Hi, Cylon, the 1980 Goodies series for BBC 2 was poor and I was in a minority of one by saying they improved on LWT. However, from 1972 to 1977, they were class.
You are right about Morecambe and Wise, they had a few good moments on ITV, but by the time Eric died their ratings and reputation were well down.

He lasted 2 and half years iirc but his ratings were dwindling hugely by the end, he claimed at the time it was his decision to retire. But in his Autobiography he admitted that ITV forced him to.

Of course unlike Chiles the real reason Parky moved was because they offered him 2x the money that the BBC did. The timeslot exuse was utter lies from Parky.

However, Parky is like the cat with nine lives. In the nineties he reinvented himself on Radio 2 and relaunched his chat show.

Don't forget the other factor in Ross's demise - the rise of Graham Norton. His show has been pissing all over Ross for a while, even when they were both on BBC1. Norton has the best guests (even when both on BBC1 in the same week) and is miles more fun.

Why bother with Ross's tired old own brand supermarket frozen burger when you can have Norton's steak, as someone once put it?

More like four series

Parkinson ran for several series on ITV. Steve Rider was still presenting the F1 coverage for ITV until the BBC won the contract. Ironically he'll be hosting some of the F1 coverage again for Sky.

I'd say that Rider didn't flop on ITV rather he was shunted around.

Eric and Ernie's first significant TV series was actually for ATV from 1961-67 so I suppose technically they were returning to ITV. Eric had had his first heart attack by the time they moved to ITV in 1978 (the BBC having allowed them a very relaxed recording schedule) and there was clearly pressure to repeat what were perceived by many critics and viewers to be the ''golden years'' at the BBC.Alas, it was not to be.

Parky made a big thing about not being on at 9pm on Saturdays (despite often having been, or at 9.15/9.30), so moved to ITV.

Who put him on at, you've guessed it, 9.15/9.30....

None of which were in the same league, and had the flow interrupted by the ad breaks, particularly as they just happened with sledgehammer editing. I think the ratings slumped pretty quickly after the first few shows.

Don't forget Trinny and Susannah Ftv, their departure from the BBC to ITV even meritted a segment and live interview on the ITV evening news


Well his career certainly did if not the shows. He got a nice pay off in 2010 after they bought Chiles in do the football, something Rider had already signed on to do.

I think there were some gems in their last series. Politics, Saturday Night Grease, U-Friend or UFO? & Animals stand up very well. But at this time the alternative era was starting to take hold and Not The Nine O'Clock News was around. They even had Mel Smith in the Animals episode. John Howard Davies pulled the plug pretty much on the BBC's years. There's still some slight animosity towards him about that but I will say no more.

You're definitely in a minority about their LWT series though.

I'd also say that The Goodies were magnificent from 1973-77 with series 4 onwards. The comedy was more consistently funny. The first series is good while series 2 & 3 are hit and miss.

He seemed to rate ok for the first year iirc but he nose dived rather quickly, his last year was posting around 2.8-3m. MOTD started to gather steam around then as it recovered from the 2.6/3m levels The Premiership was getting on ITV1.


Of couse his last show was on A Sunday at 9pm
Though tbf most of normal episodes did air on Saturdays after 10.

This is so true. I went off Ross ages ago, probably about the time I started watching Graham (when he moved to BBC1). Graham is a superb host and his format of having all his guests on the sofa together works brilliantly in his hands.

I am so delighted Graham is currently way ahead of Ross in the ratings.

He did seven series for them, actually. His first was in Autumn 2004 and then he had Spring and Autumn runs in 2005, 2006 and 2007.


Not quite. One of the main reasons his ITV show started flopping is that they went the other way and starting airing him too late. He regularly started at 10.30/10.45 in his final few series there, with one or two episodes shunted after 11pm, meaning that they had to air the news before him so he ran past midnight on one or two occasions. His best run on ITV was in Autumn 2005 when he aired at around 10pm, and the highest ratings were for the episodes that were at 9.40/9.45 and followed TXF results.


Not so. He dropped after the first show but bounced back and did well in 2004/2005, and only began faltering in 2006 and especially 2007 when the timeslots got later and later, and the show started to feel tired. Of course they made a big song and dance about his last show in December 2007 and put it on a Sunday at 9pm and made it 2 hours long, and it went and got 8.3m and was over a million ahead of Cranford on BBC1 at the same time. I remember wondering how he'd have done with a regular Sunday slot (at say, 10pm). I daresay he may have lasted slightly longer, as his show certainly seemed more suited to Sundays (with ITV's old skewing dramas) than Saturdays (next to ITV's young skewing entertainment).

Jonathan Ross is a show that does well where it has no competition (Friday nights BBC1) or when it has a strong lead-in (X Factor).

I don't think its current ratings are surprising given the terrible lead-in.

T&S was a particularly idiotic acquisition for ITV because, IIRC, their transfer from BBC2 to BBC1 was a ratings disaster.

ITV's poaching was a result for the BBC.

Parkinson said his show was axed because Michael Grade came to ITV and that he never liked him. But really the show was running without adverts by the end - it was about as commercially viable as The South Bank Show, and probably costing about ten times as much.

For a while I seem to remember 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' being constantly scheduled against it.


I remember Cilla Black was constantly goving quotes to the tabloids declaring what a disaster it was and that Saturday nights were for Women and men would be down the pub at that time.
She didn't last long after that


I believe it was the main reason why Kevin Lygo left as he was overruled

Having watched both the BBC1 and ITV1 versions of Jonathan Ross' show, they're very similar in style and content (post-2008). They're almost identical apart from the set, theme tune, no 4 Poofs and a Piano and ad breaks. As I understand it, Jonathan's own production company makes the current show just like Friday Night and many of the same crew are working on it. It's a show which peaked in quality about 6 years ago when it was TV chat show gold and it's been going downhill ever since, even during the pre-Sachsgate days. It's still decent but not must watch and definitely at the moment No. 3 talkshow for me behind Alan Carr and Graham Norton, not to mention the US ones like Craig Ferguson.

One of the best things Friday Night With Jonathan Ross had over the current series of the new show was that it was in the fantastic Friday 10.35pm slot. At that time of the night, it inherited 4 or 5 million viewers from the BBC News and importantly there was literally no competition from the other channels apart from a few occasions when Big Brother aired that late. It's a timeslot which effectively became a free run. Hence, there's been 10.35pm programmes such as Jonathan Ross' and Would I Lie To You, which when promoted to 9pm on a few occasions, they've not rated all that much better, even though you would think 9pm is better than 10.35pm. But the competition is 4 or 5 times harder at 9pm and these sort of shows can crumble under the pressure. That's exactly what's happening with the current series.

The new Jonathan Ross Show should never have been scheduled for a primetime slot. It should have been shown on Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday at 10.35pm after the news when the competition is weaker and where the pressure is smaller than a Saturday night timeslot. Getting 2 million at 10.35pm on a weeknight would've been quite good as I gather ITV1 doesn't even get 1 million at that time sometimes. Getting 2 million on a Saturday night however is verging on a disaster...

Yes everyone except MW enthusiasts like me forgets they had a hugely successful run on ATV in the sixties and also had a film career. Sadly very little remains of these shows now, but the clips I have seen are good.

With the Ross show maybe the choice of guests is a deliberate attempt to get a certain audience?

Downton Abbey as well.

Preceding the Ross show is that 'Story of the Talent Show' thing which is right up BBC1s alley.

What not to wear got a huge boost when it moved to BBC ONE. It was actually doing badly in its last days on BBC 2 and then BBC one revamped it, changed the format slightly and doubled the length.
It was the first time in years that BBC 1 was competetive with ITV1 in the 8pm slot on Wednesdays. I remember their Christmas special got something like 7.5m in 2004 sandwiched between the first Strictly Christmas special which was live that year.
Normal episodes were getting around 4.8m at first and I think it was one of the first shows which helped BBC ONE loose the 'Wednesday night Flpxone' label

Though its true to say the appeal of T&S and WNTW was definately on the decline when ITV poached them.

I remember Parky welcoming them to ITV on his chatshow and 'telling them I hope you will be as happy here as I am'

Well technically their TV career started with their flop BBC series Running Wild in the 50s, they became stars with ATV in the 60s then superstars with the BBC in the 70s. Several factors worked against them on ITV mainly Eric's heart attack, Eddie Braben who moulded their success on the BBC didn't go to ITV at the start, and mainly the fact they were older and couldn't do those energetic performances of several years ago.

Many of their ATV shows exist. I think they all do but their first BBC series penned by their ATV writers Sid Green & Dick Hills has been wiped bar a few sketches.

Borgen is even better than the second series of The Killing, it's that good. These Scandanavian crime dramas have been so successful for BBC4, unfortunately it's only a matter of time before BSkyB come along bidding millions for these shows .

Interesting demos, as always, so thanks to rzt. Sherlock has fantastically broad appeal across the demos - and its performance is particularly impressive considering it has to gather all those younger viewers by itself. It certainly isn't inheriting them from Countryfile! Clearly it did a good job of siphoning off many younger DOI viewers (and there are more of them than you might think...) at 8.30 last week. Of course, Call the Midwife tonight will probably mostly appeal to the Countryfile crowd anyway, which is a good job considering they miss the junction by half an hour. Had to go for 8pm though, really. 7.30 would be too early, and 8.30 would leave Sherlock (and next week, Birdsong) finishing a bit too late for comfort.


As for last night...

Future not looking very bright for The Magicians. Slightly odd, in a way, given that people for some reason stuck with it all the way through the first series. I don't think this one is any worse (though many of the problems remain), in fact its a modest improvement in respects, but people are leaving now. Still, I don't imagine too many tears will be shed. It was worth having ago with a second series to see if they might sort it out - back to the drawing board for next January though!

Total Wipeout, National Lottery and Casualty kept the BBC on track for the rest of the evening, as they so often do at this time of year. ITV by contrast only had Take Me Out to save it. The ratings post-8.30 are really ugly - not much of a surprise for Talent Show Story but pretty galling for Jonathan Ross, I imagine. His chat show just feels like a bit of a throwback now - it's neither particularly funny, nor particularly revealing, nor particularly exciting in terms of guests. On all three scores (as well as the ratings), it's comprehensively outperformed by Graham Norton in Ross' old stomping ground on Friday nights. The BBC must wonder why they went through so much to keep Ross around - turns out he was a few years past his sell-by date.