I believe Knowles has some sort of ''golden handcuffs'' deal with the BBC. They are clearly becoming increasingly desperate to find him something to justify it, not easy when he has the charisma of a brick wall.

I dunno about this, I think it's been quite valuable for the Beeb as they get two live primetime matches in mid-January (and the Manchester derby got a massive audience two seasons ago) and a final on a cold Sunday afternoon in February, without the obligation to show loads more games of middling quality. It's probably better value in some ways than the FA Cup which involves most matches on Sunday afternoons and the final on a sunny Saturday in May, and with fourth pick live matches on terrestrial telly so they end up showing some ropey ones. I know one of these is Palace vs Cardiff but you had Barnsley vs Cardiff in the FA Cup semi-final the other year.

It's hardly a massive burden, the live rights, you get three games out of it and good ones as well. And it's good for the League Cup, when the final was on Sky alone it just felt like a middling Premier League match.


I remember the Beeb showing this one Christmas afternoon in the noughties, announcing what an institution it was in America. It's remarkable really how bad Christmas telly is in America, half the time they don't bother and the rest of the time it's a load of sanctimonious guff (the Christmas episodes of 30 Rock are good examples both for the type of thing the show-within-a-show does at Christmas and the rather sentimental episodes themselves). And it's all weeks in advance.


They do get two games each and Sky appear to get the first choice, but if Sky pick the second leg of Liverpool vs Man City, which seemingly they will, I think it works pretty well for the Beeb because Liverpool vs Man City would get an audience regardless of what leg it is and if you wanted any leg of Cardiff vs Palace, you'd go for the decisive one.

In other news, after slagging off ITV yesterday for their bad manners in not saying when Corrie was on next, I'd also like to complain about BBC1 not apologising for not showing The Impressions Show, and not even saying it was a change to the schedules, presumably leaving everyone totally confused. Manners!

Viewers in Scotland and Wales were not confused because they got their scheduled programmes

A bit random but did we ever get a reported overnight figure for the One Ronnie repeat last Saturday before Strictly? With the CIN best of doing quite well there, I was intrigued as to how this did.

Super Tiny Animals 4.8m (20.6%)

Charlie’s Angels 315,200 (1.3%) and 38,842 on E4 +1

Re Christmas telly in the US I thought Thanksgiving was the bigger holiday than Christmas and the networks brought out their big guns then (although I think CBS has been showing Wizard of Oz at Christmas since about 1954).

Tiny animals, but half decent audience. They'll probably give it a longer run now!


It's like how German telly shows that old b&w British comedy short every New Years Eve and gets mega ratings for it.

Wednesday ratings:

BBC1
Breakfast 1.6m 36.2%
BBC News at Six 5.2m 26.0%
Regional News and Weather 6.0m 27.8%
The One Show 4.8m 21.5%
That's Britain! 3.6m 15.6%
From Russia With Love - Panorama 2.0m 7.6%
Frozen Planet 5.2m 19.2%
BBC News at Ten 4.7m 22.2%
Regional News and Weather / The National Lottery Wednesday Night Draws 3.6m 20.3%
Who Do You Think You Are? Vanessa Williams 1.4m 10.9%
Film 2011 with Claudia Winkleman 0.7m 8.1%

ITV (inc ITV+1)
Daybreak 0.7m 18.0%
Lorraine 1.1m 16.8%
The Jeremy Kyle Show 1.4m 21.9%
ITV News & Weather 3.4m 15.9%
Emmerdale 7.3m 32.9%
Super Tiny Animals 5.0m 21.5%
I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! 8.8m 32.9%
ITV News at Ten & Weather 2.8m 13.5%
Cops with Cameras 1.4m 11.2%

BBC2
Heir Hunters 1.5m 6.8%
MasterChef: The Professionals 3.1m 12.4%
Your Money and How They Spend It 1.4m 5.1%
Mock the Week Again 1.1m 5.1%
Newsnight 0.9m 6.3%
Frontline Medicine 0.3m 3.7%

C4 (inc C4+1)
Channel 4 News 0.7m 3.3%
Kirstie's Handmade Britain 1.3m 5.3%
Grand Designs 1.6m 6.1%
Chris Moyles' Quiz Night 0.9m 4.9%
Alan Carr: Chatty Man 0.5m 5.1%

Five
5 News at 7 0.2m 0.9%
Europa League Football 2.0m 7.8%
Second in Command 0.6m 4.6%

Richard from Pointless tweeted earlier that they had their highest rating ever yesterday. Anyone know if it was much higher?

Frozen Planet is down quite a bit even I forgot about it last night.
At least its on again Sunday.

they should have held back the footage of the cute animals being eaten by the killers til the end. once you've seen that you can switch over.

BBC1 is quite weak on Wednesday nights. If the 9pm show doesn't perform they don't have much else that does. It's the channel's poorest night of television in my opinion and has been for years.

Good night for ITV1 and Ch5. The 'Super Tiny Animals' filler worked well sandwiched between two high rating shows and IAC probably got a boost from having a head start on Frozen Planet whilst only 2m were watching BBC1. They need to re-think the 8.30pm junction, because shows normally perform better at 7.30pm, like Waterloo Road, but the 8.30pm show performs much worse than it would if it acted as filler at 7.30pm, because not many other shows start at 8.30pm

yes they make good sandwich fillers

So Frozen Planet held up fairly well considering the lack of interest from Penguins Do The Funniest Things viewers, which probably explains the lift for IAC, although that was still well below 9m in its final run in and despite starting opposite a 2m rated show on BBC1.

That Panorama rating is truly atrocious. What on earth made them drop that into the schedule without notice and think viewers would watch it?


BBC1's worst night it may be, but it still does miles better than ITV on Tuesdays, where the flopzone is so entrenched now it barely merits comment.

Def BBC1s weakest night, considering it used to be as bad as ITV Tuesday flopzone, I think they'll be happy that it's improved in recent years. Waterloo road does quite well, but as Zoe said above the 8:30 junction is dire. They need to figure this out.
I loved last nights Frozen Planet, was surprised to hear there was a negative reaction. I wondered the whole way through the series what it was like for people living in these regions.
I can understand the criticisms about next weeks programme and global warming, but personally I think it's a bit difficult to do a show on icebergs and not mention the elephant in the room so to speak.
Great night for ITV and nice soccer rating for Five.

They could send Attenborough to Africa and the nations tweeters would complain about the lack of amusing penguins and cuddly polar bears....

Like you, I found last nights just as fascinating as all the others.

so I can arrange my dates for those evenings in advance?

At the moment, nobody in the UK is even broadcasting it so you'll be ok...

Talking of football on telly next summer, nobody has commented on here about the Team GB fixtures in the Olympics. It was announced the other week that England's men (& Gareth Bale) will play their group games:

Thursday 26th July - one of two games in a window 5pm-9.45pm

Sunday 29th July - one of two games in a window 5pm-9.45pm

Wednesday 1st August - one of two games in a window 5pm-9.45pm

The QFs all take place on Saturday 4th August between noon and 9.30pm (the Wembley QF 2.30-4.30pm).

The SFs both take place on Tuesday 7th August between 5pm and 9.45pm

The Final takes place at Wembley on Saturday 11th August at 3pm.

Now I imagine all of those that involve Team GB will be on BBC1. All in good slots which would get massive audiences for a World Cup or Euros fixture.

I doubt Team GB's fixtures will do as well. But with Beckham and the London 2012 buzz, these are surely all going to get stellar audiences so long as Team GB goes the distance?

Not sure there would be uninterrupted coverage of these games on BBC1, it would depend what else is on. For example in Sun 29th there are swimming finals on from 7:30 including Women's 400m Freestyle final - I think Becky Adlington defending one of her Olympic titles would take precedence.

There will be more interest in football next year due to the presence of team GB but for most people Olympics = Athletics, Swimming, Cycling, Rowing etc. not football.

lets hope it stays that way.


Im pretty sure that a Richard Attenborough series would be poorer if the BBC let twitter users decide where he pointed his camera.

Lets look at ths list of Top 10 being followed on Twitter.
[LIST=1][*]Lady Gaga (ladygaga)[*]Justin Bieber (justinbieber) [*]Katy Perry [*]Kim Kardashian (KimKardashian) [*]Britney Spears (britneyspears) [*]Barack Obama (BarackObama[*]Shakira (shakira) [*]Rihanna (rihanna)[*]taylorswift13 (taylorswift13) [*]Selena Gomez (selenagomez)[/LIST]
now I cant help but notice that 8 of of 10 of these are not worth following, and ITV probably has had the rest on X-Factor at some stage.

News from Broadcast that DCI Banks should return next year to ITV1:

This year’s run arrested an average consolidated audience of 4.85m (18.13%) on ITV1 and ITV1 HD in a difficult Friday night slot, according to Barb figures supplied by Attentional.

The drama was originally piloted over two episodes in 2010, averaging 6.48m (23.61%) viewers.


I wasn't too sure about this series to start with, but I warmed to Tomkinson in this role... Pleased to see that ITV1 are continuing to invest in new British drama too.

I notice the Morse prequel, Endeavour press pack has been released, so must indicate a New Year weekend airing.

Bank Holiday Monday 2nd Jan perhaps most likely after Corrie at 9pm.

Robbie: The draw is being broadcast on BBC2 tomorrow starting at 4.45 pm and has been in the schedule for weeks.. I believe it's also on Eurosport.

I think Robbie was referring to the fact that the rights deal for the tournament hasn't been confirmed yet.