The history books will show CTM rated better for its first series and rightly so, as that's what happened. We can't try to fill in the STV blank for ourselves to bring DA's figures closer in line, that's not how it works.

The thing with The Killing USA was that is was a dreadful show IMO. I watched all 13 episodes (I don't know why) and it didn't even conclude well. Needless to say, I won't be watching Season 2. I've recorded Homeland so hope its good. As for the new 24? Good luck with that. 24 is my favourite TV show of all time!!


Excellent end for CTM. Its turned into a monster hit. Corrie did well for a one-off Sunday outing. Probably about 1m higher than I expected. Top Gear really suffered, but if that figure excludes HD then maybe it will be closer to 4.6/4.7m?!

UD did OK, but not brilliantly. I was expecting a bigger rating especially after a massive lead-in from CTM. I think that's WaH lowest ever rating. DoI performance show did alright under the circumstances and not as low as I was expecting. Poor for the Skate Off though. Homeland started well. The question now is, can it retain most of this audience or will is suffer the same fate as recent US imports such as The Killing and The Event??

I agree I think UpDown will be solid rather than a spectacular Midwife/Sherlock type success.


And this proves what I've been saying all along. Midwife has rated higher than Downton in series 1, but series 2 of Downton had an exceptional performance. So we can only compare Midwife series 2 with Downton series 2.

But I will also add that people always say "Downton wasn't on in Scotland" and I counter that with Midwife didn't have a 14m lead in or competition that some weeks was as low as 3-4m. And on that basis Midwife's series 1 performance is even better than Downton's as it had far more competition and far less of a lead in.

Obviously not, I don't think I or anyone else has suggested otherwise. But just to make the point that if you were to compare the two series averages, it wouldn't be based on a like-for-like comparison whereby the two shows were both fully networked. Of course there's other factors too which aren't like-for-like such as lead-in, competition and channel they're airing on. So they're not really like-for-like anyway but I thought it was still quite important to note that the STV factor can have quite a big effect on the officials (in terms of overnight average both DA and CTM series one averaged an identical 8.7m). For the record though, I'd agree with cylon6 that CTM's performance edges it for me as it had tougher competition, lower lead-in and it totally came out of the blue.

And there I am with you. That part of your post was good and a perfectly reasonable thing to point out. But I thought you spoiled it slightly by adding that provocative line about it probably equalling CTM if STV had shown it. You might be right, but we'll never know.

Nice rating for Call The Midwife. It does appear to be showing all the same trends and media publicity as Downton series 1 did, so I expect when the next series comes along it will rate higher than this series has done. Upstairs Downstairs started decently but I did expect to crack 7m with the lead-in it had.


Really hope to see some improvement in Top Gear's figures next week. Even with HD, officials and Iplayer included it will still be down on what it can normally attain combined.


Concerning that DOI performance is still dropping but it did have an early start last night. It would be interesting to compare the peak to last week, as without Call The Midwife in opposition and with a Corrie lead-out it should theoretically have peaked considerably higher last night. Wild At Heart did very poorly by its standards and will also be hoping for a post-Midwife boost next week. Corrie did brilliantly by its recent Sunday standards, although it doesn't seem to have boosted ITV's ratings or dented the BBC's at all.


Bit of a drop for Being Human compared to last series, of which all episodes were above 900k in the overnights - however it has lost the main cast members and is on a much more competitive schedule this year.

DOI is definitely no longer must see TV. Below 7m again isn't good. WAH suffered too from the excellent rating for CTM. Surprisingly high for Corrie though for an unadvertised Sunday episode in the middle of a 6/7m rating schedule. Just shows how much there is still an audience for Corrie on a Sunday whatever the slot.

Top Gear got 4.73m (16.2%) inc HD

Upstairs Downstairs averaged 6.99m (26.9%) for the first 15 minutes, 6.22m (28.8%) in its final quarter.

Top Gear had 4.73m (16.24%) including HD last night.

To be fair though, I did say 'almost identical', which is a subtle but important difference in the above context. Sure, I can't (and didn't) say it would've been identical to CTM but based on previous form regarding STV opt-outs, I think it's reasonable enough to say it would've been in and around the 10.5m mark (so say somewhere between 10.3m-10.7m), hence why I also clarified that in my following post by saying 'c.10.5m if not slightly more or less' .

How do you know he hasn't ordered it ?

they could deliver a baby in a stable...

A few more overnights from yesterday:

- Three Men In A Boat: the Best Bits had 1.1m (5.4%) for BBC2
- Fantastic Mr Fox averaged 1.9m (inc +1) on Channel 4.
- True Blood on FX averaged 223,800 (1.2%)

Sources: MG, SOV

Excellent for CTM. Breakout hit of the year pretty much sewn up. Very good for Corrie as well. I would like it back on Sundays but cant see it happening unless they commission an extra episode which would be awful.

Decent for UD but I can see that falling next week. Very good start for Homeland against tough competition, and a very high quality show. Great purchase by C4.

DOI and WAH as expected. Wonder if they'll recover slightly next week?

Homeland did ok, sure it could have gone bigger but as long as it holds up it should be fine.

Future house was interesting, a bit of Tomorrows World about it, but in a domestic setting.

BBC 1 did well, Dancing on Ice continues to under preform, but yeah Corrie did really well, in the Sunday slot.

shame for Being Human looks dented, no idea what Secret Street Crew is.

all the press are wetting themselves over Call The Midwife.

I think Titanic will do well but it's a serial rather than a series, so I say it's virtually impossible for CTM to lose that title.


I can see UD falling as well and possibly Homeland. When other networks buy shows I'm always thinking that it won't be long before Sky gets it.


It'll be an even bigger story if Dancing On Ice & Wild At Heart don't rally next week as they'll have no clash with Call The Midwife and no excuse.

Do we know what proportion of Downton's series 2 audience came from the STV region?

If we do, then we could try and extrapolate a figure for series 1 - although even then it would overstate the STV effect because plainly a number of people in the STV region who have Sky would have been able to watch an ITV English region when series 1 aired and would thus have been counted in that region's figures; for series 2 STV viewers would not have had to do that.

For DA to have averaged 10.5m for series 1, then it would have needed around 800,000 additional Scottish viewers. Even leaving out Border TV Scots, that's around 16% of the entire Scottish population. If DA averaged 9m in the rest of the UK, then it was watched by around 16% of the population. But as I say, that takes no account of Border TV, and STV viewers watching via Sky on an ITV region - so it would more likely need 17% or more of all Scots to be watching.

I would be surprised if a very English period drama about a bunch of toffs from a big mansion in the Home Counties would be that big a rater in Scotland, and disproportionately more watched there than in the rest of the country; I imagine Call the Midwife skews a bit more Scottish than Downton.


So TG was down about 370k - not bad really considering the Corrie competition and boost to CTM.

UD held up better than the earlier "lost 1m" tweet suggested; seems clear to me that this was a "time for bed" drop off and it should do OK next week (granted it won't have a 9m+ lead in)

I'm a bit slow on the uptake today, but here's your regularly schedules spoilers

1 CALL THE MIDWIFE (SUN 2000) 10.42
17 BRITISH ACADEMY FILM AWARDS (SUN 2100) 5.45
1 TOP GEAR (SUN 2001) 5.13
1 ONE BORN EVERY MINUTE (WED 2102) 4.1

the rest is later

After the success of Corrie last night, I wonder if ITV might move one of the weekday Corries to Sundays for 8 weeks next January/February, to either go head to head with CTM or force BBC1 to air it away from DOI and move their 9pm offerings to 9.30pm?

A similar dip for the official CTM rating as for the overnight (500k or so); I thought it might have timeshifted better with the overnight figure being lower, but it appears not.

TG's SD rating is down 160k on the week, but it should be comfortably over 6m once HD is included.

And CTM could be on afterwards and still do very well.
The timeshift for CTM is incredible. From 8.5m to 10.47m around 1.9m. Amazing stuff.

On that basis last night's CTM should end the series with an official of over 11 million

Downton Abbey series two on STV averaged 652,000 (28%) in the overnights. So in the official ratings with timeshift included (officials for that series were about 23% higher than the overnights), the STV consolidated audience would've been about 800k.

So taking that c800k and adding it to the 9.7m (non-Scottish audience) for series 1, as you've suggested, it would work out at c10.5m. Even if you remove the Scottish ITV1 London viewers from the 9.7m (of which there were about 150k according to this article) and then factor in the c800k Scots, it'd have c10.4m.

Here's the episode by episode overnight ratings for DA series 2 on STV:

Ep1- 545k (21%)
Ep2- 678k (29%)
Ep3- 663k (27%)
Ep4- 587k (25%)
Ep5- 637k (27%)
Ep6- 629k (27%)
Ep7- 699k (29%)
Ep8- 780k (35%)

You're right though that on STV it's not as popular as the rest of the UK. In Scotland it averaged a 28% share but for the network as a whole DA averaged a 35% share for the series (so in some regions of England it must've close to 40%). On the whole though it still works out as approximately 800k consolidated Scottish viewers for it, which is about 16% of the population of Scotland.

I've been told that Upstairs Downstairs series 3 is already set to go once the green light is given. I hope the ratings don't dip below 4 million as it might put it in doubt. I know Call The Midwife was already commissioned for series 2 before the first episode had even aired but the BBC spent so much money on getting the rights to UD that I can't see them wanting to let it go that easy yet at the same time they might be pissed off if it doesn't stay around 6 million each week.

No BARB officials today ?