Wow, great for Mrs Brown's Boys! But I really wish it was 0.02m higher....

OK start for Cowboy Builders, but capable of more. Hopefully with no Millionaire next week it will rise. Thirteen Conspiracy kept above a million too, so again OK - did it's job as pre-CBB filler


I used to like The Vault. And Don't Try This At Home wasn't bad either

Mrs Brown's Boys is quite the phenomenon. It has a case for being one of the ratings stories of the year.

I can only assume the comparison is to FOX when it had some more controversial reality series in the early 00's. But these days, all ITV and FOX have in common is being #1 in primetime and both showing X Factor.

And tbh, I don't see the big deal with TBL. Some of those FOX shows were genuinely quite shocking but TBL is nothing particularly extreme as far as I'm aware. Nor is the decline for the Tuesday move at all surprising.


If she were going to do it I'd have thought it would be in the US (where BBCW might be sh*tting themselves a wee bit about DWTS).

She does seem unlikely to be brought back for X Factor US, though.

The Royal Bodyguard won't be beating Mrs Brown's Boys again after Boxing Day!

Yep. I thought from day one when I saw the first episode that it would ultimately end up becoming a big comedy for BBC One but not so fast! Thought it would take about 2-3 years, at least, for it to get to this kind of level. I suspect if it had been the one with the EE lead-in, it might've been closer to 9m. Something worth doing next Christmas.

Mrs Brown's Boys and Luther probably share the title for the best 'ratings arc'*

*Copyright grimshaw

Sorry but the respect level went down with that one (and I have followed your posts for years)

that sounds like something ITV would do, not the BBC.


reading your post makes me think that Strictly should have a guest judge each week, but the twist being that each judge is from a different international version of the show.

At this point im still waiting for the Strictly Come Dancing World Cup.

Assuming you get to the end of the thread the arrow by the thread title goes to the first new post after your last visit.


The Bank Job pretty much held on to it's audience from Monday then. Fat Fighters flopped. The gross out documentary did well relatively speaking.


They've got to make sure though they don't move the problem to Wednesday. They may be taking away 14-16 nights from Tuesday, but it'll be more expensive to fill those 30 hours or so on Wednesdays to meet the expectations of the audience. And this time they haven't got The Bill to fill half those hours and prop up the 9pm slot.



Cooking with Heston and the Baker Brothers actually look like two quite decent lifestyle shows from C4 compared to the new series they've been serving up lately, and both could probably return in hour-long formats too if successful.


What - BBC in sensible scheduling shocker! I thought The Apprentice usually began in March though and ends the first week of June (between BGT ending and BB starting usually!).



They're expecting people to opt for the BBC when they can then, even with ad free races. I agree with those saying it would rate better on Sky Sports 1/2 - but be impossible to schedule without them axing at least one sport.


Not sure how the BBC's matches fall but there could be the option of running a 6-part series starting within Euro 2012.

I suspect though they'll either be short 4-parters or shows stripped across a week.


FA Cup 2008 overnights: 3-5pm match coverage: BBC1 7.3m/Sky 646,000
Masters 2011 (final night): BBC2+HD 7pm-12mn: 2.9m + 278,000 / Sky 521,000

Can't find anything for the Carling Cup. I think some Four Nations Rugby League games were also shown on both Sky and the BBC last autumn, but can't find figures.

29th place for The Royal Bodyguard and 31st for Mrs Brown's Boys in the year-end chart by my reckoning.

Trending at number 2 on Twitter - Countdown's Rachel Riley, who not only looks stunning, but whose specialist round was Manchester United on Celebrity Mastermind. (Can't find the drool symbol on the smilies).

The BBC don't have any Tuesday Euro 2012 matches so in theory they could show a 6-8 part series during the Euros right through until the week before the Olympics. But, I don't think they'd do it because England v Ukraine (ITV1) is scheduled on one of the Tuesdays and there's little point putting a new episode of a drama up against it and getting knocked down a lot ratings-wise which could have a detrimental effect for the remaining episodes. I suppose they could take the drama off for a week on that England match night, but then that would disrupt the momentum of the series and too large a gap between two consecutive episodes could result in a loss of viewers anyway.

Jaw dropping even by his stanards.

According to the Radio Times Guide To TV Comedy, the first five (of nine) series that M&W made for the BBC premiered on BBC2. Series 6 (Autumn 1971) was on BBC1 on Sundays, series 7 and 8 ran on Fridays and series 9 in 1976 ran irregularly on Wednesdays between 7th January and 19th April.

BBC Two must be delighted by winning the 9pm slot. The Biggest Loser is living up to being a loser in more ways than one, perhaps suffering the same curse that afflicted 71 Degrees North last year, second time no one is interested in a run of the mill reality series.

You'd have to go back years for a really controversial FOX reality show. That would have to be Temptation Island but that was nothing compared to Sky's infamous, There's Something About Miriam where in a bachelor style show, male contestants try to woo a female. Then the female reveals she's transgender. Now that show was a fustercluck!


Is that due to DWTS having weak ratings for the latest series?



It does sound like an ITV move although I can't see her return to any Cowell show in the UK. It would be a coup if it did.


No guest judges. They tried it before and it didn't quite work. I would like to see some US couples take on the US ones. That would be amazing!

Been enjoying the posts about how BBC One dominated Saturday nights in the late seventies. However, the station was also very powerful on Thursdays when the trio of Tomorrow's World, TOTP and The Good Life attracted 14-18 million viewers while ITV wilted with a substandard import and current affairs. Fridays could also see BBC One have a sitcom hit like Porridge in an 8.30 slot which would pull in 18 million viewers and a decent drama such as The Onedin Line or The Brothers could hurt ITV. However, at other times, peaktimes, esp Mondays, were dominated by ITV.

Nice touch by Channel 5. They just aired 2 CBB trailers during Emmerdale's ad break.

Nice. I'm so sad I'll probably wind up catching this on +1.

Seriously, nice to see them splashing out a bit on the promotion. That must have cost them serious wonga on primetime ITV1.

I think Mrs Brown's Boys has guaranteed itself a Christmas Day slot with these ratings. And Michael McIntyre shot up in the ratings too. Two very popular performers that get criticism but viewers love them.

I knew it! As I said, Morecambe & Wise being part of BBC1's Saturday line-up is an urban myth. Repeats possibly but not first run editions. I remember TheTwo Ronnies on Saturday nights far more than Eric & Ernie although I think series 4 in 1975 was part of the Show Of The Week strand on BBC2. Does the RT Comedy Guide have anything about that Iain?

WWE had 6 of the top 10 UK trends the other night.

This does nothing for them though, because:

1. I'd suspect most of those commenting were watching a stream rather than the official Sky Sports 3 broadcast.

2. Most of the tweets were negative.

#Twittermeansnothing.

Yes, he signed a golden handcuffs with ITV in 1978 and was there for over a decade. The sitcom was Slinger's Day. That said, though, he did present the Royal Variety Performance in 1988 on the Beeb with Ronnie Corbett, which begat the Bruce And Ronnie special at Christmas 1988 (the one that went out at eleven o'clock and the producer cried at the appalling slot) and then at Christmas 1989 he did The Bruce Forsyth Show on BBC1 which struck me as very odd. He did another series of You Bet at the beginning of 1990 before moving over to the Beeb for, firstly, Takeover Bid and then the Gen Game.

Oddly too in 1994 when he moved back to ITV, he did a series of Play Your Cards Right for ITV in 1994 before his final series of the Generation Game, and it's not like the Gen Game was filmed months in advance either. Funny how he had these kind of overlap periods.


And just to emphasise this, here's the BBC1 line-up from ten years ago on Wednesday 10th January 2001, just a few months after the news moved to ten...

7.00 Dream Lives - a Tomorrow's World spin-off looking at technology being used in everyday life
7.30 Car Wars (repeat - this became Traffic Cops)
8.00 Celebrity Ready Steady Cook
8.30 The National Lottery Draws
8.40 Escape To The Sun - docusoap about ex-pats
9.10 Secret Life Of Happiness - documentary as part of a season on mental health with the likes of Steve Redgrave discussing how they found happiness

As you can see, it was a right state, the following week there was one of umpteen Castaway spin-offs at 9.10, the week after a One Foot In The Grave repeat. Meanwhile ITV had Emmerdale, Corrie, the first episode of Popstars (the rest of the series was on Saturdays) and Taggart.


Hmm, maybe, although you would think that Sky might have more of an advantage with the F1 because there would presumably be loyal viewers who would want to watch every race with the same pundits and the same commentators, whereas with the FA and League Cup Finals they're one-off events which a higher percentage, presumably, of casual viewers than a bog-standard mid-season F1 race.


Indeed, that "irregularly" being once every two or three weeks, as was sometimes the style of the time. The last shows I think shown less frequently than once a week were Mike Yarwood In Persons and The Paul Daniels Magic Show which alternated on Saturday nights in the autumn of 1981.

As has been said, The Two Ronnies were far more frequent visitors to Saturdays, especially as they made far more series. They too had one series on BBC2 in the seventies, although BBC2 did have a big tradition of light entertainment, most obviously on Mondays opposite Panorama when they would always show an entertainment show, and also up until the mid-seventies they would have Show Of The Week which was a big light entertainment show, when BBC1 were showing something more challenging. I think some series of both M&W and The Rons went out under that banner.

And I've got a Radio Times from September 1975 when, on Thursday, at eight o'clock on BBC1 is The Two Ronnies, first shown on BBC2, and at nine o'clock on BBC2 is Morecambe and Wise, first shown on BBC1.

it might be ok move for Dancing With the Stars, but not Strictly. Strictly is better than that kind of behaviour