I see what you're saying. The bar is constantly being lowered and what would be seen as poor even a couple of years ago is now considered okay or even good. It's fascinating to watch that take place.

I guess channel bosses taking a similar view instead of striving for better means inevitably 3m is becoming the new 4m.

Would I Let To You should do better than it does, the host and Captains are good, its a good format, following HIGNFY it should be doing well.

I find these articles incredibly frustrating purely because they tend to ignore the fact that ABC's ratings slide has been just as bad as NBC's (if not worse). Seriously there's a graph in the article linked to that shows the network averages for the past 4 or so seasons and ABC's has nosedived for every year of it and is now basically in a dead heat with NBC (its average is actually below NBC's for Fall) and nobody mentions it. Its astonishing.


Its a weird decision but ABC's bread and butter is odd scheduling decisions. I don't think it'll effect the comedies at all but if I were a Revenge fan I'd be concerned particularly as its a serialised drama. Those basically never recover from audience erosion.


The original plan appears to have been to air it Tuesday at 10PM (Parenthood has a shorter order) but I suspect that plan has changed. I imagine they'll bump Parenthood up to 22+ episodes and keep it on Tuesday night. My assumption would be that Awake will take Thursday 10PM (the 'ER slot').

It should also be noted that The Voice doesn't really lend itself to a results show until the final few shows so that's not really an option to try and prop up Tuesday's midseason.


It should be noted that with the exception of Survivor and Top Model everything else was in repeats Wednesday night.


It doesn't make much difference at this point.


ABC and The CW both skew very heavily female. NBC's Thursday comedies in particularly have a higher percentage of male viewers than just about everything else on broadcast so were always going to get hit hard by the World Series (NBC should have done another week of repeats).


Surprisingly fantastic start for Grimm especially against the World Series. I suspect NBC may now be kicking themselves slightly for not moving it into one of their open slots Monday-Thursday. I imagine it'll stay on Friday though until midseason at least. If it holds up they might consider a move somewhere else or they might take the view that holding a decent number on Friday is more than enough for them at this point. Of course the challenge will be next week when the drama competition is back.


I imagine its the 'Dollhouse argument'.

When Fox stuck Dollhouse on Friday (after originally scheduling it for Monday) their argument was that its a niche show and Friday represents the best chance for it to survive. Although that argument holds basically no water at NBC...

I edited my post after you quoted me as WILTY did beat Manilow, but I dont see why people exp ect every show to hit 10m on every station, every night.

If you do the math, you arent going to get more than 22m- 25m watching tv in that time period and with so many channels trying to eek out decent ratings, therent arent enough viewers to go around.

Move to China folks if you want to talk about huge rating tv shows

Whilst we're talking about ITV's light entertainment shows, here's an updated list of the overnight series averages (inc HD & +1) of their new LE shows this year:

1 - 5.0m (22%) - Red or Black?
2 - 4.1m (21%) - Sing If You Can
3 - 3.8m (19%) - The Jonathan Ross Show
4 - 3.4m (16%) - Penn & Teller: Fool Us
5 - 2.7m (12%) - Comedy Rocks
6 - 2.5m (11%) - Holding Out For a Hero
7 - 2.4m (10%) - Born To Shine
8 - 2.3m (09%) - Show Me The Funny
9 - 2.2m (09%) - High Stakes (currently airing)
10- 2.0m (10%) - The Marriage Ref

Yep, pretty bad list there. And as Pizza you were saying, lowering standards means lower rated shows are being renewed. The Whole 19 Yards which averaged 4.0m last year got axed. SIYC is apparently getting another series despite getting the same sort of average in the same slot this year. Who Wants To Be a Millionaire was getting c3.5m in the Tuesday flopzone last year and got axed, but they might need to bring that back considering how some of those shows have rated!

I've put your edit into my last post now.

Maybe they should have done A Phonebox With Barry Manilow....



WILTY doing a bit better than of late. It is the funniest show on telly, with A list guests every week. It is criminal that less than 4m tune in each week.

It does, sadly, look like HIGNFY is seeing a long term decline. If it can't get a 4.5m overnight against a 3.5m show on ITV, then that's not good. Maybe they should shift it back to Thursdays?

Then again, it is its 42nd series in 21 years. How many shows manage that?!

Thanks for the figures, rzt.

Would we class Millionaire as light entertainment too? If so, I think that may well be 2nd, wouldn't it?

But yes, a bad list, not many shows above 3m and too many shows below 3m which makes you wonder why some of them were even commissioned!

I suppose it's a bit like dating when you get to my age: ending up quite pleased with something which would have been disappointing a couple of years ago.

Millionaire certainly ain't a new show!

I wonder why the figures have declined in the last twelve months. I don't think the show is any worse than it was a couple of years ago, so maybe people are just getting bored with it.

so are you the ITV of the dating world?

I think I'm community radio these days.

Woops, sorry, I thought rzt's list for all shows, have just re-read it now. My mistake.

EastEnders seemed to struggle last night in comparison to Coronation Street - I wonder whether that's an indication of the Strictly Come Dancing v The X Factor battle tonight; with the younger skewing show struggling. I thought Barry Manilow would flop so that isn't a bad figure considering. have I Got News For You isn't really gaining much momentum and maybe they should cut it down to one series a year. Big Brother did well relatively speaking for Channel 5, and The Bachelor remained reasonably steady for it's finale; I'm sure it'll return but will it have the Big Brother sandwich? Pete Versus Life is really struggling without Big Brother propping it up, but Derren Brown did ok for Channel 4. Gardener's World performed well for BBC Two but I expected Autumnwatch to get above 2m; maybe it was dented by a better performing Coronation Street?

I wondering if a lot of people are waiting to watch the extended version a couple of days later. That seem to be getting around 2m in the ratings.

if he is, I pity whichever woman it is, he takes out on Tuesdays.

Loved Brucie's dig at ITV and Simon just now. Haha.

What did he say?!

Anyone think The X Factor will rise a little tonight with all the commotion about Kelly being replaced by Alexandra Burke?
I think it will be around 10.5million tonight and then 12million tomorrow.

I predict a small slide in over nights, but a larger slide than previous episodes.

Halloween-themed....

"There was a strange knock at the door.

I got up and opened the door.

A tall man in a black coat said, "Would you come over to the Other side"

I said, no way, I'm not going back to ITV."

Or words to that effect. Then he said, the man in the black coat was called "Simon".

It's an old Morecombe & Wise joke but still hilarious, especially given X Factor's woes....

I always treat C4's Friday night 10pm comedy as an 'appointment to view' slot.

Perhaps it suffered more than last week because of the late start?

LOL - that's a scary thought. I was thinking actually before it was announced of previous X-Factor stars Alexandra Burke probably would make the best judge so be interesting to see how that pans out. I don't think it'll make a bit of difference in the ratings and seeing how Strictly has risen and The X Factor fallen in recent weeks Robbie should be gloating tomorrow.


The problem is it's become a slot, not a night. Everything just seems somewhat thrown in the schedules at the moment on Friday nights and it's the original sitcoms which seem to suffer most - and Million Pound Drop doesn't really help the way it is in and out of the schedules, stopping C4 from re-establishing Friday night as comedy night.