Certainly over the past two series the BBC has done something pretty rare for them in throwing some money at entertainment and really bigging it up. From the pains of 2009 this has been quite a turnaround, and even if for some a bit of the original charm of the show has been lost, the result is highly watchable light entertainment.
The arena show was truly spectacular(and needs to be an annual event), the theme nights dotted about and the Blackpool finish all work very well. The Beeb just needs to keep the foot on the pedal, the cast list this year has been just about perfect as its turned out and clearly much effort needs to be put in getting that right.

I think you're talking about the era of Jay ''I don't care about the ratings''Hunt running down BBC1. And didn't licence payers have to pay if they wanted to go into Wembley Arena to see Strictly. I thought it was against the rules to pay an entrance fee to be in the audience of a BBC programme.

It was fundraising for Children In Need.

And you have another ITV music show to look forward to next Saturday Westlife: The Last Time (which in fact it isn't because they have a tour next year). Perhaps it means Westlife: The Last Time on ITV on a Saturday Night in December 2011, hosted by Christine Bleakley.

All for CIN or after 'expenses'?

Well I wasn't expecting SCD to beat TXF last night especially with the Wembley factor too. 10.9m is around what I thought it would get. I think tonight it will be around 13.0m. Obviously not great after last year, but this series is going to average about 12m excluding +1 in the consolidated figures so it does seem strange saying its been a total failure this year with a series average of that figure. The Justin Bieber show was going to flop, but 2m on a Saturday night in December is just dire. Imagine if they'd aired it in the Summer? 1m possibly??

Its still close ratings wise between the big two, anyone would think SCD posted 15mil and XF 9mil by the reactions on here.

I expected low for Justin Bieber but i wasn't expecting it that low. The only one i recall to have done well with these shows is Susan Boyle.

Well, earlier in this run we had the episode with the Sex Pistols parody which Sky One showed at 9.30 but C4 showed at six, albeit editing it quite a lot (most obviously removing every use of the word 'bollocks'). I think C4 also showed Weekend at Burnsies, where Homer starts smoking pot, at six when Sky One only showed it post-watershed, and way back when it was on BBC2, they showed The Cartridge Family at six when I think Sky didn't show it at all.

Sometimes with imports episodes do seem to get "lost", though, I remember Lisa's Wedding went missing from the original run of the series on BBC2 and ended up on New Year's Day lunchtime, billed as a repeat.


Text Santa sounds absolutely awful, there seems to be no point to it whatsoever, and certainly not enough to get people to miss a strong BBC1 Christmas Eve to watch three hours of just stuff happening. It needs a much much stronger hook and unlike Children in Need or Comic Relief viewers don't know what it is or where the money's going. There's no reason to tune in.

It reminds me of that three hour Prince's Trust thing they did opposite Eurovision the other year, which didn't do much because people just didn't want to sit through three hours of something without an obvious purpose.


This reminds me of the final of Pop Idol 2 in 2003 which ran 6.45-9.30, but the first twenty minutes or so was presented from "backstage", without the opening titles or anything, and it didn't start properly until part two, then just before nine they did an ad break with a quick news bulletin in it, so the final half hour would count as a separate show.

It was actually a crafty trick by the BBC. I seem to recall one Saturday night in the summer they had a Simpsons evening but the viewers could chose from a shortlist of episodes to be shown at he end of the evening. Lisa's Wedding was on the shortlist but wasn't shown at all until that evening.

No surprises which show was voted the most. I also seem to recall it was hosted by Zoe Ball.

Has anybody got the ratings for The Chase last night? The evil inside of me want The Chase to beat Justin Bieber.

Not quite, the Simpsons Night was in June 2000, Lisa's Wedding was first shown on New Year's Day 2000. Presumably, everyone missed it so voted to see it.

Thanks. Those are definitely the overnights. I wonder if someone like Mike Teevee might be able to get us some consolidated ceremony numbers? The full 5 hour coverage went up about 300k in the officials IIRC and I can't imagine timeshifters watched the full 5 hours so I reckon those ceremony figures could easily be a million higher for the BBC. Did the BBC coverage make the magic 20m mark, officially?



Crumbs! 2m in primetime on a Saturday, in December? I bet ITV are wishing their rigged primetime definition started at 8pm last night!

It's more that Strictly Come Dancing took advantage of poor opposition than The X Factor underperformed (in comparison to this series) that resulted in last night's ratings. The X Factor won't seen a gain until tonight. I'm not sure why ITV1 are so willing to give BBC One wins but the scheduling of a Justin Bieber special was pathetic and got the rating it deserved. Merlin and Casualty did well on BBC One; Piers Morgan held up respectably...less said about Bieber the better. Channel 5 did well with Tommy Cooper's Christmas and the snooker recorded a respectable figure for BBC Two but Channel 4 had a poor night.

BBC One obviously don't count 8pm as primetime, considering it was at that point that they flooded the channel with desperate filler because Strictly somehow finished early.

I do wonder whether The X Factor's approach this series has been partly down to trying to steal The Voice's thunder - the four way mentor axe in week one akin to the battle round, and last night's 'sing with the mentor' approach also taken from The Voice. Now, to the casual British audience, The Voice will be ripping off The X Factor's approach which may weaken it slightly.

Whether the approach was wise is another debate entirely; I think Ceri's audition, the bootcamp cull and the four way mentor axe are the three main reasons why the show lost momentum this year.

It averaged 3.41m (15.4%) - second half was dented by Strictly.

Ironic considering everyone seemed to think The Chase in prime time would flop. Is normal weekday The Chase back after Christmas does anyone know?

I don't know last night's figure but The Chase has been rating between 3.5m and 4m in its Saturday night slot, so that the chances of it rating less than Bieber last night are very remote.

edit: rzt gets in there first with an actual figure. Bit lower than recently but I was right about it beating Bieber.

They'd be nothing surprising in that - remember it was the Susan Boyle series of Britain's Got Talent which began to turn the Syco talent shows into absolutely massive hits.


Although I think we could pencil in a One Direction special knowing ITV.


Have to agree with the final comments - although Strictly had the slightly better stage the atmosphere suited The X Factor much more and I'm sure it'll be repeated next year - though may move up to the O2. Must make a fortune too - even for the live tour you can't get tickets for less than £60 so I'd imagine tickets for this weekend were going for much more than that.

I've always felt too that unlike the weekly shows such as X Factor Britain's Got Talent could book out an arena for a week for their live shows - though it might be too big for the semi-finals. There have been reports this week that Cowell is considering moving BGT from Fountain to the 007 Stage at Pinewood.

Dancing on Ice returns to Elstree next year - I've not seen it confirmed but there have been rumours they're knocking the two main George Lucas stages together (the one previously used by Big Brother and the one previously used by DoI) to create a much bigger set.

How big is the 007 set then - Fountains at Wembley is about 14,000 square feet when the two studios are used together.

It's slated to return on Tuesday 3rd January in their usual 5pm slot. I suspect they'll do the same with last winter and air a new series, followed by repeats.

New episodes of Pointless is also slated to return on 3rd January as well.

It seems no tickets were paid for. TalkTalk gave away the majoroity, then the press got some, then Applause Store filled in the gaps. Seems like a strange decision but maybe a "token gesture" as it were - although I'm guessing the competition for tickets made some money.

any chance we could all stop being "surprised" by SCD out rating X-Factor, given the ratings this series for both, its not one bit surprising.

X-Factor will only look good tonight, because people dont watch the Strictly Results show.

I agree; though I will warn you now that I will be shocked if the Strictly final beats The X Factor Final (Sunday) rating.

59,000 square feet by the looks of it.

http://www.pinewoodgroup.com/our-stu...s/007-stage-pw

BBC1's just shown the new promotional film with David Attenborough speaking "What A Wonderful World".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYXBJmrsxZU

I wonder if they'll realise it as a single. After all, if Telly Savalas can get to number 1....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNVvlLAvswg