They have already announced a summer special involving olympian skaters I believe. So cannot be the last ever. Unless they rename that special 'Sinking in Slush' - given the hot weather (or the ratings ).

Dancc maybe able to tell us this, but did Eddie Stobart get an increase due to TV Burp?

you can see why C4 have pulled the New Girls, loosing out to Eddie Stobart, and an over all ratngs of only 1 million, im sure they hoped it would be preforming a little better.

EastEnders continues to under preform, as does New Tricks, there was a time its repeats rated better than this, and it was being compared to NCIS. I dont think Room 101 was worth bringing back with those ratings.

I think all the ratings posted look correct. For example the first Corrie is reported as 8.9m (39.8%) inc. HD and +1. Looking at the DS report the breakdown is as follows: 8.7m (38.9%) at 7.30pm (+1: 200k/0.8%). Adding the shares together you get 39.8% which is the same as reported earlier before DS updated just after 11am. And the episode wasn't tape-checked either so the figures are right. The EE rating of 7.5m most be full-slot rating whereas DS have reported 8m as the tape-checked rating. The site to check the EE timings for last night is currently down so I can't check it, but I assume EE finished early or started early.

The Beeb have made The Apprentice their own though, and probably pay a mere pittance for the rights (although I guess the renewal fee has grown as the show has taken off). You only need to watch the pants US version of TA with Donald Trump to see how good, and how much better and uniquely "British", the UK version is.


Have you got the figures to hand for the F1 rights/coverage savings, so we can see how that saving has allowed for the talent show rip-off?

EE aired 19:59-20:26 , It doesn't normally start early when it's on at 20:00

Thanks. That explains it then. 7.5m is full-slot rating and 8.0m is tape-checked figure.

BIB: you are wrong.

ITV was a ratings juggernaut in both popular drama and entertainment from the late 80s and throughout much of the 90s: Blind Date, London's Burning, Soldier Soldier, Surprise Surprise, Heartbeat, Prime Suspect, Cracker, Bramwell ...

The channel lost the plot - and viewers - about ten years after the franchise auction with an obsession with younger viewers and a string of reality formats, most of which bombed. Contrast that with a resurgent BBC, particularly in drama (Spooks, Waking The Dead, Doctor Who).

I actually don't see the big deal in the BBC making The Voice. Why exactly should they not make programmes designed to engage significant numbers of viewers? Curiously, there seem to be a lot of people with opinions about a show that hasn't been broadcast yet.

ITV is concerned about The Voice because it's biggest entertainment hitter, Simon Cowell, is having hissie fits about it undermining the already diminishing potency of his own formats. That's the bottom line here: ego and money. Along with the BBC being so slow off the mark to recognise this that they've placed their new big show directly in ITV's crosshairs.

I'd argue the franchise auction put the mechanism in place for ITV's collapse in the early 2000s though. Of course, there were other factors such as a more competitiuve commercial market which also affected the broadcaster.


Why waste money on a singing contest rip off when they're axing other services which are not covered by the commercial sector?

Mark Thompson has said to the Commons Select Committee that the saving is "over £150m" over the 7 year contract - ie compared to what BBC was previously paying.

Nobody knows exactly but I think the most widely reported figures say BBC is paying £18m per year going forward compared to £40m per year previously (for rights only; ignoring production costs).

7 * 22 = £154m which ties into Thompson's figures.

Have C4 puled New Girls then? Yet another US import flop for them. Shows just how resilient Homeland's ratings have been.

Not everyone will agree, and I certainly want as much top class sport on BBC as possible, but that seems a decent bit of business to me. Still half the season live and a sizeable contract period-and presumably freeing up money to retain or bid for other stuff.

I do not have the +1 included data today which added nearly 200k to Stobart's figures last week. Without, it was slightly down week-on-week (1.48 v 1.42).


Next week's episode is the last for a while. They are taking an unplanned midseason break due to the poor ratings. It will be back in a later slot but they haven't said when.

Well, X Factor isn't really a straightforward singing contest. It's a tongue-in-cheek entertainment show, where the singing is secondary to everything else: the laughing and pointing at the less talented contestants, the faux spats between the panel members, the album plugging for the celebrity guests, etc, and it has done it all very well for the most part, up until last year, anyway.

For all I know, Voice might go down a similarly silly path, but it might turn out to be different, filling a gap in the talent show line up on UK television.

We can't judge it as "the same" on the basis of a few YouTube clips of other countries' versions.

ITV's Tycoon was scrapped after one series. Didn't it get under 2m viewers?

It seems like a lot of people complaining about the voice are itv or bgt fans who are jealous bbc have got a big hit show. All this talk that bbc shouldnt be doing talent shows is nonsence. X factors hardly a singing contest anyway, the voice is a pure musical talent search without the circus freaks.

thanks

Well let's wait until it airs before pronouncing it a 'big hit show'.

This £22m for The Voice - do we actually know what it covers in terms of format fee and/or production costs? Or are we just speculating here? It's just that it was reported as a two-year deal, and I've never seen rights fee's reported alone before. For all those deals for Big Brother signed by Channel 4/5, we always seemed to assume those covered all costs (even when Channel 4 were re-signing the format in a competitive environment).


You could make the same arguments about so much on the BBC, though.

Why bother funding Graham Norton when you can get basically identical chat shows elsewhere? Or most potently, why bother shelling out 10's of millions on the World Cup or Euro Championships, when the exact same games would only wind up on ITV anyway? At least The Voice is actually something new (even if it proves to be a bit derivative) - the BBC bidding against ITV for sports rights doesn't create anything new at all. It's a bit like the BBC actually spending money stealing TXF itself!

I don't agree with the above argument (and think the BBC ought to value Sport more highly) but it makes logical sense. And that's my problem. know where you're coming from, Fudd, and I agree in principle. But when I work out what the logical extension of that argument is in my head, I wind up with a BBC that doesn't do half of what I like it for anymore... That's a selfish way of looking at it, I suppose. But it works for me - and, I think, the majority of people.

Its audience share was consistently higher than BBC1 throughout the 90's - but I think BBC1 beat ITV's audience share in 2001 or 02.

All you need to do is look at this. http://www.barb.co.uk/facts/annual-s...f-viewing?_s=4

Ken

Does The Graham Norton Show really cost that much though? Besides, the main competitor is Jonathan Ross and he was a BBC employee before Sachsgate so I can't blame the BBC for commissioning a replacement. I'd say Ross was the first of the comedy chat shows (Parkinson did not have comedy at the fore) though I'm sure others know of others which I'm aware of.

As for the football - I doubt ITV could afford the rights on their own, and I don't think Channel 4 or Channel 5 would be able to splash out on half of the rights.


Considering the amount of services the BBC do supply I doubt I use much but I understand how the broadcaster in general improves the quality of programming on British television. And of course they should air populace programming as well, but in this time of austerity only when it'd benefit television as a whole. I just don't see how The Voice fits in this. What is the BBC offering which isn't being supplied by the commercial sector?

Exactly - I can't see the BBC shelling out £20m for nothing - it's not like sports rights. In this case they're bidding to air a show from an independent producer who will deliver the show to them for a set fee. If they were bidding for the licence to make it themselves I doubt the fee would be anywhere near as high.

It's like when Jonathan Ross was paid £18m a year - most of that went to his production company in order to make the show.

P.S. An article some might find interesting here - how a show can live or die in the ratings based on the title it chooses for itself.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/new...8110?page=show

The BBC is offering a talent show based on voice alone. This is different from the X Factor which is more than just having a voice.

Should the BBC stop doing expensive dramas now just cos ITV and other channels do drama?

Sorry - the facts don't back up your argument. ITV's collapse in the early 00s was all down to the then management. It wasn't about the change in the commercial market. It was about how the company dealt with that - i.e. badly ...


The argument that the BBC should only do things the commercial sector can't provide is a thinly veiled excuse to scale the BBC back to little more than broadcasting Songs Of Praise and local news. And it's usually made by people with vested interests who feel threatened by the BBC's raft of programmes (we'll start with James Murdoch ...).

The BBC has broadcast talent shows before, so I hardly see why The Voice is such a big deal, particularlt as nobody has even seen it yet. The real question is: if the commercial sector can provide much that the BBC does, why did it not commission the Corporation's most successful programmes in the first place? And I can't believe The Voice was all about money, because if it was, it would have ended up on Sky ...

I don't really see the issue with the BBC picking up The Voice either. Firstly, it was going to air somewhere and rather it be the BBC than ITV where it would have inevitably been playing second fiddle to The X Factor. Secondly, part of the BBC's remit is to entertain, and that is what BBC One is primarily for. Thirdly, BBC1 has been screaming out for a big Winter/Spring hit to compliment Strictly in the Autumn for a few years now and whilst striking lucky for a couple of years with the Lloyd Webber shows nothing has really taken off in a big way - The Voice probably presents the first big opportunity to replicate some of that success at a time of year where Saturday nights on BBC One have been pretty dry. I don't see the issue with that.

Whether it is a hit or not remains to be seen but I don't begrudge them going for it at all, even if the format is slightly derivative.