pundits or commentary, same as in every other country.

I'd like to see it taken away from the BBC and set up on an independent basis like CSPAN and most other countries.

Watched this last night. Definitely a pre-watershed 'family' show. If this was on BBC1/ITV1 it would get a Saturday evening slot at 6 or 7pm.

It's on at 8pm (7pm Central) in the US.

Worth noting that earlier this week Wipeout, who've had the slot most of the year, announced they'd be back "later this fall" rather than January as expected.


Don't know about Radio 4 - or Newsnight of late for that matter, but the BBC has a presence at these conferences so should production etc. be shared across them and Newsnight not be split between sections in the studio and on location, is it actually saving any money at all?

To be honest when I first saw the headline about that on Thursday I read it initially as Newsnight itself being axed, which didn't really surprise me in terms of ratings and how it hampers the BBC2 schedule.

Presumably Mark Thompson thinks it will save money as it's part of his cost-cutting proposals - savings on travel, hotel rooms, meals, hospitality to politicians, engineers, uplinks,videotape,taxis etc

England Out now. No big ratings for the final then

no but at least it might be a good match now

The peak for today's game should still be north of 6m, potentially higher.