Don't feel sorry for Chiles, ITV pay him zillions and he looks totally disinterested in everything he does. Nothing more insulting to the viewer.

As always, rzt, you are spot on!

K

I do get the impression there is slightly less gush about the programme this time though. There was some article in the Express a week or so ago saying it had "jumped the shark" with one scene and my dad (who is a big fan) agreed. Cant remember which one-tied in with somebody coming back from the front apparently. Next week its against Leonardo Da Vinci i think-so the Beeb taking the chance to be PSB in the face of stiff opposition.
As for last night well the standout for me is Countryfile which consisted of Sussex,Wales, Pizza, Pumpkin, Windfarms and Cricket. Probably the highest rating Cricket has ever achieved-still amazes me how so many people will sit down to what is a local interest magazine.
People still interested in who gets through on XF obviously, and SCD approaching 10 million with its unlive padded decision show is pretty good imo. Strong for AR in the face of XF and the BBC will be very pleased its putting up such a strong share against ITV's big hitters.
A word about Spooks-never seen an episode before but watched last night. Even though I knew none of the characters it was very poignant and well made. I think there is vindication in the decision to put it against DA-decent figures and a clear alternative. Frozen Planet aside the only other possiblity would have been arty filler so all things considered its turned out quite well.

It would, though, be interesting to see:

i) how New Tricks would perform in an autumn Monday 9pm slot where ITV1 were showing something capable of only 3m a week or less, rather than a competing drama. I'm sure it would get 10m+ in those circumstances, given it can get 9-10m in summer

ii) how Downton or Doctor Martin would do in summer slots rather than the primest of prime autumn berths

I dont think he suits ITV and was the result of them having a bit of money again and spreading it about. I think he spent 20 years at the BBC and had arguably his perfect show in The One Show which I doubt will ever be as "in the news" as when he and Christine were at the helm. As well as MOTD2 and Apprentice -both of which are diminished with him gone imo.

Agreed. It's a damned good programme though, always something interesting to learn about, and some new part of the country to explore.

What never ceases to amaze me is that this is a programme which airs about 50 weeks of year, with the odd compilation thrown in, but always manages to come up with something new and interesting, and always finds some part of the country to go to without being repetitive. We live on a fairly small island - they must be running out of places to go?

To keep it fresh, interesting, non-repetitive, and do it for 50 weeks a year to 5-7m viewers week in, week out makes Countryfile, for me, one of the most remarkable programmes on British television.

If anything Points of View shows too much regard for viewer feedback, it lets its correspondents get away with a host of ill-informed rubbish without ever challenging their views. The bit about Masterchef would have been a lot simpler if Vine had just pointed out the primetime shows are repeats of the daytime ones, but sadly the script of Points of View is awful, not helped by Vine's smarmy approach, and so they made it even more confusing.


But the whole benefit of having Panorama on for fifty weeks of the year is that it's always there to talk about the week's big news, one of the worst things about when it was on Sunday nights is that it was on for eight weeks or so, then off for a month, then back on again for another six weeks, and nobody knew when it was supposed to be on. The news doesn't happen in series.

There's an argument that there should be another investigative series, not under the Panorama banner, but there's a clear benefit in having a regular slot where the week's big story will always be discussed and analysed. Apart from on Bank Holidays, natch.

It's odd to think that 60 Minutes in the USA is a hugely popular and successful series, with a format that's never been a success in the UK, the original incarnation of Tonight tried it, so did Here and Now on the Beeb. Although 60 Minutes' success is mostly down to the rules in American telly which in the seventies said on a Sunday night the affiliates all had to show either an hour of (expensive) local programming or an hour of news programming, so they all opted to show 60 Minutes.


Since everyone else has got one, my theory about the "decline" of The X Factor is that it might have got too trendy with the song choices being a bit too current (and the outfits, some of them look ridiculous) and turning away older viewers who don't recognise them, same with the guests, Professor Green is a good example. OK, it's maybe because I'm getting old and there's no Top of the Pops but there seems to be less for the wider audience to grasp to. I mean all I know of N-Dubz is Dappy's appearances on Buzzcocks. That's my theory, anyway.


It surely attracts a very similar demographic to MOTD2, the presenter certainly does, so if that's a big game, it's invariably going to affect it. And the loose nature of the format, the name emphasises that, means it's surely the epitome of the watch-if-there's-nothing-else-on show.

It looks as if the Manchester derby actually boosted MOTD2 with people who knew the result tuning in. The received wisdom at the BBC used to be if the main Saturday night news gave the football results people would not watch MOTD (which usually followed it) and BBC Sport used to make frantic efforts to prevent that. Maybe the reverse is actually true as MOTD has been enjoying good figures this year.Time for another showing of that classic Likely Lads perhaps ?

Or are they just ensuring that those who do want to tune in without knowing the results beforehand get an appropriate warning to "look away now"?

A new entrant for the Ratings Prediction Game?

The Sun's tv critic Ally Ross reckons the TXF Final will get 18m viewers.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-15402269

(4th para up from bottom)

Hm....

well If the "Ratings Prediction Game" was on ITV it would have a Celebrity version by now.

I think any regular MOTD viewer who did not want to know the results would take the necessary precautions
A few years ago I was in Australia and the Channel 9 newsreader said We are now going to give the Aussie rules results. You've been warned so don't complain to us afterwards if you didn't want to know. I can just imagine Huw Edwards doing that

Oh I reckon there would have been a definite need for some people to see United get such a drubbing. And if your team has played well there is nothing better than soaking it up later on-and the Premier League interesting and important enough to keep you watching other teams too. This is why MOTD is still such a great brand-there is still no better highlights show more than forty years on.

Ok thanks for checking. If the % skew for 16-34 is the same then it suggests roughly that the raw number of viewers have fallen accross all ages.

BBC1 did excellent, those are some fine ratings, then you consider they are up against 2 of the top ITV1 shows, it makes the figures even more respectable. Great figures for ITV1 from 8.00-10:00, Downton Abbey timeshifts so well, a shame that the rest of ITV1 Sunday night primetime collapses so much.

Special mentions to Channel 5 for Toy Story 2 - something like triple the Madagascar rating on BBC3 in a similar timeslot. Rating of the night though is for MOTD2, close to 4m - I bet the peak was higher than that, winning its timeslot easily.

It shocks me when people say The X Factor is doing poorly.

It had 11million viewers last night. How can that be called a flop?

SCD is doing well too and I agree that it has narrowed the ratings gap on ITV1 but The X Factor is blatenly the most popular show.

It would be nice to see X Factor on 12million and SCD on 10million though

Personally, I think it would be nicer to see The X Factor getting 1.2 million. But as much as I loathe the show, I don't understand why people think it's going poorly, when it obviously isn't.

I would like to see live viewers ratings reported, say we see a show with a 40% overnight share and another with a 25% share, a third with a 15% share, then finally the last two mains channels report a 6% and 5% share. Hypothetically that adds up to 91% of television viewing for that timeslot. Of course that is not accurate for live viewing - overnights include viewers watching before 2:00am or 26:00hrs in b.a.r.b language.

I do have one query, when it comes to head to head - SCD v TXF for example, that too is not 'live' viewing - although we can assume most people watch a show live rather than timeshift for 1-4 hours later. I am sure b.a.r.b. record millions of pieces of data - but giving out overnights (to 2:00am) seems the simplest way to do it. Of course all this is quite superfluous - but seeing live data would be ideal.

Ended up with 756k in the consolidated, a 263% uplift!! Overnights for pay tv are becoming more and more meaningless.

Another good week for Sky1. Five originals and only one Simpsons in the top ten.

I think the bigger concern for ITV is going to be what's happening around The X Factor. Holding Out for a Hero will go down as one of the top 5 turkeys of 2011, whilst That Sunday Night Show is looking more and more feeble with each passing week despite a fairly successful first run in the 1st quarter.

The Rugby World Cup had been helping inflate the all day shares to mask some of these big declines we are seeing in primetime, but they won't have that to prop up their overall shares from now on. They'll be hoping for a strong showing from IAC next month to turn their fortunes this season around.

I wonder how much ad spots on Sky1 go for given so few are watching the ads? £2.50 BOGOF?

I wish they'd get rid of the bloody things altogether, especially on Atlantic, where most of the primetime content is premium cable programmes.

It's still a pain on timeshift spinning through them and of course, the producers don't insert break points into the programmes.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...mes?CMP=twt_fd

The FA have been extremely greedy over the past few years as far as TV contracts are concerned and now the chickens are coming home to roost.I suspect we will see the same sort of thing with the Premier League rights 2013-16.
Has the bubble burst as many have been predicting ?

Its all well and good saying that Downton got the standard two weeks of trails before it began but that doesn't take into account the sheer volume of those trails in that two week period. I watch very few shows on ITV these days and I felt bombarded by ads for Downton Abbey so God knows how regular ITV viewers felt. Unless of course the shows I was watching just happened to be targeted for Downton ads and they didn't really air anywhere else (which seems unlikely).

In general though as I think I've said before I'm not suggesting the raw figure is bad by any stretch merely that it doesn't seem to match up with the expectation of what's behind it.


Its a short 6 (I think) episode order that hasn't been scheduled. That more than anything else will have impacted on its pricing.


Have you watched Panorama lately? The show you're describing doesn't match up with anything I've seen from Panorama in years. They don't offer analysis or discussion of the weeks news they (try to) make news. Admittedly that has produced some fantastic television but its also not something that can produce 50 worthwhile episodes a year. If it were the show you were describing that offered greatly analysis or investigation of the weeks biggest news stories then I'd absolutely agree that it should be on every week of the year but that's not what Panorama is.

As I said in my original post personally I'd like to see that 'new slot' extended to an hour and shared over three or four different brands over the month each with their own remit. So for example the first week of every month would be a Panorama investigation and then the second week would be something from a politics or current affairs strand and so on.


60 Minutes hasn't really been a hugely successful or popular show for a long time now. A part of the problem with the format in the UK is that we don't really have the size or depth to make it work here.


Read that back and see if you can work out the mistake you've made.