Say something more snappy and tabloid-esque and you may get quoted in next week's story

and it seems like in most industry's there are alot of really shit execs.

Was TRB something David Jason had alot to do with, or was he just cast in it?

I was predicting this was a flop long before any of you joined my band wagon

Trouble is Jason is such a big name and the BBC must have thought that even getting him to read a phone book would be a hit. However, even he has difficulty trying to save this rubbish and I hope this isn't a sad end to such a glorious career.

Jason is credited as Executive Producer, so he is very heavily involved in this disaster. When he appeared on The One Show before Christmas he seemed particularly proud of it, and was hoping the public would take to it.

Given the current weather patterns, conditions are set to turn cooler mid month onwards, which an increasing risk of snow more especially from the North West. This comes from weather anoraks on the internet, not tabloid newspapers.

In regards to this thread being too big would it be a good idea to post a new thread just giving rzt or whichevers contributors figures as a sticky topic with no way or replying. Purely for those you dont want to trawl? Or do we expect the thread to calm down abit now?

As night follows day, the BBC has a new success and George starts his grousing.....

You appear to be in a minority, the show's audience went up nearly 400% between the start and the end of the year!

I think DJ has an old fashioned view on entertainment. He's criticised many shows recently for being too adult themed.

It will calm down, before it inevitably gets busy in the Summer, more so than usual this year for obvious reasons.

so basically the BBC did not want to say no to David Jason, a man with a long running successful career. Execs can often be accused of making bland uncreative TV, but some of them do let the star make the decisions.

Episode 1 was a shambles from start to finish - poor writing that wasn't funny. I tried to laugh, but I just wasn't up to laughing with that tripe. And ratings halving from episode 1 to 2 is no joke.

As regards to the thread, I'm struggling to keep up with how quickly this thread moves. Maybe a sticky thread wouldn't be such a bad idea or even a subforum to incorporate all ratings-related threads including our stuff i.e. TXF Ratings Thread etc and so forth.

One question to everyone - do you think BARB will change their ratings system to the way it was pre-2002 but with a few alterations, so include all repeat showings with the actual live showing, VOSDAL, Live+7, PVR and possibly on-demand viewings on BBCiPlayer, ITV Player, 4oD, Demand 5?

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a bit of good, clean, family-friendly comedy, but The Royal Bodyguard looks like a children's programme. Plus Guy Hubble is a totally unbelievable character and unlike Frank Spencer or Norman Pitkin, he's not particularly likeable either.

Ungrateful bunch giving me 87 "dislikes". I wasn't dissing Downton, just giving an alternative perspective.

What a nasty bunch the Downtonistas are....

There always seems to be an unusually amount of posts during the middle of a working day. Quite often the ratings have been announced, discussed and then the conversation has changed to one of the generic filler topics all before I manage to log-in at teatime!

The Bank Job will surely plummet tonight, car crash like you could't imagine.
Technical hitches, George Lamb messing up all over the place, truly shocking, but strangely compelling.

Quite right!

Re David Jason. I saw something the other day which suggested the BBC were keen to keep him and may have other projects if this doesnt work out. Cant think where now.

Big Brother tommorow night, I predict 4 million

It's the launch without the summer to distract people this time, so I'll go for 5.5 million. The series will then settle down to 2.5 million, which seems to be show's typical audience now. CBB might be past it a bit now, but it still has its followers.

I gave up after Monday, George stumbling over his words, which although I put down to first night nerves, obviously hasn't improved.
There was one thing I'd never seen before on that show though - a Twitter feed running across the bottom of the screen during commercials. I wonder if that's a sign of things to come in the future.

My memory may be mistaken, but I seem to recall a Digital Spy article on the day of TRB's 1st episode where David Jason said TRB's humour was more "visual" than anything else. That had alarm bells ringing in my head as to how funny it would be, but I still at least gave it a try for 1 episode. I was wrong to.

A very special project, I think. Saarf London, a pair of brothers, the odd scrape, a suitcase in the van, best 'uns with no questions, bonnet de douche. Christmas Day 9pm. Luvvly jubbly.

I don't think the solution to this thread's popularity is to hack it up into various sub-threads which it's hard to keep track of. I'd much rather wade through one thread than several.

It is useful signing up to Twitter though and subscribing to ronant's TVRatingsUK ratings tweets, amongst others, to get your daily ratings round up and then catch up here from home later.

I suspect things will die down a bit once the Christmas ratings are all out of the way, the charts are finalised, and Alesha's new found fan club have their excitement out of the way.

It's a bit of a wasteland now till the spring I suspect.

I thought it could've managed a slightly higher figure considering how the other terrestrial channels performed; then again, I didn't expect King George and Queen Mary to pick up a figure like that!


It seems strange that they can change the schedule to 6.30pm, though. Celebrity Big Brother is hardly an excuse as they managed to air the news at 7 over the summer/autumn. Between the two time slots, I'd say 6.30pm is better for the channel. Though is the 5pm bulletin required because of the quota? That appears pretty redundant to me considering there's another 30 minute bulletin 60/90 minutes (depending on the evening start time) after it finishes.


I agree; I'm suprised they haven't gone full out over the next few weeks to try and build a share. TBH I think the commercials should bow down to the BBC's dominance over the Olympic period as no new show will stand much of a chance, but it turn that should allow them to air more new programming in the winter and, of course, autumn.

It doesn't have to air at 5pm but it brings in healthy ratings of 700k+ and sometimes 1m so it makes sense to keep it there. I can't think of anything else that could rate better for them in that slot, it bridges the gap between the afternoon movie and Neighbours pefectly.

Thanks for that Robbie! Although it's not too easy for me to tweet all the details during the day with work it will hopefully be handy to just be able to scan through and see the important info quickly. Im afraid it won't tell anyone who uses this thread anything particularly new though, but does seem to be getting quite a bit of interest on twitter.

I agree though, keep this thread as one - don't think it would be the same without all the various discussions.

It wouldn't be a bad idea, if people have the data readily to hand, to post on here a big final top 30, or perhaps 40, once all the consolidated ratings are out next week. Just the once, not to keep reposting it for reference during the year (we can keep it to the usual 20), but it would be nice to see a big list of the top shows of the year, not just the biggest ones.

Or maybe a "Class of 2011" list - the one offs, new shows that started, and ones resurrected in 2011. Purely from memory I guess it would be something like:

Frozen Planet 9.72m
Scott & Bailey 9.11m
Absolutely Fabulous 9.07m (i know, it's 20 years old but revived and possibly has a new life with these stonking ratings)
Come Fly With Me 8.80m
My Big Fat Gypsy Weddings 8.70m
The Royal Bodyguard 8.25m
Mrs Brown's Boys 8.24m

etc....