RATINGS PREDICTION GAME SPECIAL
Mon 19th March - Sun 25th March Schedule by Fudd

Just a reminder that it's not too late to take part in next week's game, which features amongst others the much anticipated launch of BBC's The Voice, the premiere of ITV's Titanic, and the return of both The Apprentice and Britain's Got Talent. How will they rate? As ever, we want to get as many of you involved in our fun competition as possible. All ratings enthusiasts are welcome to play. Please submit your predictions to me via private message if you'd like to take part by 9:30am Tuesday.

To play, copy and paste the schedule below, add your own predictions and submit:

1. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares USA - Mon 22.00 Channel 4:
2. Return to The Falklands - Tue 21.00 ITV1:
3. Hit the Road Jack - Tue 22.00 Channel 4:
4. EastEnders - Wed 19.30 BBC One:
5. Midsomer Murders - Wed 20.00 ITV1:
6. The Apprentice - Wed 21.00 BBC One:
7. Inside the Titanic - Thu 20.00 Channel 5:
8. John Bishop’s Sport Relief Hell - Thu 21.00 BBC One:
9. Sport Relief 2012 - Fri 19.00 BBC One:
10. Harry Hill’s TV Burp - Sat 19.30 ITV1:
11. Avatar - Sun 17.50 Channel 4:
12. Dancing on Ice - Sun 18.50 ITV1:
13. SPECIAL The Voice - Sat 19.00 BBC One:
14. SPECIAL Britain’s Got Talent - Sat 20.00 ITV1:
15. SPECIAL Titanic - Sun 21.00 ITV1:

Backups
16. Only Connect - Mon 20.30 BBC Four:
17. Executive Decision - Mon 21.00 Channel 5:
18. Sean Lock: Lockipedia Live - Tue 22.35 Channel 4:
19. Death Row - Thu 22.00 Channel 4:
20. The Million Pound Drop Live - Sat 21.50 Channel 4:

Then keep an eye on the dedicated RPG thread from Tuesday onwards to see how you get on.

* Ratings used take into account HD but not +1.
* Programme averages not peaks, and tapechecked where possible.
* Backups are used in the event of programmes being cancelled, postponed or overrunning.
* A full list of average predictions received will be published on the main DSRPG thread on Tuesday morning.

If making tv is so bloody difficult they can cease doing it completely. Compared to brain surgery or working down a coal mine its a cushy number

I meant financial "effort". It's a lot cheaper to set up half a dozen cameras indoors at a snooker tournament, for example, than it is to cover a horse race meeting.

or cars racing around a track?

BTW 500m watch the Grand National worldwide versus 10m in the UK so the UK rights are relatively small beer

The BBC don't have many cameras etc at F1. F1 races are in Bernievision.

Hardly; it's missing sport from the list. And drama. And light entertainment which doesn't break the bank and result in the broadcaster selling off other rights in the process (yes, I know sport and LE are from different budgets etc. etc.)

But screw it, I've had enough of having to constantly state my case over and over every time I dare to criticise the BBC.

They've just shown a few clips of The Voice on The One Show, and whilst the standard of the talent itself remains to be seen, the clip they showed of the coaches 'supergroup' performance didn't exactly 'wow' me I have to say. Compared with how brilliant the one the US coaches did last year it looked a bit crap in all honesty. It didn't exactly sell the show to me anyway (nor did the other clip they aired). Still, I'll probably tune in on Saturday out of curiosity anyway, but the on-screen promotion of it so far hasn't been as good as it could have been (although the promotion in the press has been good).

Yeah, I agree. The PR has been outstanding, but anything I have seen of the actual show is pretty poor. Hard to tell from a few clips I guess though.

Astonishingly good numbers for The Walking Dead last night,

https://twitter.com/#!/Variety_StuartL


http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/liv...ratings-301516

Also still doing good business for FX in the UK, had 720,000 in the latest officials and a further 117,000 for the Sunday repeat.

Pawn Stars has overtaken Jersey Shore as Americas favourite cable reality show! Jerseys Shores ratings are down a lot compared to last season, people getting bored of them.

They've done really well with the PR so far, with plenty of coverage, but I agree that the show itself doesn't look that great from the clips revealed so far, with a mediocre looking group performance and Tom Jones already coming across as incredibly irritating (I can see Will.i.am starting to grate after a while too). Having said that, you're right in saying that we have only seen a few clips so it would be unwise to make a judgement just yet - the proof will be in the pudding on Saturday.

I notice ITV are stepping up their PR for BGT quite a bit as well with the (admittedly funny) advert being shoved in to ad breaks at any possible opportunity, whilst the press coverage is building a bit (they even managed to shoe-horn it in to the story about Harry Hill today). The press launch will help (what day is that?) but I think ITV should start showing a trailer with a bit of actual show footage as well as the one they're airing with the judges.

Could you give us a source for your claim that 500 million worldwide watch the National please George.Also your assertion that 10 million watch in the UK (I assume you are referring to last year's race).

99% of people havent seen The Voice USA so most people wont be comparing the Voice UK coaches performance to the excellent US one. Theyll see the coaches perform and say how good it is compared to the X Factor UK judges, some of whom cant sing that well or at all. The Voice UK will have 2 to 3 times more talent in its launch episode than BGTs launch, this should hopefully help it come across better over the weekend and give it more buzz. I also think ITV have been a bit arrogant and assumed people will just watch the BGT launch out of habit, they havent put in as much effort to advertise their show like the BBC has in the last month and just look at the BGT sub-forum on here which is dead.

Not where it matters it hasn't. Pawn Stars still lags behind Jersey Shore in the demo by a comfortable margin.

BGT press launch is Thursday, press pack is out tonight along with pictures

The voice clip is quite disappointing really, far from the US coaches' group performances

In fairness the 30 second clip I saw of the performance wasn't bad in comparison to the US coaches performances but just pretty bad. Maybe the whole thing is better though. Also the Voice US' coach performance of Crazy exploded online before the show debuted so I think there's every chance that more than a few people will have seen it.

But I go back to what I've said previously - will.i.am was a casting misstep for this show because he limits what the coaches can do and removes one of the big selling points that helped to get people excited about the US version. The coach performances not just with each other but their artists.

Thanks for the info.

The press launch is timed perfectly for the tabloids to have lots of BGT in them on Friday and then again on Saturday.

Hmmm, well thats disappointing if true. I dont watch The One Show but will have to watch on iPlayer later to see this. Hoping the Bbc/Wall to Wall havent made a mess of this show.

The 30 second clip is up on The Voice website. I don't know if a longer one was shown on The One Show though (but would guess not).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAFDpVaHLLk

and of course its bad, its that dreadful Black Eye Peas song I Got a Feeling, song by 1 of the Black Eyed Peas.

yeah ok Jessie J sounds good on it, but other than that its a poor choice of song, and I already fear Mr Black Eyed Pea maybe too big for the show, and have far too much influence.

Could they not have done "Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi", now thats a good song, everytime I hear it, I want to hear it many more times, and sing it in my head all day.

I think Jimmy Doherty did have something on C4 that went by rather unnoticed. I would say though of all these lifestyle stars C4 currently have under contract I'd only keep Kirsty and Phil, Gok Wan, Heston Bloominhell and the doctors from Embarrassing Bodies. I doubt the docs are under exclusive contract - but none of the others are so important to the channel they even warrant a show at the moment, never mind golden handcuffs.


The Voice has quadruple eliminations every week anyway (one per judge). ITV might have put it on Saturdays while Dancing on Ice was on Sundays I suppose, but really their best bet would have been to buy the format to enable them to use the blind auditions in The X Factor.


Did make me laugh seeing a quote from Sky saying ratings of individual shows didn't matter - it was the whole channel they were interested in. Surely with Sky Sports F1 more than anything ratings will be dead most of the week then peak for the races.


I've a horrid feeling it won't be. If C4 really think it has legs axe George Lamb, pre-record it and tweak it for a daytime slot over 2 weeks or so.


Anyway, saw the headline "C4 sets May deadline to revamp entertainment" and the teaser line "Channel 4 is planning a major overhaul of its entertainment output by the middle of May and is making more money and hours available to the genre" and it gave me some hope.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/b...039256.article

But then I read the article.

So basically they're still looking for cheap entertainment formats on Fridays rather than establishing a decent comedy line up, their ambitions don't stretch much further than Home for the Holidays and they're willing to stupidly schedule shows against big hits and kill them before they even begin.

Just watched it, I admit its not too good . Bad choice of song, doesnt show off the vocal skills of the three coaches who can sing well. But Ive liked the other clips of the show so far, I especially have liked what Ive heard of the actual contestants so this will be important now.

It wasn't poor at all.


Calling Game of Thrones poor? Possibly one of the most ridiculous comments I've seen on here. Granted, it wasn't perfect, but its become a massive success. It averaged 9.3m viewers in The States and every episode shown on Sky Atlantic last year was over 1m. It's also broke the HBO DVD record becoming the most successful first week DVD release of all-time selling over 350,000 units.



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Regarding last night, DoI is still stuck on 7m viewers and I can't see the final next week breaking 8m now if I'm honest. UD hasn't been the success everyone imagined. Also BARB's ITV1+1 chart is clearly wrong this week. Someone's screwed up there. Head to BARB to check it out. And the numbers are in for Frank's murder in Corrie. 11.33m (exc. +1) watched the 8.30pm episode for that week. A pretty good result, and beats EE's 10.98m for their biggest episode so far this year!

EastEnders doing well on twitter tonight (must better than past Mondays infact)

EastEnders is 2nd most popualr topic trending in the UK
George Michael
Heather
Ben Mitchell

also trending

Poor Heather is trending Worldwide

Enlightened is great and did well at the Golden Globes. why do people call Boardwalk Empire, Broadwalk Empire?



True Blood doesn't do that well on FX these days. Have C4 stopped showing it?



Totally unrelated. The same as they bought stuff from Showtime, NBC and CBS.