The football will allow them to not have that gap where they were forced to air repeats. The Europa League match in December air on Wednesday and by that time, Paul Merton will have finished.

I'd be tempted to air a premiere on 13th November but it would have to face IAC.

Now Channel 4 have stopped airing movies on Sundays they really ought to capitalise with a few pre-Christmas big hitters.

Week 45 would have benefited from a premiere also to ensure their share is as high as possible for BB finale week. But I guess they might make a late change, they occasionally do.

Harrys Law skews really old! Think they should consider moving it back to Mondays. CSI held steady but I think its likely it'll come to an end within a couple of seasons.

Criminal Minds is worth a mention again, IMO. That 3.9 fast national already ties the final rating for NCIS last night, putting it on course to tie as the #1 drama of the week. Also skews pretty young for a CBS procedural - 38% in the 18-49 demo (NCIS on Tuesday was 26%). CSI only retaining 67% of its lead-in is a sign of how strong CM is (to be fair, CSI seems to be holding up OK on Wednesday nights so far).

I imagine Channel 4 realised they were going to run out if they kept airing them weekly and a lot of them would a lot better if they'd be scheduled in January-March rather than against The X Factor.

Sunday 6th November I think is the Downton Abbey season finale so its probably wise for Channel 5 to hold back a week.

2BG is on E4 is it not?

Criminal Minds is sort of the underdog of CBS, it skews young for a crime drama but I think that's due to the subject matter and it has survived cast changes.

Super stuff for Hollyoaks last night, seems like it is turning a corner, 1 million near for the E4 first look is unheard of.

I expect they will get around that by just generically referring to 'exams' rather than wany specific qualification.

From what I can gather from talking about WR outside of this thread, it seems to have a good stream of new viewers every year and people who have only watched a few series, hence why it seems to cope well with the problems and issues that the long term viewers complain about. (Characters disappearing, repeated storylines, ignored back stories etc)

Not unheard of. It's been around that mark before. But it hasn't happened for a very very long time.

Agree with your overall sentiment though. Pleased to see it doing well, it seems to have got its act together at last.

C4 has been promoting this Wedding alot, now sure why its all in black however, that confused me.

Sensational performance for Hollyoaks. 920,000 for the E4 First Look is excellent and they do deserve it. The episodes have been really well-written these past few months and especially this week with the big wedding.

Hollyoaks hit over 1m on First Look when they had that hostage situation, I do wonder how it would have done had it just been on Channel 4, probably 3m+

I wonder what sort of boost Home & Away will enjoy next week with the storm episodes? They've been trailing it a lot. It would be nice to see it above 1m all week for the 6pm showing.

How did the storm episodes do in Oz? I think 1m is likely.

Noticed Paul Merton has a Sunday repeat at 8pm so I imagine Channel 5 will be seeing if any viewers lost to FP next week will watch the repeat. I think another series is likely but I'd return to the continent format.

According to someone who went to the filming of it, BBC1's new series of 'Room 101' will be shown in the Wednesday 20.30 slot from January 2012.

E4 showings have gone over 1.5m before so not a record but certainly excellent for a show that seemed to be heading for the axe not so long ago.

The slot of death!

Note, The One Show's average for tonight will be inflated/deflated tonight by 'Rangers: The Inside Story' on BBC1 Scotland.

I completely agree sn_22. With budgets tight, I dunno why they waste so much money and time on the limited 2-5 parters which have no chance of returning. Fair enough, I can understand if they do it occasionally for really high quality stuff like Appropriate Adult which have a chance of winning awards. But I don't see the point of having stuff like 'The Reckoning' and 'Injustice' which were 2 or 5 episodes and had no chance of returning at all. They're not necessarily bad shows but it'd make more sense if they'd not had either of these two shows and committed to a 6-part drama series which could've had the potential to return for a few years. 3-parters are okay too if they have the potential to return, like Above Suspicion, but there's no point of doing something like The Reckoning IMO, especially when it's not even that good or unique.

I'd say a similar thing about the BBC too. I mean, I can understand why a channel like BBC1 do a lot of serials, they make shows which you wouldn't get on other channels. But I read in an article recently saying that they were looking specifically for more serials for 2012/2013- the thing is I don't think they're really in a position at the moment to spend a lot of money on non-returnable serials at a time they're losing a lot of their big dramas. In the 2 year period of 2010-2012, they're losing or have lost 5 key drama series which officially average 6m+. But they haven't had enough new ones come through yet at that sort of level: the only 2 I'd say are Luther, which isn't even 6-8 parts... not yet anyway, and Upstairs Downstairs. The others have done pretty good 5-6m consolidated numbers, though mostly against poor sub-3m FlopZone opposition so it's not too great. I know I've said it before, but they really need more 6m+ drama series to come through.

I think this Death in Paradise show coming up in particular is an important one for them- clearly a lot of money has gone into it (no doubt helped by the co-production with French TV), and the fact that they're airing it months in advance of what they originally said when it would air (2012), is a good sign they've got a lot of faith in it. But if this show doesn't get 6m+ officially, it would mean none of their 5 big new drama series launches this year (Outcasts, Silk, Case Histories, Body Farm, Death in Paradise) have achieved that level, which I'm sure they'll be quite disappointed with, even though 3 of those are coming (or most likely) coming back with solid 5-6m official numbers. It's quite rare that a show does a Luther and rise significantly in their second series, most series rate lower or about the same in series two, so it doesn't give a few of those shows much breathing room to drop next series, especially when they could potentially face tougher competition next year. Their returning dramas such as New Tricks/George Gently/Merlin have done very well this year but they definitely need some of these new shows coming through to be rating at a higher level than they are.

World Cup 2014 game schedule announced today - kick off's mainly at 5pm, 9pm and 11pm but in some group games 2am. The final is at 8pm UK time.

One has to imagine ITV will be trying to get the 5pm and 9pm games, I imagine 11pm would only be viable if it is a big team or England.

EDIT: http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/news/ne...755/index.html

Opening Match: 21.00
Group Stage matches: 17.00, 20.00, 23.00, 02.00
Round of 16/Quarter-finals: 13.00, 21.00
Semi-finals: 21.00
Match for Third Place: 21.00
Final: 20.00

Very little of it has come from BBC ONE. It has avery similar funding model to Torchwood-Miracle Day, BBC Worldwide[the majority] and French Televisions have coughed up most of the budget.



No buts about it, it's not going to happen. It faces 3 weeks of I'm a celebrity and 1 week of The Jury.

Was that a new football themed ident before the Europa League tonight on Channel 5 or have they been using that all season? Video here.

Seems odd to introduce a new one now when they are running out of football nights!

In a way, this is quite good for BBC1 and ITV1 as the soaps won't be affected much. Only really the 20.30 Corrie episodes will be affected and Emmerdale on occasions the 5pm match overuns perhaps? I would say the 11pm kick-offs are quite similar to the 12.30pm kick-offs in World Cup 2010 in terms of ratings potential. The 02.00am ones will rate low but pull in high shares.

Edit: Scrap what I said in the first sentence; reading that Fifa page, it seems like group matches will be at 8pm mainly not 9pm.


Ah fair enough. I read in the Broadcast article saying that each episode cost £1.2m and assumed that BBC One was the primary major financer with French Televisions being the secondary one. I guess with that kind of model though, as you say BBC1 won't be paying too much. True, there's tough competition on the way - it'll be interesting to see though if the first 3 episodes which face just 71DN can rate at 6m+ official figures. I know it's difficult, but I really do think some dramas in that Tuesday 9pm slot should be rating better than just 4.5-5.0m overnights when they're facing c2-2.5m opposition from ITV1. Part of the problem I feel is that they don't start high enough and that could be down to promotion - starting at 5.3m-ish like Body Farm and Silk isn't the best base level to begin from, if promotion could be better they could be starting closer to 6m like Luther series 1, and with the kind of retention they experienced, they could've been in the 5m category overnights-wise and 6m officials-wise.

Episodes were up about 20% year-on-year when it aired in Oz last month, so it performed really well. 5* complicates things over here, in a way I'd have preferred it if they rested the first look episodes for a week.