While most people scarper to BBC One for the rest of the evening. None of the 8.30pm episodes are particularly successful for ITV1 but they still do better in the slot than anything else would and supplies some momentum to the 9pm slot. Admittedly, the 9pm slot doesn't usually make the most of the lead in.

Still think a 9pm drama on a Wednesday would benefit from the lead in as this can be a slow night for ITV1. Tuesdays are a washout and I think they realise this and don't seem to try. I still think a drama like Benidorm at 8.30 on a Friday would be successful and keep momentum until 9.30.

Wednesday's are OK because they have the two hour drama to hold them up. Saying that, I think the usual Tuesday schedule would do better on a Wednesday simply because that's now seen as more of a 'ITV' night than Tuesday - Tuesday really needs another big hitter (following Emmerdale) to give it a push. ITV won't do anything now because of the football switch in September but they shouldn't tried something sooner really.

In the same way, I think only big hitters would work on a Friday but why would they air Benidorm there when it would rate better and attract a more desirable demo on, say, a Thursday?

Hard to say as ITV1 seem stuck on weekdays. They know their two soaps are on too much, but can't do much with them as they are frightened of losing viewers too much. However, I still the Dorm, whose audience often overlaps with Corrie, would still watch on a Friday and the show can pull in 7 million.

They won't cut the soaps; financially they can't afford to. What I think they could do is schedule them a bit better than they have at the moment. I've said my idea before so I won't say it again but it's currently very messy. Coronation Street's return to Wednesday will help ever so slightly but that's going to leave Emmerdale isolated at 8pm on a Thursday with a potentially weak lead out.

I hope its Mandy

Eternal Law scores just 3.2m. I'm not surprised though...it's terrible. I wonder how low it will sink with another 4 episodes to go?! Hopefully ITV will have the sense to pull it, but ITV and sense in the same sentence doesn't really work, does it?!

New Tricks' 5m+ rating for a repeat is excellent. I didn't think it would be that high. WSPL on C5 did very well. I caught some of it and it was a fairly decent show. CBB seems to be holding steady which will be a massive relief after the disaster of the normal BB last year.

Speaking of disasters, 8.2m for Corrie in January is extremely poor and way down on last years 9.6m for the equivalent episode. Granted, last year Corrie was still riding high on the back of the 50th Anniversary bump, but generally the soaps rate well in January by default so to be so low is quite embarassing for ITV. At least Emmerdale recorded two, if unspectualr, identical figures, but again massively down on last year when the shop fire took place. The second episode had 9.0m last year. The sooner Corrie is moved back to Wednesday's the better because since the move to Thursday's in July 2009, this slot just hasn't worked at all and I'm surprised they have let it drag on this long. Also I didn't realise EE was 40mins tonight, so looks like another poor rating for Corrie is on the way. Sub 7m I'd expect. It's not having the best January at all and has failed to crack 10m which again is quite surprising.

BBC1 normally win Thursday primetime if they win the 9pm hour. On Thursday nights between 7-9pm, ITV1 is usually ahead of BBC1 by about 1.3 viewers to 1. BBC1 wins 10-11pm every night by about 2:1. So nearly every week, it ultimately comes down to the 9pm hour as to who wins Thursday night primetime (7-11pm). If ITV1 rate higher at 9pm like last Thursday, they end up winning primetime, but if BBC1 rate higher at 9pm like last night, they win primetime. It's normally quite a close run thing thanks to how strongly 10-11pm rates for BBC1, especially on Thursday nights due to Question Time. Yep agree with you, BBC1 rate much better at Thursday 8pm against the soaps than ITV1 rate at Tuesday 8pm against Holby City. Clearly a bigger effort is being put in by BBC1 during that potential bogey hour and they're getting some good figures. But what needs to be taken into consideration is that the two channels run on different budgets. It would be commercially impractical for ITV1 (or any other commercial broadcaster for that matter) to commission an expensive natural history programme for an 8pm slot against a soap like what BBC1 have done with Human Planet and Earthflight. Although something like that would almost certainly rate better than the poor 2-3m programmes ITV1 have in that 8pm Tuesday slot at the moment and pull up their primetime %, those type of programmes would probably make a loss and it would result in a reduced budget for the more important key-9pm hour. It wouldn't make commercial sense.

Just onto a wider point though, I think one of the reasons why ITV1 has lost so much ratings share in the last decade or so is that they've considerably reduced their programming budget in that time in order to adapt to a changing advertising market, the recession, increased multichannel competition etc - something which probably had to be done, though maybe not to the extent it has been. Since 2003, the main channel's annual budget has been reduced by -20% (after adjusting for inflation) which of course has had a major impact on the choice of programmes they now air and thus a knock-on effect of their ratings. They don't show anywhere near as much drama as they used to, which is the one genre that normally delivers the highest ratings for them on a daily basis (bar the soaps). They've had to seriously cut back on their Saturday night schedule outside of Autumn resulting in some poor schedules which just about have new programming between 7-10pm even though previously it would've been between 6-11pm. They used to show 3 hours of pre-watershed drama (besides the soaps) per week most of the year, now they don't really show any - they can't afford to. They hardly commission anything for post-10pm anymore. They've slashed their news budget, leading to poorer quality news coverage and many viewers switching to alternatives. All these things make a big difference from a ratings point of view because they've replaced those above things which normally have a high ratings-threshold level with generally filler and repeats that have a lower ratings-level. In the meantime since 2003, BBC One's annual programming budget has remained static so they've continued to invest in lots of quality programming for a lot more different timeslots (pre-7pm Saturday, post 10pm, slots up against the soaps etc). And so the ratings gap between the two channels has progressively got bigger and bigger - 8 years ago the two channels had a similar budget, now BBC1 has a 20% bigger budget.

I think ITV need to consider increasing their investment in programming otherwise their main channel ratings share will continue to decline at a pretty rapid rate. Moving the Champions League to Tuesdays isn't going to do anything overall for them ratings-wise, all that's going to happen is Tuesdays will rate better 15-weeks of the year but all the current cheap Tuesday programmes will move over to Wednesdays and Thursdays, the latter day of which will rate considerably worse than it is at the moment. If they want a serious chance of ITV1's ratings increasing or flatlining overall, they have to increase the programme budget and invest in more drama/sport/high-end entertainment. It's a bit like Channel 5 and Sky 1 at the moment, C5 are reportedly spending an extra £40m on their schedule than a couple of years ago to accomodate BB and it's helped them increase their viewing figures (certainly the CBB part anyway), whilst Sky 1's increased investment in original drama and comedy has seen their ratings go up too. If you invest more into your programmes, you'll get the ratings reward. The ITV shareholders would probably disagree with that as long as the company's turning a decent profit, they'd say what's the point in spending more money on programmes. But for the long term future of ITV1, it's surely a bad thing if their programme budget is kept so low compared to the major competitor as viewers will be driven away to other channels and their natural base audience (which used to be 30%, then 25%, then 20%, now more like 15-20%) will simply continue to decline, making it harder for them to launch new hit programmes and that'll bite them in the back in the future when the current set of big-hitters (bar Corrie and Emmerdale which I think will run and run but to slowly declining audiences) fall out of favour with the public and they have difficulty launching new hit programmes.

We don't really go down the US route here very often, pulling a show with 4 episodes remaining is pretty futile, it has cost them a pretty penny to create such a drama, it has to be shown somewhere - moving it to 10.35pm to get 900,000 viewers is suicidal, also ad slots will be sold in advance - you can't say to an ad buyer, sorry we know you were expecting 800,000 16-34 yrs olds to be watching, but we pulled Eternal Law to show a repeat of Bee Gees, a J Ross re-run, WWTBA Millionaire etc. As we know some ITV1 shows don't even rate 2m, by comparison 3.2m is pretty safe.

That's their own fault though with Heartbeat, The Royal and The Bill - stupid scheduling with the first two and a pointless revamp with the latter that was doomed for failure from the get-go.

Yes The Bill situation still makes me angry. A show that didn't need a revamp, but was required to boost the new Thursday line-up in 2009, which by September this year will almost be gone with just Emmerdale keeping the same slots that day. Well done everyone!!

Of course BBC1's Thursday 8pm slot inherits an audience from Eastenders while the ITV Tuesday 8pm slot is on after low-budget factual.

But low-budget need not necessarily be an excuse for low, low ratings. I don't imagine The Great British Bake-Off, with its 4m viewers, had a budget that was out of the reach of ITV. Plus the last couple of underperforming Tuesday 8pm programmes were quiz shows and they don't need big budgets to be successful. They just need good formats. Both High Stakes and The Exit List have weak formats and would have flopped in any slot. Witness the equally weak Holding Out For A Hero tanking despite having a plum Sunday 7pm slot.

Of course we can only speculate how well the brilliant The Chase would fare if it was given the Tuesday 8pm slot. That would surely perform much better than High Stakes. Wouldn't it?

That's true, it's their own fault with The Bill. The other two though, I sense they were deliberately trying to kill off Heartbeat and The Royal in order to ensure they had a reduced no. of hours of drama in their schedule to suit their reduced programming budget (it was around 2008-2010 when they messed about with the scheduling, the same time they were making big cuts with the drama genre). The point though is: can you imagine them trying 3 pre-watershed hours of dramas per week now (excluding soaps)? It's very much possible pre-watershed dramas could be 4m or 5m raters, exactly the sort of middle-hitter shows the channel really needs at the moment in the weeknight schedules in certain 8pm slots (what could be their equivalents to Holby/Waterloo Road). In previous years they were able to do it but nowadays it just wouldn't happen, even 1 hour is pushing it these days.

Wow for Channel 5 last night. But credit to C4 who still managed to beat them in primetime shares


Important to note that STV and UTV both have a 30 minute local news programme at 10.30pm Mon-Thu, and ITV1 Wales often have opt-outs at 10.35pm. UTV's local programming at least generally rates very well. So it's not an easy slot to analyse from overnights


PSB box ticked, so I don't think it really matters too much

Good post there rzt, worth bearing in mind though that ITV do seem to be taking steps towards doing what you have suggested - the drama budget has been increased by £30m for next year for instance. Laura Mackie says she wants some pre-watershed dramas (presumably for Wednesdays), and I hope they do make some progress in that area. The football moving to Tuesdays will help as they'll just be able to run repeats of stuff like Lewis and Midsomer Murders on non-football weeks during the main season, and can also shuffle the awards ceremonies across from Wednesdays. They'll have to commission some factual stuff for January-February and the Summer but the flopzone won't be anywhere near as prominent as it is just now.

ITV seem to be trying to increase the number of 2 hour dramas they have too. Already they have Vera, Lewis and Midsomer and now it sounds like Foyle's War is coming back, Endeavour is almost certain to return and I think Suspicions of Mr Whicher is coming back too. I think they should focus on getting another one just in case Kevin Whately quits Lewis too. So that leaves them with 5x2 hour dramas producing 4 episodes per year and Midsomer doing 6-8 per year (they'll be able to run them in decent sized blocks now too instead of throwing them everywhere, so it should be capable of a consistent ~6m). If the last few years are anything to go by there is only room for 2 per year on Sundays (say Vera and Foyle) leaving the other 4 for Wednesdays. That therefore sorts out 18-20 weeks of the year for them. If they can focus on getting one or two decent per-watershed dramas off the ground in the next few years (probably with a drama or decent entertainment/factual show at 9pm) then they should be OK on Wednesdays (they can get away with repeats in the Summer, or maybe The Chase as iaindb suggested).

Thursdays are trickier, and I think a good idea would be to have Corrie in that 8pm slot rather than Emmerdale as it'd be stronger for them. I know Corrie's Thursday episode doesn't do that well just now but I'm 99% sure that it is dented by starting at 8:30pm, half an hour into every other channel's programmes, so is pretty much stuck with whatever lead-in Emmerdale gives it. We've seen it do better at 8pm before and I'm sure it'd do well there, particularly as it'd be straight after EE on BBC1. The extra Emmerdale episode would go on Fridays at 19:30, meaning that ED would have an hour long episode on Fridays (alongside the half hour episodes on Mon-Thu) whilst Corrie would be spread better throughout the week with the Monday double followed by single episodes running Wed-Fri. That 8:30pm slot will be difficult, but if Sky1 can find and fund hit new sitcoms then ITV can too if they actually try. Some sort of cheaper comedy such as panel shows or sketch shows might work but they'd have to be decent. YBF and Best of TV Burp will be useful filler in that slot for the Summer but they shouldn't just stuff the slot with them. Some sort of 90 minute entertainment show might work at 8:30pm too but as we've seen that can be difficult. A half hour gameshow they can order ~18-20 episodes per year of could be really useful for them - I bet Play Your Cards Right would get 5m+ in that slot. The 9pm slot could be filled with a mix of comedies, dramas, documentaries, entertainment shows and repeats, but the key difference to Tuesday is that they'd have Corrie at 8pm propping them up. At the moment on Tuesdays they have ED at 7pm and that's it, so EE at 7:30pm hits them then and then anything starting at 8pm has a dire lead-in, whereas that wouldn't be the case on Thursdays. I daresay they'll show some cheap stuff on Thursdays but with a decent-ish lead-in it may not do so badly. Some of the stuff they show on Tuesdays now isn't bad but just doesn't go anywhere because of the slot (I agree with what you said about the recommissioning process - shows like Strangeways and Smugglers should be back).

Yeah, low budget is not the sole excuse for low low ratings, I agree. The format definitely comes into it and low budget shows can definitely be successful if done well. But drama is where ratings generally are high on a day to day basis, it's a genre with a higher threshold than something like factual or gameshows on the whole. So their reduction in the number of hours of drama in the last ten years - it's almost halved hasn't it? - must be one of their main contributing factors to the big ratings declines they've experienced, as well as other things of course. That's why I think if they want their ratings to go back up again, they need to invest in more drama (and high-end entertainment), and like you said - less rubbish entertainment formats .

The Bill was a victim of the recession - they cut costs by reducing it to an hour a week but perhaps more importantly, they hoped, by filling the Thursday 9pm hour all year round.

I'm not sure that they really miss the other 2. But they could really use something like The Bill.

Basically, they need another "continuing drama" (a soap, but not like Emmerdale or Corrie). Teachers would have been a good starting place but Waterloo Road has that covered. And the BBC have the whole medical soap genre well and truly covered between Doctors, Casualty and Holby. Not sure they could do police again so soon after The Bill. The other TV genre cliche is lawyers but I don't see them as the basis for a continuing drama at 8pm.


The thing is that if ITV have anything they think is half decent, it won't end up on Tuesdays. Because we know that everything on ITV tends to do worse on Tuesdays than it would in pretty much other primetime slot. So it does end up being a bit of a dumping ground which makes the situation even worse!

Rzt made a good post a few days ago - they could be making better decisions with Tuesdays and doing more with the few successes they've had with factual shows.

Yeah, I just wonder though if that's simply because they don't have a major sports tournament next year and therefore able to have a bigger-than-usual drama budget for 2013 to make up for the smaller sport budget. It'll be interesting to see if they continue with that higher investment in drama to 2014 which is a World Cup year.


Good point, it does seem like there'll be more of the 2-hour dramas on Wednesday nights to take advantage of the Corrie lead-in. The signs are that either Vera or Lewis in 3 months' time will be on Wednesday nights (though with no CS lead-in) so it looks like there is a plan to do this sort of thing in the next couple of years.


Interesting ideas Score. Keeping Corrie on the Thursday but at 8pm would really be useful in giving the 8.30pm programme a heads up and more effective than sticking with the lower-rated Emmerdale at 8pm which could be a bit vulnerable, as others have said. Regarding sitcoms - I'd also like to see some more on the channel. One thing is though, when was the last time a BBC1 or ITV1 sitcom launched from a prime-time 7.30pm/8pm/8.30pm/9pm slot and became a hit? Someone made a good point about this a few days ago that it seems like all the hit mainstream sitcoms in recent years started in a late-night timeslot or on a smaller channel to get a cult following before being promoted to a bigger channel or more prime slot when they eventually broke out. It's quite rare if a sitcom does well right from the off, so if ITV are thinking about doing them, they have to be in there for the long haul and give them a chance to develop (unless it's blatantly obvious viewers hate it!). Yep, I agree that half-hour gameshows like a PYCR or even a normal version of FF would do a decent job in the 8.30pm slot - there seems to be quite a big crossover there between the Vernon Kaye gameshow/s and soap audiences, if the Xmas Day figures anything to go by. It's going to be an interesting year ahead for the channel with the CL day change and seeing how they adapt to that.

Agree, Heartbeat and The Royal aren't missed but The Bill (or an equivalent to The Bill) is. Don't know what they could go with though. As you've said, teachers are covered, and the medical genre is overdone whilst I doubt they'd want another police one. Fire fighters perhaps? I guess they could go down the whole 'relationships' drama angle but without an obvious hook they'd be struggling.

Like...London's Burning?

I don't think they'll put Lewis on Wednesday, it'll be more likely Vera and Midsomer.

Morse frequently aired on a Wednesday so I don't think it's completely out of the question. I guess it'll depend on what BBC1 are airing on Sundays, as I doubt either drama will have much of a crossover audience with The Apprentice on Wednesdays (particularly with an hour's headstart).

Or how about one which covers the professional and personal lives of the crew of a Royal Navy ship?

I doubt they'll find anything, tbh. I'm not even sure if it would be possible. Launching a new soap these days would be a very different challenge compared to the days when Corrie, Emmerdale and Eastenders launched. Waterloo Road started out as a 9pm drama (I think?) before it became a bit "soapier" with more episodes, more personal drama and a revolving door at the casting office.

I think Waterloo Road did start at 8pm and it was up against The Bill in its first series with ratings around the mid 4's IIRC. I think it is possible to launch a new continuing drama these days but the approach has to be like how Waterloo Road worked: so about 8 episodes in series 1, have it back in the next half of the year with 10 episodes, then back in the next half of the year with 15 episodes, etc. So slowly increasing the number of episodes per series so it's only a gradual increase in committment viewers have to give to the show rather than a sudden major year-round committment which would be too major a step.

If they do go down that route though, not sure what could work. Pretty much everything which is about a community of people working in one place (hospital, police, school) has been done as you've said. Maybe a different slant on the hospital genre, focussing on nurses rather than doctors? That's all I can think of.

I'm hoping they'll keep it up for 2014 and beyond, as they haven't done it in previous years without a major football tournament. I guess it might just be a one-off thing, but ITV do seem more committed to drama now than they were a couple of years ago so I hope they stick with it.


They're fairly easy ways to fill the slot as they rate very well generally (and repeat well too) so the risk is pretty limited so I can see why they'd want to do it.


You're right about sitcoms. Benidorm, Miranda, Mrs Brown's Boys, Gavin and Stacey and Outnumbered amongst others all started in lesser slots/channels, so they'll need to stick with any sitcom that shows signs of being a potential hit (so ratings of 3.5-4m+ in the second half of the series basically). I rememeber the first series of Benidorm settled on c3.5m and they recommissioned it so hopefully they'd show similar patience with any new sitcoms. The soap viewers do seem to like Vernon's gameshows, so they could fill the slot nicely. It'd probably be worth getting Paul O'Grady to do one as well (possibly a revival of an old show) as that'd probably do alright too. Basically they've definitely got cheaper options (obviously they can't afford scripted stuff there all year round) that won't go sub-3m.


Maybe a bit.


Waterloo Road has always been an 8pm show but it was definitely more 'gritty' and less 'soapy' in the earlier series than it is now. It began with an 8 episode run in Spring 2006, before returning with 12 episodes in Winter 2007 and a further 20 from October 2007, and now they do 30 per year. If ITV were to try one I think they'd need to do something similar and start relatively small and build it up, but I agree that it'll be pretty difficult for them to find anything, so they might just be better off finding a couple of good 6-10 episodes per year hits for that slot.

EDIT: rzt beat me to it with the WR info! The nurses idea could work, or maybe something that cuts across all of the emergency services and the links between them, focussing on a few police, a few doctors, maybe a bit of fire brigade etc (a bit like Law and Order but with the emergency services I guess).