It's not just about the duration of the character - Pat was on the sidelines for years before she went, while Becky has completely dominated for years now and has arguably been Corrie's lead character since about 2010. Becky's exit is a much bigger thing in context of the show itself.

The Skins premiere is on Sky Anytime this morning. As rare as hens' teeth to see FTA channel content. Ad and DOG free too.

Glad to see the royal bodyguard slightly increase. I will genuinely miss it after next week, it doesn't,t deserve to be in the same league as big top. RIP guy hubble

agreed, cant see EE beating that this year.


BBC will be pleased RB is stay above 2 million.


its a show a few people have challenged me on, and I always said at the time, had it been a BBC show, I would have watched it.

It is a good show.

on to ratings

Not surprised Panorama didnt preform well (im avoiding train puns) the reasons for high train fairs are well known. Sometimes I wonder if Panorama is best served having to make an episode every week.

Was expecting slightly more for Celebrity Big Brother, again Wedding Planner took advantage of the lead in.

Really? It rallied by about 600k week-on-week to become the most watched highlights show of the series to date. With online the only source for news on the show now, it was a big ask to expect more than that I feel. People on here were saying it wouldn't rise at all as the show had apparently "lost" the casual audience. Oops!

Celeb Wedding Planner is a flop, beaten almost 2:1 by a show called Party Paramedics on 4, but its demos are probably alright. I agree with the poster that said they should have swapped it with Bit On The Side last night. It's not strong enough to be a good sandwich show.

Where do all the men go?

If my wife is watching one of her programmes, I'm still in the lounge, surfing the net or reading, but aware of what's on the TV.

If I was in a BARB home, would I be counted as a viewer?

These ratings show that there is still life in CBB format. Don't watch it anymore myself though but a lot of people seem to be enjoying it.

As for the normal BB, I recon one more go in the summer and if that is a flop again it needs to go. Even 2 CBB's in a year would work in place of it

thanks for posting the demo information rzt, I was going to ask you to post them for Call The Midwife.

TBH I am amazed that as much as 38% of the audience is male. figured it would be 25% - 30%

Football aside, BBC seems to serve male viewers better than ITV.

Look closely at the small print - after one month you have to tell them whether you wish to continue. If you don't contact them they'll assume you do and start charging you.

It's been free to Irish subscribers who take the Sky Sports pack since August.

As far as the free weekend is concerned, I would be very surprised if Manchester City v Fulham manages to be the highest rated live Premier League match ever as some of the media have suggested.

Will be fascinating to see how ESPN get on in the auction for Premier League rights which is due in the Spring. I imagine they will want at least 2 packages (although the details of the packages on offer has yet to be confirmed) but I suspect Sky will want to keep hold of Monday Night Football which has been a big success since it returned 2 seasons ago. There is also the added wild card of Al Jazeera who have being buying up rights for French football in recent weeks and who obviously have a huge budget.

True. Thirty one days notice. But there is no contract.

When Sky give three months free, you're tied in for twelve months regardless.

I've put the cancellation date on my calendar!!

Seems quite low for a final, anyone know what it peaked at? thanks

Surely this series of Skins is going to be the last. Talk about flogging a dead horse. If that's its premiere rating then it's going to be rating very low by the end of the series.

I think the Skins bubble might have burst last year. It premiered okay but as it got into the series proper it was posting some low numbers.

Not sure how 4OD views might affect it though. Maybe it does really well on there?

Maybe. This week's episode was quite heavily advertised so that may have bumped up the numbers, although I think Skins on the whole is no longer the talking point it once was, and every new cast seems to dilute the impact of the show a little bit further...

Are the Corrie figures really that surprising? They have been advertising and hyping Becky's exit up for weeks.

The BBC rarely seem to promote EE anymore. Not in the way they used to. Pat's exit did well to get over 10 million considering the promo for it only began a matter of days before she snuffed it.

The BBC didn't promote Birdsong very much yet it ran endless promos for Andrew Neill's new Sunday politics show (which I would think had less interest for most viewers).

what? I saw loads of Birdsong adverts. The young woman in them, is quite attractive. Distractingly so.

This one

I also think that with EE, Pat's demise was a widely known, foregone conclusion and not exactly cheery New Year's Day viewing; Corrie on the other hand managed to keep some air of mystery surrounding Becky's departure. Becky had the same lynchpin status as a character which Raquel did back in the 90s.

That seems a bit stupid, making half the celebrities immune from elimination, which surely would just disenfranchise the viewers more?


Yes, well done to me there. I guess when there's a really big storyline any scheduling will do but the current scheduling does limit them in terms of what they can do to really make an episode special. He says, repeatedly being proved wrong.


There already is a day free from them, Saturdays. They can still put those shows on as well. My argument is that putting them on Sunday frees up the schedule, whereas now they're all crammed in on weeknights so if you don't like soaps there seems to be nothing for you on ITV pre-watershed. By moving one episode of each to Sunday it frees up another midweek slot and it provides more variety.

It just needs more people Denise and Michael's ages, I still think that other than that, not being on in the summer and being on the day after CBB8 are why BB12 flopped.

Disagree with that. There are loads of different factors. Length of the episode, opposition, fragmented viewing, promotion, mystique of the ending to name a few.

To be honest, I was surprised at how well the show did last night, didnt realise Becky was such a draw. In the style of others posters who love their stereotypes, perhaps Corrie viewers relate to her with her being a northern, heavy smoking, violent, loud, semi-alcoholic, chav.

Well actually, I think the schedule would free up better if there was less soap on in the week as well. There really is no need for two episodes on Mondays, two episodes on Fridays and a Thursday episode too. Go back to Monday, Wednesday and Friday for Corrie and Tuesday and Thursday at 8 for an hour for Emmerdale.

I wonder if the problem with Skins is that its just failed to find a new audience. Its been six years since the first series aired and the teens that watched that will now be either approaching their 20's or already there – how much interest do they have in a teen drama about 16 year olds? Skins is a great idea if you assume that every two years it refreshes its audience but if its just the same viewers who were there in series one the whole thing falls apart...


Its the exact same format just on ice and as I said yesterday I think its the addition of the ice that tends to undermine the whole thing because it just makes it far too difficult and far too technical. Despite being on air for several years now I've yet to see anyone excel in Dancing on Ice in the same way contestants do year in and year out on Strictly and as a result you have a much lower standard of competition and a much less visually engaging show for viewers. The basic concept is absolutely fine it just stumbles in reality.



Depends on what they have lined up for Christmas and how the Christmas schedules shake out this year. I don't think its such an incredibly high number that its impossible though.

Superb for Corrie and very well deserved.