Channel 4 already had an established audience when they launched and promoted E4 I don't believe the same can be said for Five. Indeed a large part of their reasoning for purchasing Big Brother was to drive viewers, particularly younger viewers, to the channel and to then tempt them to stay for the rest of their content. What is now being suggested is that Five should ditch this strategy in favour of pushing these Big Brother fans to a 5* live feed that can only run whilst Big Brother does and doesn't particularly do much to establish a consistent audience for either channel. As an additional point how often did Channel 4 promote a live Big Brother stream on E4 during prime time? Wasn't it almost exclusively confined to early morning, late night and daytime slots when Channel 4 was unlikely to be showing much that would interest younger viewers? You're absolutely right that 5* could be a golden egg for Five but a Big Brother live feed won't get them there and frankly it makes much more sense to focus on Five given that's where the (relatively) large sums of money are being invested.


There's very little to suggest that Five do know how to cash-in on a profitable show (that's an odd choice of words though, profitable) but OK.


You'd be surprised by both how difficult and expensive that can be.


Yes that viewers are opting to watch a live eviction via various catch-up services cannot be seen as a sign that Big Brother is running out of steam and that audiences are simply less interested in it than they were. That's without even going into historical comparisons. It is painfully obvious that Big Brother is a show on its last legs. It had a phenomenal run and one that was longer than I imagine most suspected was possible but that doesn't change the fact that it is playing to a decreasing level of interest from audiences as a whole.

And once again hysteria about breaking a 5* record is all well and good but also has the same air as celebrating ITV's best Tuesday night performance in a year. They're fairly meaningless states in and of themselves because the bar is set so low to begin with.


But it'll play to ever diminishing returns (much like Big Brother in general). There's only so many stunts you can pull out of the hat before people stop caring and the Big Brother producers should have learnt that lesson already.

If the live feed gets 300,000 without a twist or anything, all they have to do is a small twist or task to get 500,000 as long as they mention it like last night.

Wish the eviction rating could be higher. 2.1m is around 250k lower than I expected it, but the Live Feed 5* rating....

Incredible.

Is that coming back this year?

In relation to C5

Please no. Look at the Tamara Ecclestone/Amy Childs ratings and stop development work immediately!!! Or sell the programme to RTE/TV3 but not show it in the UK


It's something different for C5 but it's a risk IMO, since it's not the sort of show normally associated with C5. However good to see them trying new things and taking risks to try and diversify the schedule

Didn't see this one coming...

American Idol premiered down 18% in total viewers and skewed considerably older, losing 27% of its 18-49 audience vs last seasons premiere.

Previous Premiere Ratings:
2002: 9.85m (4.8)
2003: 26.5m (12.4)
2004: 29.0m (12.8)
2005: 33.5m (14.0)
2006: 35.5m (15.3)
2007: 37.3m (15.8)
2008: 33.2m (13.8)
2009: 30.1m (11.8)
2010: 29.9m (11.8)
2011: 26.2m (9.8)
2012: 21.6m (7.2)

I see what you mean. But food shows can be very big when executed well regardless of the channel, and the demos tend to be attractive too. So I can see why they've gone for that genre. Curious to see how it turns out.

ABC:
8pm - The Middle - 8.15m (2.6)
8.30pm - Suburgatory - 7.02m (2.5)
9pm - Modern Family - 11.81m (5.0)
9.30pm - Happy Endings - 6.22m (2.9)
10pm - Revenge - 7.58m (2.5)

CBS:
8pm - NCIS (R) - 9.07m (1.5)
9pm - Criminal Minds - 12.83m (3.2)
10pm - CSI - 11.81m (2.8)

FOX:
8pm - American Idol - 21.61m (7.2)

NBC:
8pm - Whitney - 4.30m (1.6)
8.30pm - Are You There, Chelsea? - 4.27m (1.8)
9pm - Harry's Law - 6.41m (1.1)
10pm - Law & Order: SVU - 6.41m (1.8)

Tvbythenumbers

ABC's 8pm was off double digit percentages from last week to season lows. The 9pm hour held up better although Modern Family's 2% drop still took it to a tied season low. Revenge was up 4%. Criminal Minds was down 6% to a season low. NBC's entire line-up hit series lows, with the 8pm hour down over 20%.

That's low for American Idol. Forgive me if I'm wrong but i read The Voice USA is airing after the Superbowl. Is there a chance that The Voice could get a better rating then American Idol?

Its down 27% but tbf its coming off a massive year (dejavu comments) but still a big big drop.

imo its down to over-doing it with both Idol AND X Factor selling themselves as the major singing competitions, and making the other either look preferable or worse. Especially since The Voice has joined in.

Btw The Voice should certainly beat that - Glee did after Super Bowl last year (and it seems to be growing year-on-year), and The Voice I think should be able to target a more general audience.

It almost certainly will but that would probably have been the case anyway because of the lead-in. The test is whether or not it can hold much of that audience for regular episodes.

Last season, The Voice averaged a 4.5 rating but it was all over the place - up from a 5.1 to a 5.7 in the first 2 weeks. Then dropping when it moved to 10pm, eventually down below a 4.0. Then with the AGT lead-in it hovered in the mid 4's while the stand alone results shows (including the finale) fell into the 3's as well. There's no real telling how it will do on a regular basis.

Alot also depends on whether or not Idol continues with this decline or if it was a one off. I think it might stabilise in the coming weeks, but we'll see. They've got an NFC Championship lead-in (50m+) for a special episode on Sunday which might help.

If Idol is down 20% on average, then you're looking at an average in the high 5's. If it's down 25% then mid 5's. So The Voice would still need to improve by 20-30% to regularly win in the demo. In viewers I can't see it toppling Idol.

However, NCIS may well top it a few times in total viewers (not entirely new - DWTS did this a few times in 2010).

FOX ordered a rush on the final ratings which lifts Idol to 21.9m (7.4), down 24% in the demo vs last year.

we can only hope not.

Can I ask why the BBC HD figures omit the simulcast of Great Railway Journeys?

How are the figures for series 3 holding up compared with Jan 2010 and 2011?

It is as enjoyable as ever and Portillo has found his vocation. But I guess we are reaching a Coast type scenario where a series 4 in 2013 might have to start stepping beyond the mainland (he is going to the Isle of Man next week, I note) or include some excursions that might at best have made a footnote in Bradshawes.

Really good figure for the 5* live feed for Celebrity Big Brother. I think they should consider bringing it back more in some form, maybe 18:25 to 20:00 at first seeing as that is Channel 5's weakest slot.

Idol launched unusually low in America it seems.

CBB does well on Channel 5, but as previous posters have mentioned it is a declining format now and certainly, apart from Desmond rags, attracts little interest in other journals like it used to. Yet I still know 4 people at work who still talk about, so the interest is still there.
Crunch point will be the summer one. Should this stiff, and the last one struggled badly on some nights, I wonder if Desmond will ditch the brand. After all, 12 years is a long time considering all the show's contemporaries are long gone and almost forgotten.

Yes, if you didn't see 101 Ways To Leave A Gameshow, imagine if, when the contestants got to the Big Balls on Total Wipeout, they then spent five minutes talking about what they thought about the Big Balls, then didn't go on them anyway. It was awful. It might have worked if we'd not had Total Wipeout, where seeing one person fall in water might have had some kind of novelty factor. It did alright in America, though, didn't it, presumably as the US hour meant it had to hurry the hell up.


The thing about Russian Roulette is that every episode was billed as Russian Roulette Celebrity Special, as if there was a normal Russian Roulette with the public, which there wasn't. That was during the period when they tried to give everyone on I'm A Celebrity a million vehicles and Rhona Cameron did that, The Luvvies (the "funny" spoof awards) and Rhona's Rudest Home Videos (a format Granada tried about a million times, including a series with Mike Reid which was dropped from Saturday nights after two weeks), all in quick succession. Whereas eighteen months before her (quite good) BBC2 sitcom was dropped after one series. They still haven't shown John Fashanu's Man vs Beast yet, natch.


You can hardly count their opening show This Is 5 as an in-house production, it was only stringing trailers together. And the other two were presumably only extended trailers and were made by the promotions department.

You seem to change your tune on this subject every day!

Given the growth in audience share C5 is enjoying this month I'd be very surprised if the celeb series at least wasn't recommissioned. And I think we need to see more of the normal version before we can be sure about whether or not that has a future.

Wow, thats a big old year-on-year drop for Idol. Dangerous to draw conclusions this early, and as you say Football will help on Sunday, but it's still interesting. Bad form to quote yourself, but I do remember saying in the autumn that I thought this year would be just as big a test for Idol as last year. Since the last season wrapped, both The Voice and X Factor have offered fresh twists on the tried-and-tested format to pretty sizeable audiences. That's never really happened before in all the years Idol's been running - so if it's ever going to suddenly start feeling old by comparison, then this is surely the year. Still the biggest show on TV, of course, but I think Fox are going to have to face that introducing TXF (alongside the emergence of The Voice) will inevitably shorten Idol's lifespan.

ABC weathered the storm with moderate levels of damage, and can be happy that they know their schedule won't collapse. All four comedies will live to fight again, and there must be some relief that Revenge seems to steady too. Much worse for NBC (so whats new there then) but it always looked like they'd rejected those comedies by sending them to Wednesday, and thrown their hat in with Up All Night on Thursdays instead.

I'm slowly catching up on reading this thread as I've been really busy the past few days, so this may have been discussed... but does anyone else find the Masterchef scheduling ridiculous this week? It's been running at 9pm Tuesday - Thursday... how boring and uninspired. Where's the variety been this week in the BBC1 9pm slot? I know Hustle is on tomorrow, but stripping Masterchef over three nights has been a bit much.

[quote=sn_22;56006004]I wouldn't get too excited about Superstar on ITV1. Though the Maria and Joseph searches were very popular initially on BBC One (and we're only talking 6-8m, even then) the latter two series did drift from there. Taking a look through, and the last ALW show, Over the Rainbow, bumped along in the 5m region for officials from March to May 2010. Only one episode, the finale, cracked 6m as far as I can see.

I think this could do quite well, with some hot male Jesus's going for the role. One of the reasons Joseph did well was due to Lee Mead. I'm sure that there will be some smouldering hot males for the role of Jesus. Should draw in a huge female audience.

The Voice is filming at Television Centre today - getting a good reception from a few showbiz journalists who are there.

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I'm amazed almost a million people watched live feed on 5* last night. That's high by any standard in the multichannel-universe, let alone 5*! Channel 5 should implement live feed into 5* much more during the next series. Not 24/7, which is unrealistic, but it would make sense having live feed on every night for an hour just after 9pm highlights shows, as an appropriate mid-fill programme between the HLs and BOTS at 11pm. And why not show a few hours of LF in daytime and after midnight on 5*? It can't do that much worse than what's currently being shown, surely??

And while we're on the topic of 5*, it's always struck me as a channel which could do so much more. Apart from Home & Away and that American sci-fi series the other month, there's never much happening on 5*. 5* should pick up the American or Australian series of Big Brother and see how that goes, what do they have to lose? If they rate badly, they won't be rating that much worse than how the channel currently does. if they rate well, that's a big boost to 5*. And whilst they're at it, go for the Australian X Factor rights. ITV2 aren't interested so 5* should go for it - again, what do they have to lose? If it bombs, oh well, but if it can pick up a quarter of a million to half a million viewers, then that'd be a sound acquisition.

agreed, I have been utterly amazed at the ratings for the Live Feed.

There is a singing talent show fatigue in America at the moment with Idol, X Factor and The Voice all being shown in the space of 6 months. What is rather shocking is that a 7.2 launch for Idol means it'll be settling into the 5-6s mid-season, only a little more than what Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory are getting! The days of Idol completely dominating and towering over the opposition are well and truly over. NCIS will probably be the Number 1 most watched programme in total viewers in a couple of week's time, which is quite astonishing when you think about it. I bet no one saw that coming 5 years ago .

Next week Masterchef drops to two episodes with Crimewatch on on Thursdays. I believe that from the week after it is only on on Wednesday with new drama on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It'll probably get 3 editions for its final week.