Strong figure for The One Show - over 5m and probably only 1m behind Em unaggregated.

That's Britain did ok for what it was.

Frozen Planet recovering after losing a big chunk of its audience last week.

Not strictly ratings related, Elbow have just announced on facebook that they are to Soundtrack The BBC's 2012 Olympic Coverage.
Think they are a great choice, they do wonderfully emotive anthemic numbers,

Frozen Planet has had The Impressions Show leading into it over the last few weeks, which rated much lower than That's Britain. I think the viewer loss is a mixture of not all viewers returning to FP after the England match and I'm A Celeb dented it the last 2 weeks. At 6.6m though, Frozen Planet is still doing very well for a nature program and it will timeshift well too.

One Day Like This set to become even more ubiquitous then?

that EE rating may appear to be nothing special, but for a Wednesday I think its very good.

Yep and against the football. I thought it would get about 7.7

I'm not so sure. It's given Frozen Planet a bigger lead in than The Impressions Show did. A trailer for this week's episode would have helped too.

The Big Bang Theory is definitely the new Friends on E4:

Monday 6:30pm: 862k (inc. +1)
Tuesday 6:30pm: 762k (inc. +1)

Considering last week's new episode averaged 881k (inc. +1), those are amazing figures for the reruns. People can't get enough of this show at the moment.

OK then hopefully it will still do better than Jon Culshaw again next week

ITV Press Centre now showing Downton Abbey on Christmas Day at 9pm.

The Cube Corrie Special Christmas Eve at 6pm

Fast Freddie, the Widow & Me 9pm Boxing Day

stupid ITV question, but whats going on with Whitechapel?

Well, there you go. At least it puts an end to the speculation. Not sure it makes much commercial sense but at least they're making more effort than usual.

It certainly won't be the walk in the park for the BBC that it normally is, especially taking into account the weaker films and no Royle Family as well.

Looks like Robbie was right. Think DA will be huge Christmas day and will beat evrything else.

Has it ever aired without an X factor lead in?
I don't think it's going to be the most watched show of the day tbh

DA airing Christmas Day suits me, means ITV wont be airing anything I want to watch, that will clash with my BBC viewing.

No, it's not aired without an XF lead-in before.

If say, ITV go with: 18.00- Emmerdale, 19.00- Corrie, 20.00- All Star Family Fortunes, 21.00- Downton Abbey (basically same as last year apart from DA)... EastEnders could air at 8pm and will get the top rating of the night. But then that would leave BBC1's 9pm-11pm programmes exposed, I guess, so EE might have to be scheduled for 9pm to keep viewers stuck to BBC1.

Very true.



So what's to say it will ever stand up on it's own 2 feet (so to speak)

I think the BBC should now going with

6:20-Doctor Who
7:20pm-Strictly
8:20pm-EastEnders
9:25Pm-The Royal Bodyguard
9:55pm Ab Fab

EDIT-Isn't Downton 2 hours?
If so many people might record it and fast forward the adverts

Channel 5's Christmas lineup is pretty decent with a varied mix of specials and oldies. Carry On Night should do well.

As for Downton Abbey, Boxing Day would have made more sense financially, Fast Freddie will go up against either Young Herriot or Great Expectations. BBC One are stuck with what shows to air at 9pm, sacrifice an hour long Eastenders or have comedies?

While filmwise, the BBC One lineup is a little thin, next year they'll have Up, Alice in Wonderland and How to Train Your Dragon. Alice would be a huge hit especially if it aired on Boxing Day. 2013, It'll be Toy Story 3, Shrek Forever After, Megamind and Tron Legacy.

Personally id have EastEnders run 10-20mins into Downton and then use that as a lead-in for the comedy.

That scheduling would also leave Downton incredibly exposed though (with a lead-in of less than 5 million whilst BBC1 would have a 10+ million lead-in for the 9PM hour) and I think in that event I'd go with BBC1 winning the 9PM hour at least. I think if they're going ahead with Downton on Christmas Day at 9PM then they need to put Corrie at 8PM to give it the best lead-in they can. So I'd guess ITV goes with something like:

6PM: Emmerdale
7PM: Family Fortunes
8PM: Coronation Street
9PM: Downton Abbey

That would either force the BBC to put EastEnders at 7PM or put it head-to-head with Downton at 9PM.

In fact the best response the BBC could probably give to all of this is to run everything at half past the hour.

6:30: Doctor Who
7:30: Strictly
8:30: EastEnders
9:30: The Royal Bodyguard
10: Ab Fab or Michael McIntyre

Although that's not without serious risk. The fact they don't appear to have a big family film to run after The Queen is becoming a problem. If they are saving Up for New Years Day they might want to start rethinking that.

I think only Eastenders is a potential Downton beater. Not Ab Fab or Royal Bodyguard.

BBC would be best scheduling Eastenders at 8.30pm for 1 hour. Or perhaps do something a bit left field and put Strictly at 9pm.

There's nothing to say for certain. But it's very rare that a show, even with TXF lead-in can get 9m+ like DA can. It suggests to me that there is a big audience out there anyway who will now actively seek out to watch DA even if there was no XF lead-in: the demographics of the two shows are quite different, which sort of would support that theory.

They've tried a couple other new dramas with TXF Sunday lead-in in the last 18 months, both of which have got about 4.5-6.5m, so nowhere near DA's level. It's not like they can put any old drama in that slot and it'll get 9m+. Put it this way: DA has been rating better than how Doc Martin, which we know can stand on its two feet, was rating with TXF lead-in a couple of years ago. My thoughts are that if DM can continue to rate highly on another day without TXF lead-in, DA probably could too (maybe with a slight drop but nothing too noticeable). But on Christmas Day, of course, it might suffer more than usual.


I agree about Ab Fab. It's not that big of a show, really. Its last Christmas Day special had c6m (admittedly in a late time slot) and the regular series episodes in 2003 were rating between 5-7m most of the time, which for 2003 standards isn't really that great. I think The Royal Bodyguard is more of a threat as it's an unknown quantity and could do a CFWM-style launch if in a good slot and promoted a lot.

This thing about advertisers not wanting to pay for adverts on Christmas day, why is that exactly?, Boxing day is one of the biggest shopping days of the year and lots of people will have got Money/Vouchers as presents, so why is it that shops and manufacturers aren't falling over themselves to advertise their wares on and around Christmas, seems to me to be shooting themselves in the foot.

Corrie and EastEnders won't clash.

I think ITV should definitely put Corrie 8pm, followed by Downton at 9pm. Christmas Day is the sort of day when people don't bothering changing channel so it is important for ITV to get the viewers in early with a 7pm-9pm soap-athon. Also Leaving 8pm-9pm open for Eastenders runs the risk of Eastenders overunning past 9pm and then people not bothering with Downton. Especially with the rumored 2 x 40min episodes, which the BBC may disguise in smaller slots.

I also think it would be worth reducing the advert content in Downton so it runs 9pm-10:45pm, hopefully preventing people from baulking at the running length and going past their bed-time. Might as well seeing as commercial income would be low anyway,