It was sad to see Eric's health decline as it affected their material and their last series was more like a sitcom. However, it has to be said the material was never as good as the BBC and ATV years.

I seem to remember him seeing off two of Graham Norton's shows the Daily one and the American based one. Of Course JR lost out originally to 'So Graham Norton' and he also saw off both incarnations of the Friday Night Project on C4 and ITV pitched Al Mirray's chatshow there for a while and he went against BBC quite a few times particularly in his later year.
As he said himself in his Guardian Interview last Autumn he built the Friday night slot on BBC ONE. Poor Patrick Kielty

Also Last night he faced the News and Live at the Apollo as his main opposition, are you trying to say that was a tough slot?

Are Dancing On Ice's younger demos better than Strictly? I think they are. Do we think Call The Midwife will be a hit?



The Magicians biggest trick is making viewers disappear. How come it rated better last year? Saturday nights on ITV are poor and Take Me Out isn't as big as ITV have you believe. The lottery quiz and Casualty do much better. As for Jonathan Ross it really suffers away from that peachy Friday slot after the main news.

Dancing on Ice skews younger than Strictly Come Dancing. Just looking at the demos, DOI's highest rated episode last year (9.3m) had more 16-34s watching it than SCD's highest rated episode last year (12.2m). The DOI launch last week had 1.4m 16-34s, exactly the same as SCD's final which also had 1.4m, even though SCD had 3.5m more viewers overall. SCD has a better ABC1 profile though.

One word-Primeval


I suspect so given SCD often clashes with a certain talent show and younger shows like Harry Hill

I'd go as far as to say Jonathan Ross built the Friday night chatshow slot with The Last Resort on Ch4. Then everybody wanted a piece of it. Ch4 had its successor with Graham Norton, they've also tried Alan Carr there. He pretty much returned to his spiritual Friday home with Friday Night With Jonathan Ross.

Is there only room for one chat show across the whole week?

Just because Graham Norton's show is number 1 in the ratings should every other chat show host quit?

What is it about DOI that it does better with younger viewers when it and Strictly are quite similar.Likewise why does Strictly do better in ABC1 viewers when the shows are quite similar?

Yeah wasn't Parky on Friday for a while in the late 90's
Was Jack Dee's happy Hour a chatshow, I cant rememeber

It's opposition [Harry Hill etc] has high 16-34 viewership


It's opposion [countryfile, AR] has high ABC1 viewership

And thats not me taking the piss.

Oh yes. Which reminds me that ITV are due to show the remaining episodes. But when?


That's a very good point. ITV will have Takeaway back in 2013 so that will help prop up Saturdays.

Your definition of flopping seems to vary depending on who it is you are talking about.

To add a bit of balance, doesn't everyone who moves from ITV to anyone other than the BBC, flop as well? (based on your 'make it up as you go along' definition of a flop)

Answering your first question: DOI normally faces very old-skewing competition such as Countryfile and Antiques Roadshow so it therefore skews a bit younger than what it could be if facing young-skewing programmes like what SCD often faces. I suspect something like ballroom dancing is probably more popular among 50+ year olds than ice skating anyway, and ice skating has that 'danger' element to it which sort of could be seen as more appealing to younger viewers.

In terms of ABC1s, an average SCD episode has a 55% skew whilst DOI is more like 45%. Much of that would be due to the natural BBC1/ITV1 audience differences - if the exact same SCD show was on ITV1 it wouldn't be skewing with a 55% ABC1 audience, it would be about 5-10% lower and vice-versa. Also just from a content point of view, SCD just comes across as a more classy show anyway.

BBC1 had a Friday night show with Terry Wogan too I recall that Jonathan Ross helped out on. The Last Resort opened the floodgates to irreverent chatshows in the UK. Jonathan Ross was a trailblazer for the genre.

Surely crying out for a Tuesday night slot

Does this mean less Red or Black ?

I'm too young to remember though i do remember 'Davina' Sharon Osbourne and Anthony Cotton's chatshows

That's absolutely right, I am amazed so many people swallowed Parky's utter rubbish. According to him, his show needed to be on after 10pm and with MOTD it meant it would have to be on at 9pm, and that would have made it "a different show". Exactly why it would have been "a different show" at 9pm, he never bothered to explain, and then he slagged off the Beeb for not asking him about it, like it mattered. Putting him at 9pm would have been a promotion if anything.

In addition it was patently rubbish as in 2000/01 they had both and Parky was on at 9pm week in week out andhe never said a thing about it then. I hate Parky, the miserable, ungrateful hypocrite. I was so amused when he ended up being dumped at half eleven on ITV.


Yes, I've said this before but I've never liked Ross' show, the first few series it got awful ratings and apart from getting rid of Andy Davies they never changed a thing about it. I can't believe they kept the green room, why not just have all the guests out at once? It's pointless. And they never show the audience so it may as well all be canned. There is no atmosphere whatsoever, and all the routines and jokes are the same old, same old - there was a great bit in Ally Ross' column in The Sun the other day when he printed something Ross said in The Guardian last year about how he wasn't going to do the flirting anymore because he was too old and it made him look like a perv, and then alongside that a transcript of him perving over his guests last week. That said, I find Alan Carr's show unbelievably dull as well.)


Yeah, but I guess people go to bed earlier on Sundays and the Parky audience wouldn't generally want to stay up to eleven on that night. I remember the last series of Aspel and Company being moved from Saturday to Sunday and not doing very well - although that was also the series with the Planet Hollywood incident, which probably killed the show there and then.


Someone in The Guardian said when ITV poached Trinny and Susannah, they seemingly forgot that the Beeb still owned the What Not To Wear format, so they had to give them a host of rubbish, contrived formats instead. I never thought WNTW worked very well on BBC1 anyway, I liked it on BBC2 as half an hour but on BBC1 they extended it to an hour and they started doing all that awful clothes-as-a-metaphor-for-life cod-psychology, which was rotten.


Yes, Cilla told everyone who'd listen that she'd personally instructed Charles Allen to put Blind Date back on Saturday, as if nobody else in the world could have thought of that. Although whether by accident or design, Blind Date ended up returning the exact same weekend it had the previous year.

Bang on 5m for TMO with +1 included. If it can stay at this level for the rest of the series I think ITV will be happy. Awful for JR. Looks like he's sinking without a trace on ITV1.

I imagine that Philip Schofield and, especially, Holly Willoughby have more appeal with 16-34 year olds that Bruce Forsyth and Tess Daly. Christine Bleakley may not be so popular with the age group but the programme is established now, so I don't think she can do too much damage.

Also the celebrities on DOI that nobody has heard off tend to come from shows that are more popular with 16-34 year old like Hollyoaks, TOWIE and The Inbetweeners.

Plus ice-skating is more of a young person's activity whilst dancing appeals more to older people. (Well, ballroom will. Not so sure about the rauchier Latin dancing.)

I'm still trying to forget those!


Would make a nice alternative to Holby City.


You must be strong!

The 'training' comedy inserts on this year's SCD were naffer than the sketches on 3,2,1 and they were lamentable.

The first (of six) ATV series, which were done live from the Wood Green Empire, is now available in its entirety on DVD from the usual sources.Ernie always maintained that the BBC Running Wild series was never as bad as critics made out but, alas, no recordings survive for us to judge.

Sad to see Eric's health decline across the years in those Thames shows as well as the quality of the programmes. I can watch and see so many sketches from the BBC years done again with different actors. Poor.


I hope to God we never see those again. Nobody likes them. I'd much rather see the week's training on Strictly than alleged comedy sketches that wouldn't even make it into Play Away.

I remember in the Autumn of 2004 after she had left ITV, she gave an interview with The Sun where she was slagging off ITV's Saturday Night Schedule without her.
She said that The X Factor [ which launched softly] was nothing special and that she and viewers were sick of singing shows.
Fast Forward 16 months and she announces her ITV combeack as a judge on Soapstar Superstar
She will go down in the record books as the worst talent show judge ever. [ even worse than Max Clifford on Let me Entertain you]


Their first show for ITV was just a blatant rip off of WNTW, instead of two female strangers getting a makeover they were couples.
At one point they seemed to be launching a new show on ITV every 4 months.

Also the celebs they use like Kerry Katona appeal more to the younger audience and the show has a more raucous feel to it than SCD. Still it's not a bad show.