Goodnight Mister Tom by the same author did pretty well so maybe Just Henry will be a bit higher.

The Michael Buble show seems to be the sort of sickly sweet programme that you can only get away with at this time of year.

It seems to be a cross between an ITV Music Special, Ant & Dec's Christmas show and even an element of Surprise Surprise!

Talking about Surprise Surprise, maybe they should bring that back? maybe just for Cilla's singing at the start and end. What do you think Glenn?!

What if the repeat rates 0.9m and a 4% share though

Oh it would be a 20m banker!

Goodnight Mister Tom was a long time ago now though. Hopefully it will be a bit higher but I can't see it doing much better. It was the sort of programme that would appeal to older viewers and families so the clash with Countryfile/Roadshow won't have helped but I don't see where else it could have gone. Good move putting it at 7pm not 8pm though as it was definitely a family drama, a 10pm finish would have been too late.

Although Mister Tom was sold as a vehicle for John Thaw who was always worth several million viewers on his own.

[quote=Dancc;55377183]It's a good point you raise. I don't think any commercial broadcaster has a serious amount of viewer loyalty any more, those days are long gone. Probably Sky has the most as people think because they are paying for it, it must be good! At various points of the year we've seen ITV1, Channel 4 and Channel 5 fall to some spectacular lows in certain situations. The only solution for surviving the digital era is providing consistently good content. Multichannel cannot ever hope to offer that- it's just a few hits scattered very thinly across hundreds of channels and buried amongst mountains of repeats. It's winning the war largely thanks to all these specialist channels that hone in on a certain type of viewer and lock them in, becoming their default channel for when nothing grabs them on the main channels, which tend to schedule more broadly for all demographics.[/QUOT
I agree, I think Channel 5 once the football has gone should go for more home produced entertainment and ITV should major on its strengths in drama and factual and bury some of the real LE/reality rubbish on ITV2 as the ratings they've had for some of this year's offerings would be quite good for ITV2.

I think the format could work again as it was a popular show and if Cilla wasn't interested, then maybe her sidekick Mr Biggins could take over. I'd think a 7pm run on Sundays would pull in a decent audience.

I think you raise a good point there. The X Factor is a young-skewing programme so to counter it, the BBC puts old-skewing programmes against it - and it works well. It's relatively simple for BBC1 to pull in older viewers as these viewers are habitual to the channel (and ITV1) in general, and so airing Antiques Roadshow or a repeat of a drama against TXF works fine. They sweep up lots of the 55+ viewers who have no interest at all in watching TXF and normally are watching BBC1 anyway. For ITV1 though, it's more of a problem finding a counter audience against the older-skewing Strictly Come Dancing. Going for an older audience, which is ITV1's traditional and core audience, can be difficult as many of these viewers are watching Strictly at the same time, so they have to try and pull in the younger viewers against SCD but these viewers are generally tougher to attract and less habitual to the channel than the older viewers. Plus, there's generally fewer young people who watch TV than elderly people. So it becomes more of a problem finding a programme (TV Burp aside) to get a decent counter-audience against a show like Strictly. If they air a programme like JLS/Justin Bieber, they get a decent 16-34 audience but are niche and rate poorly among all other demographics and end up with dire overall ratings. If they air a programme like the Westlife show, who I'm sure have a large elderly/housewives female following, the show also ends up rating poorly as it's pitched exactly at SCD's target audience. It's a bit of a tough one to get right. It's no excuse for Westlife's dire rating last night though - I thought beforehand it would've got c3m. I'm not sure what they should air next year against the SCD final results? Maybe a repeat of a Bond or Bourne movie which are popular with younger male viewers (as different an audience to SCD's I can think of).

Sounds like the perfect format for Ant and Dec.

They could end each show with a few verses of Let's Get Ready to Rumble.

Could be for them as some of their newer shows haven't done much and they are ideal for the middle of the road vehicle Suprise Surprise was.

I think a decent enough drama/comedy could do okay. A Bond film would certainly do well.
Problem with young skewing shows like JLS/Bieber is that they already are niche WITHIN that demographic, hardly widely loved, no real 'general like' just love or hate tbh (less so with JLS)

Its not like Bieber blew the roof off or anything compared to Westlife. No, its that these types of shows have such a niche audience, not demographically targeted, but targeted at a tiny group within a demographic.

Put on a general show tbh. Its not like they didn't target the right people last night - they put rubbish on and hoped a repeated HP (they chose the wrong one imo) would be strong enough across a number of shows.

Just put something enjoyable. Spooks goes up against Downton Abbey, not an hour of JLS and Bieber dancing around each other.

A well placed Christmas comedy might work well enough.

ITV1 did badly last night, but tomorrow with their soaps they should be up to 20 pc again.

Since the early 1990s, when have 'ITV' and 'comedy' gone together?

If Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionnaire? struggles tomorrow I think it'll next win primetime on Wednesday:

BBC One: The One Show; Nigel Slater's Simple Christmas; The Impressions Show (R); The Royle Family (R)
ITV1: Emmerdale; Downton Abbey - Behind the Drama; A Night For Heroes - The Military Awards

Thursday will be pretty close with Sports Personality of The Year against the soaps, though I think Without You will drag ITV1 down. On Friday it's a question of how Jonathan Ross will do -if he maintains a decent figure they should win then as well considering the 90 minutes of soap. After then, they may not win primetime for a further week unless Downton Abbey is a big success on Christmas Day.

Christopher Biggins hosting Surprise Surprise on primetime ITV?

Doesn't sound as horrific as some of their recent 'entertainment' attempts I must admit.

Which says more anout the recent entertainment attempts than Christopher Biggins hosting Surprise, Surprise.

But that'll never happen anyway - what kind of demographic is going to watch that???

I'd watch it...

you beat me to it.

Cant see Christopher Biggins presenting a prime-time ITV 1 show, maybe a daytime chat show, but other than that it wont happen.

I'm sure Glenn would be tuned in. Preferably followed by a revival of Bullseye and the channel closing down for the night at midnight accompanied by the national anthem.

Well even High Stakes has some viewers.


Maybe something like...

6.00 Play Your Cards Right
6.30 Bullseye
7.00 Surprise, Surprise
8.00 Blind Date
9.00 Stars In Their Eyes

Does Sunday come with

Blind Date: After the Date and Stars On Their Eyes: Results Show?

Had another idea for a prequel series. Sherlock Holmes: 1890.

BBC One detective Sherlock may think he is a dab hand at solving crime, but he is nothing when compared to his Great Great Grandfather. Fans of Shelock are in for a treat this Christmas when the show changes setting to Victorian England, in a fresh twist on 21st century detective Sherlock Holmes.

That is a pretty strong line-up against average BBC1 opposition. I need to research my Christmas Radio times better. I do see BBC2 rating pretty well on Wednesday, a 9-10% primetime share maybe (Christmas University Challenge, Christmas TOTP2, Rick Stein's Spanish Christmas and Ruth Jones' Christmas Cracker)

I genuinely think Stars in Their Eyes, with a bit of tweaking and updating to the format, would do pretty good ratings if it was brought back. Certainly better than the 2-3m averages that a lot of new ITV1 entertainment series have done this year! In fact, I think that entire schedule above probably would've rated better than ITV1's actual Saturday night schedule during the summer .

Also re: Surprise Surprise. Not that I've watched it, but isn't Tonight's The Night basically supposed to be Surprise Surprise, but just disguised under a different name and slight format differences? That gets some pretty good ratings for BBC1 - a 21% average share for its most recent series. There's an audience out there for this kind of thing.