Yes, especially NY. Gary Sinise was fantastic as ever in BBC1's Snake Eyes the other night.

Vegas also has a shot at winning back some viewers with the cast changes. I haven't even seen clips of Danson in action yet but from what I've read he seems to have gone down well with U.S. viewers.

I imagine Cowboy Builders should be back, it was a success at 9pm but there is only two 9pm slots in the weekday in January available and one of them is interuppted by football. Cowboy Traders sound interesting, if Dom involved at all or will be someone like Matt Allwright?

NYD I think they should premiere a new film although it depends on the competition as I imagine Channel 4 if they have any big films left will want to premiere something on NYD.

I hadnt realised that Snake Eyes was a Paramount Pictures Production for the BBC

Being serious for a moment I do hope Vegas can win back some lost viewers, I figure Danson is well liked in the states, he has a good history on TV shows over there, not sure that counts so much over here, but still as long as they dont have the Cheers cast guest starring, he should be fine.

Of course there is also the midseason cast change, that maybe a problem for the show, I know im going to miss

They should really try and bring him over but I think he'll too busy with CSI. He's a great dramatic actor as seen on Damages so I was happy with his casting.

With The Muppets appearing on The X Factor, it wouldn't surprise me to see Greatest Muppets Moments on ITV1 or Channel 5 and reruns of past Muppet films, wonder who owns the footage to the Muppet Show? I assume it would be Disney rather than ITV.

there is no question that would be good for the show.

Hang on what, the Muppets are going to appear on X-Factor? are you being serious?

They've appeared:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmyJMO7PrP8

I think that about sums up if not this series of X-Factor, it sums up all of them.

The only way that could have been better is if they were preforming with Dustin the Turkey from Ireland who went to Eurovision for them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n--JnAwirk

It's The Muppets! I'm sure if SCD were able to book them, they would! They'll probably appear on DoI as well.

I meant on a deeper level, the idea of X-Factor openly having puppets on stage, is maybe a little too close to the truth.

I think the moment with the puppets behind the judges desk is when it really parodied itself.

yep I think you have that right. It comes to something when the judges are as much Simon Cowells puppets as the contestants.


Anyways switching topic

Just read this about The Block, I wonder if this the renovation show ITV have lined up for Christine. Obviously we have discussed this show before.

This has already been made for ITV1 with Simon Cowell's brother! It flopped!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004...ting.realitytv


I can't see ITV committing to the new 6 days a week format unless it's in daytime.
Maybe they're picking up Ten's The Renovators

Getting (global) A Listers is just about impossible for shows like X Factor. American Idol potentially had a budget of $50m, pursued everyone from Elton John to Justin Timberlake. People like Rihanna and Katy Perry were within X Factor's budget and willing to be a part of it - but they simply don't have the time.

Continued X Factor related jibber-jabber...

On the subject of The Muppets if come May and the upfronts ABC (or one of the other networks) aren't announcing that they're reviving The Muppet Show I'll be both surprised and disappointed.


That's not as big an issue as you'd think. The primary problem that these shows tend to face when attracting real (and relevant) stars to their judging panels is the time commitment involved in doing them and this is particularly true in the US. Even in the UK the production team essentially had to bend over backwards to make the schedule work for Barlow. Most stars just don't want to or can't commitment that kind of time to a show.

I'm sure The X Factor producers would love Adele on the judging panel but where is she going to find the time to do it? It 2+ months of live shows plus a good couple of weeks of auditions all over the country and the boot camp and judges houses stage. Its just not something people with successful careers have time for. One of the genius elements of The Voice format and the reason as a format its been able to attract bigger names is because its a deceptively small commitment. The pre-live show stages can be shot in a couple of days and are all done in one studio location as opposed to having to travel all over the country.


I have my doubts about this. Cheryl Cole doesn't have a career without The X Factor and I suspect her agent may very politely remind her of this fact when ITV call her next year and offer her, her job back. Its no coincidence that her solo career has been built entirely around The X Factor.


Tricky one this. Raw number wise it is certainly true that The X Factor hasn't been a flop but when you factor in everything else disappointment doesn't quite sum it up. It is worth remembering that The X Factor US reportedly had a promotional budget that's bigger than the vast majority of new shows production budgets for the year.


I'm impressed by how cleverly Fox have managed to (publicly) absolve themselves from blame for the debacle that has been The X Factor US this season. Certainly Simon Cowell and SyCo deserve the lions share of the blame but Fox is by no means an innocent bystander in everything that's happened this year.

It was under Fox's instance for example that Nicole was hired as a co-host on the show just in case they needed a replacement judge. They were making provisions basically since day one for replacing Cheryl Cole because understandably they weren't entirely on board with the idea of having a complete unknown on their big new reality hit. Although it should be noted that Cowell sold them something of a false bill of goods with The X Factor panel - he got to them to agree to Cheryl by promising them a big name (Mariah Carey) which for various reasons he couldn't produce. It was also after seeing rushes from the first auditions (which were put through focus groups) that Fox flagged up further concerns with Cheryl and the panel as a whole.

On a related note having seen the results of some that focus testing I think people are dramatically overestimating how well Cheryl would have gone down in the US. I also think people are forgetting just how low the bar was for Cheryl to come across well in her five minutes of screen time on The X Factor US.

If The Muppets were to return to television, it would more likely to be on Disney Channel rather than ABC but TBH like Star Trek, its more likely Disney will just greenlit a sequel and specials.

I don't know the exact details but I presume Dom's on board. He is, after all, key to CB's success.

Last night, Strictly drew 10.68m (39.7%) peak 11.65m (42.2%). X Factor managed 11.98m (41.77%) peak 14.1m (46.2%) inc. HD but excl. +1.

twitter

Looks like SCD was slightly down and XF slightly up week on week. Says it all though when it's a relief that XF's year on year decline is back below 20%.

Indeed. I remember back in the summer a few contributors here were saying it was unlikely it would drop much more than 10%, which wouldn't have been as big an issue.

Still, credit where it's due, it was up nearly 2m on Saturday's show at least.

Don't say it then

So XF comes out on top, but lets wait and see how we spin it in a negative way due to own personal problems with ITV, Cowell and the show.

Is it not worrying that 2 million people would rather watch people leave then actually see them perform

It would be interesting to see how the demos change across the two nights. I suspect it's got more to do with more younger people being in on a Sunday night. Although that still doesn't explain why it was doing so much better in 2010 and 2009.

Perhaps more people are watching the results show off air, as it's shorter and not spinning through the ads, which would bring the performance show's average down?

People watching both SCD and Xfactor in full on Saturday, would have at least three ad breaks to spin through when catching up on the latter.

It's more like 4m!

10m for performances, 14m for the actual reveal/exit.

No i'm going for averages not peaks