Even I'm not watching tonight!

Well, not live anyway. It'll be Alphas for me at 10. I'll catch up with BB at some point tomorrow.

I agree the twist looks awful. BB never works when they tamper with the fundamentals like nominations.

True it a bit odd. But it tells us what we know. ITV Need to move X Factor out of the way of Strictly. If There had been no clash i am sure X Factor would have been over 10m

I hope to goodness they do - but they are as stubborn as a mule - e.g poor ratings for other shows and continuing to stick with them in the same time slot...

Get it moved ITV - for your own sake!

It Works both ways though BBC Could move Strictly to 6:00 not just ITV.

That must be a little concerning for ITV. Does anyone happen to know who performed during the final 45 minutes? Perhaps that might explain why some of the audience switched off.

I wonder if this is why the show is (provisionally) scheduled before an 8PM start time this week so it doesn't run so long into the 9PM hour. Perhaps they think that's why it dropped.


Yes the showing losing part of its audience from 9PM onwards tells us that ITV need to avoid clashes with Strictly...

Why would they? Strictly hasn't been hit anywhere near as hard by the clash this year as The X Factor so there's really no reason for the BBC to push the show back to a 6PM start time and doing so potentially causes more of a drop in the ratings than the clash with The X Factor anyway.

The BBC don't really have anything to lose here. ITV do so ultimately they'll have to be the ones to back down (or at least they should be). Especially since the press have latched onto 'X Factor ratings crisis' rather than getting hysterical about the BBC letting Strictly clash with The X Factor.

How is Loose Women doing since September. I had heard the ratings were back to normal again following their dips below 1million.

Their stubbornness and amazing lack of common sense has resulted in TXF being dented. Move the whole schedule forward by half an hour.

Does anyone have the viewing figures for Sunday's Korean Grand Prix?

Yeah 6 o'clock is worse for Strictly than the clash.

Its up to X Factor to move. I don't think BBC are putting much thinking into its Saturday schedule - its working rather brilliantly.

ITV...need to shift it. Simple.
Especially after the press coverage, whilst I doubt its had much an affect - people might keep with Strictly more and more as time goes on because they think its better and X Factor is 'missable'.


BBC honestly shouldn't care - just sit back and feel happy. Their good. Happy. Content.

The same thing happened last year too. Here's a breakdown from the equivalent episode last year:

For that episode in 2010, between 20.15-21.00 it averaged 12.0m, while from 21.00-21.45 it had 11.3m. A drop of -6% between the two 45-minute periods, about the same as last Saturday (-7%). TXF performs best in the 8pm hour, whilst from 9pm onwards I think the audience drops partly because the Total TV audience drops whilst some of the audience head out. Also on Saturday, 21.00-21.45 had 3 sets of commercial breaks whereas 20.15-21.00 had two sets of commercial breaks which would've depressed the second period a little bit more comparison-wise, as the commercials are watched by fewer viewers than the actual programme which dents that part of the average.

Just updated Digiguide

C4 is showing S19 of The Simpsons starting Friday 4th

What is this Da Vinci: The Lost Treasure on BBC 1 Sunday at 9pm?

If that's the case, can't the show just be 75 or 90 minutes long instead of 2 hours long - so from 8pm to maybe 9.30pm, which should bring better viewing figures away from SCD?

Fantastic. Thanks for posting this Charnham

Yep, they could. But at the end of the day, it's probably unlikely as ITV are in the business to maximise advertising revenue. So I can't see them reducing the durations of the episodes by 30 minutes to just boost the ratings average by something like 0.5m. They'd prefer getting 10m over 120 minutes than 10.5m over 75 minutes. We've seen in the last couple of years examples of ITV compromising the ratings of certain shows scheduling-wise in order to maximise ad revenue: Britain's Got Talent being the most obvious one during its live week which is now quite ridiculously scheduled with the 30-minute EE clashes whereas a few years ago they didn't do that, but they feel it's worth doing for the extra revenue even if it means the reported ratings are lower. Same thing with the World Cup too when they had a 75-minute buildup to one of the England games, which is more than they usually have and they didn't care to submit log sheets to BARB to separate the pre-match period ratings from the match period ratings, as they used to do, meaning that instead of having what could've probably been the #1 programme of the year in the BARB charts for one of their England matches, it ended up at something like #4 or #5 IIRC.

But there isn't a problem with what it's doing now, the ratings are fine whatever channel it's on, and it makes sense having it on BBC2 because the it can follow Top Gear and Louis Theroux and other lad-friendly fare, and it also means it can start before 10.30. And it would mean BBC1 couldn't show anything longer than an hour at 9pm which they occasionally like to do,

And it's all very well saying you get Lineker on if it's Man U vs Chelsea, but what about when there's one match and it's Fulham vs Blackburn? And I like the magazine approach, obviously the highlights come first but the more relaxed approach I think works fine. And I was a big fan when Chiles did it (before he completely ruined everything) but I think Murray does a perfectly good job with it.


Well, there was going to be another series of Popstars, it was going to be Popstars: Boy Meets Girl and they were going to make duos, but they abandoned it in production. I guess it must be because Simon Cowell said he only wanted to do The X Factor so they just kept on commissioning The X Factor. The Pop Idol format was up for grabs a while ago and there were rumours the likes of Five on Sky One would buy it, though obviously minus Cowell or Ant and Dec or anyone, so seemingly nobody fancied it. Which is a shame as Pop Idol is a very elegant and simple format, compared to the contrived nature of The X Factor, and it was a great show in its day. I can't watch The X Factor, I used to very much like Pop Idol though.

Of course the bizarre thing about Popstars from a modern perspective is how excited people got over it even though the viewers could do absolutely nothing about it, it was all on the whims of the judges, and it seems strange to think HearSay could be so successful when we could easily have not cared one bit. Of course the second series of Popstars was awful, it was just a complete rip-off of Pop Idol.


Heh, that reminds me of The Guardian reporting before 2002 that ITV couldn't find a sponsor for their coverage and saying it might be because Beckham was injured that nobody would want to watch it. It doesn't make any difference if Rooney's not in it, England fans would watch eleven statues if they wore the three lions - there was that match against Andorra the season before last during a tube strike when everyone was saying Wembley wouldn't be a sell-out which would be a disaster, despite them playing Andorra, and a week later Italy playing Northern Ireland in a 10,000-capacity stadium.

In any case, surely the Beeb will go all out to get Euro 2012, if they don't get it it would be the biggest disaster in the history of BBC Sport, I reckon.


Hmm, I'm not sure Brucie was very interested in doing another series, and it was scheduled in a very strange fashion, Thursdays at seven - they didn't really have the slots for it. It was a lot of fun, though. It was a bit like when he came back in 1990 and did Takeover Bid as a time filler before the Gen Game came back (although that did last two series). The format for Didn't They Do Well had been hanging around for ages, anyway, seemingly they spotted the reaction they had to HIGNFY, had the format ready to go and just did it all fairly quickly.


Which seems a bit half-arsed, it made sense repeating it at teatime when it was on at half ten, but it's in primetime now so what's the point?

It's a shame that ITV have to compromise their shows like this. It may be better to get 10 million over 120 mins than 10.5 million over 75 minutes, but the long running time induces a lot of overkill which will damage the shows long term.

ITV are experts in the field of overkill. Look what they did to Millionaire - 19 million in 1999, down to 8/9 million in 2001.

It was inevitable really - the only thing in it's favour was other shows also rating poorly at 10pm, but it's good to see C4 accepting 1.2m isn't good enough. Fresh Meat doesn't deserve a recommission either (talking of which, I saw brief unconfirmed talk of a 4th series of The Inbetweeners in one of the papers at the weekend).


Homeland definately the critics choice on that list, but I can't see it rating.


Announcing such twists after nominations always screams fix - it's basically a rip-off of the bedsit from what I can see. And the fact it's Halloween themed but two weeks early just adds to the suspicions.


True, but Strictly is also just as guilty of extending it's running time over the years (and Dancing on Ice too). Back in the early years of all shows they'd easily get through 12 acts in 90 minutes - indeed I think Pop Idol and Popstars: The Rivals did up to 10 in an hour.

I think the talk of a second film is more likely to become reality than another series of the show. In fact part of me would be quite surprised if it didn't happen given how well the first one has done.


Homeland is very good. However like just about everything on Channel 4 these days it'll have to be a self starter and exist by itself in the schedule. There just seems to be no rhyme or reason to 4's schedule these days with only a handful of shows seeming to support or compliment one another.

Their best bet might be to put it Sunday at 10 and try and line up some film premieres to lead into it. Or at least one premiere to lead into episode 1.

I do share that concern too. They might have more luck from a ratings point-of-view with the E4 sitcoms.

I'd still like to know what the hell they're going to do with 2 Broke Girls which is apparently going to land on Channel 4 rather than E4. Do 4 have some secret supply of half hour comedies they haven't told anyone about?

It is my belief that the "X Factor In Crisis" stories are being fed to the press by... the producers of X Factor.

Seriously, they are that perverse. These people measure success on the number of column inches in the newspapers and they don't care what's writtten - hence all the stories about them bullying or exploiting contestants in the pursuit of ratings.

SUN HEADLINE: X FACTOR PRODUCERS BIGGER SCUM THAN PAEDOPHILE NAZI WAR CRIMINALS SAYS PM
X FACTOR PRODUCERS: "Double-page spread in The Sun!!!! FANTASTIC!!!!

There are probably two mottos on the walls on the X Factor production office: "NO PUBLICITY IS BAD PUBLICITY" and the classic Oscar Wilde quotation "THERE IS ONLY ONE THING WORSE THAN BEING TALKED ABOUT AND THAT'S NOT BEING TALKED ABOUT".

Because, as we intelligent people in the ratings thread know, there is no ratings crisis. The series has simply plateaued, as we all knew it would at some point. This is a non-story that been's hyped up from somewhere, but, perversely, it might just boost the ratings as people tune in to find out why people aren't tuning in.

What amazes me is that supposedly intelligent organisations like that the Guardian, the Daily Mail and the BBC have been sucked into the hype.<shakes head in despair>

My money is on Brucie and his xerox machine. He may seem like a harmless old duffer but he bears a long grudge.

And in baffling news from down under, Seven are pulling Packed to the Rafters from the schedule yet again, airing Episode 15 (of 22) as the "season finale".

http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2011/10/...nce-again.html

I've been mystified by 71DN'S loss of a third of its audience since Series One, but - having made an effort to watch it tonight - I'm no longer puzzled. This once-decent little programme is now crap.

Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make Paddy
McGuinness the host? He's like a moden-day Jim Bowen.

And the "celebs"? Dear God. It comes to something when the only person I recognise is Rav Wilding. (At least, I think it was him)