They said they were looking for comedies.

This version of Titanic always faced a losing battle as soon as it was commissioned. It was never going to live up to multi-million pound Cameron movie in terms of scale or special effects, nor has it with the storyline. With no DOI lead-in and up against Silent Witness next week, it's definitely going to go down quite a bit. I just dont see what the point was of doing this, ITV might as well have not done this and used the money on an original drama series which would've had returnable potential. Also like Red or Black, it was overhyped. If you're going to overhype something, you must deliver the goods. This clearly didn't, far from it in fact.

Titanic: so bad that it was funny. Haven't got a clue who the characters were and it didn't even look like the ship was sinking. A disaster for ITV

Don't really buy that. And what's that got to do with whether it's actually any good or not anyway? The 100th anniversary coverage is already in full swing wherever you look. There is no better time to launch such a drama.

And it shouldn't be too difficult for ITV to pull off two big launches in one weekend. After all, several million plus will have seen trails during BGT last night alone. Not to mention the hefty inheritance it will have enjoyed from the Dancing on Ice final.

Hadn't realised SW started next Sunday. BBC1 have played a blinder there, it should clean up.

I suspect Titanic will have done very well tonight with the constant ITV promotion for weeks, DOIF lead-in and DA/Fellowes connection. I would think 8m+ is perfectly achievable - people will have stuck with it for the hour I guess. But next week it will ship viewers by the millions.

Titanic got a very poor reaction on Twitter. A lot of people stopped watching halfway through. There'll be a big drop-off throughout, and I think next week's going to be a bit of a "Royal Bodyguard" moment.

I'm pleased I watched the final Upstairs Downstairs in my bedroom. My father just told me Titantic was terrible and he turned over after 25 minutes!

I'm trying to get into it now on plus 1 but it does appear boring and we are only 10 minutes in.

Be very interesting to see how both shows faired against each other.

I don't the Easter break will start until next week. On the subject of Easter, the Good Friday schedules look uninspiring as per usual. Lucky I've got a couple of recordings to watch.

Jeremy Singer ‏ @JeremySinger1 Reply Retweet Favorite · Open
After that, next weeks #Titanic viewing figures could sink faster than the ill fated ship!

Titanic was dull. Quite an odd commission. The '97 film is what people will always compare it to and it will never match that. But even just in its own right it was pretty bad. The format is silly and the characters too many. Nothing for the viewer to invest in. I expect a huge drop off next week. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if it peaked at the start as I can imagine quite a few turned off after the first monotonous 15 minutes.

8 million I predict for tonight and a massive drop to 4.5 million next week..

BBC3 confirmed Being Human would return next year. Brilliant finale - and nice to see a show survive a recast


Dancing on Ice has a lot of things to fix for next year so hopefully it'll get a similar kick up the backside to what Strictly had a couple of years ago. I think it's production rather than scheduling which needs improving though.

If it were to start at ~8m tonight, I don't think it'd shed that many viewers in a week. That would be a -44% week-on-week decline which would be unprecedented for a new ITV1 drama in recent years - if it does, it'd be a massive drop! The biggest week-on-week second episode drop for an ITV1 drama in the last few years was -36% for Married Single Other (and that partly dropped that much because episode 2 faced a 7.5m drama). I reckon this will drop about -30% next week which is pretty high. I don't think tonight's breakdown will be too much of an indicator though because even the first episodes of Downton Abbey and Vera showed significant decline in their breakdowns yet their audiences rose in week 2. Now obviously I don't expect under any circumstances for this to go up next week (it'll definitely shed viewers) but the breakdown might not necessarily be that much different to c20% drops between the first-to-last 15minutes that most new ITV1 dramas experience anyway.

ITV dramas always have a large drop between start and end because the last 15 mins generally includes the programme finishing at 9:55pm-ish and then the adverts.

Factor in the people who never intended to watch inflating the first 15 mins and therefore comparing the second and third 15 mins is a better indicator, but even that is on the assumption that no 15 mins had 2 ad breaks in, which is always a posibility.

In the case of Titanic, it seems that 'it'll drop next week' seems to be the general opinion so the rating however high will probably be ignored anyway.

Silent Witness is back next week; that could be the 7m drama which strangles Titanic and leads to a 35% plus drop.

There is a new extended trailer advertising "Documentaries on ITV1" kicking about.

Most of the docs featured won't bother this thread though as they are airing either at 10:35 or probably on Tuesdays.

Probably more to improve the image of ITV1 showing off that they actually do make more than "Cowell shows and soaps" rather than expecting them to be 6m hits.



Something that got very little coverage today but would have done had it moved from the BBC to ITV rather than from BBC to the channel least talked about on here, was Sunday Brunch. Anyone know in advance what Something for the Weekend used to get for BBC2?

Titanic. I watched it and I'm just not sure people will stick around, I won't be.

Possibly, if Silent Witness returns big (it's normally more of a 6-7m rater). I think ITV should've stripped Titanic over 4 nights in anniversary week - it's not strong enough to air weekly because many people just aren't going to be bothered tuning in week after week, whereas nightly, viewers might've been a bit more prone to giving it a second chance. They should've just got it over and done with really quickly in 4 days rather than have this drawn-out saga. It's also meant that a perfectly good drama like Lewis is going to end up in a worse Wednesday night slot in late-May because Titanic's hogging the Sunday night schedules right now - and I can bet you that Lewis will rate worse on a Wednesday night against The Apprentice than how it would've done in its typical Sunday night slot.

Apparently Titanic does get better in the second episode according to the critics but programmes these days have to make a good impact in their first episodes, especially if they're hyped a lot. Shows are lucky if they're given a second chance by viewers if the first episode was a turkey. I also think if someone at ITV did know it was a bit of a stinker, they should've eased down on the hyping - it has been trailed a lot with three weeks of promos, lots of specially made expensive teasers etc. I don't think it's a good idea for channels to do this if it's clear the end product isn't up to the mark because it just means that the next time that channel overhypes something, people might be less likely to give the show a chance due to being burnt in the past. That's two times in a row now that ITV have overhyped something and haven't delivered (Red or Black being the last show). To be honest, I dont like it when channels overhype new programmes too much anyway unless they're already proven hit formats abroad or amazing. 90% of the time it leads to disappointment for the viewer (i.e. see The Royal Bodyguard).

David Suchet is trending on Twitter and there is lots of positive reaction. I doubt it'll translate to much ratings wise though, but it's good to see Twitter folks do watch documentaries!

Just under the million mark most weeks.

From the bits I saw of Sunday Brunch it looked like a successful transition. Some good guests for the first show as well. Tim Lovejoy is not the best presenter though, he could really do with an experienced female co-host to help him out.

As wallpaper television though it's fine and should do well for them. I think equally ITV1 and Channel 5 could have had success with this show.

Tbh I don't think audiences have a long enough memory for that. Certainly something like R/B because it was promoted in a certain way. But look at The Royal Bodyguard, its hardly had a long term effect (the hyping was just Cohen hoping to make people think the shows harmless so might as well watch kind of thing) on BBC promotions.

In terms of drama? For that sort of drama - absolutely (see BBC disaster shows over the last few years, am thinking specifically the Nuclear drama where a dirty bomb goes off in London, yet we were told it'd be how they react to this (or some bollocks) but it never happened and the quality wasn't there - those dramas took a hit from over-hyping poor ones) but in terms general drama, I don't see it as a problem as every show will look/sound differently to the viewer.

ITV didn't care about the quality, I think they hope for a big figure tonight and to hold onto people (they didn't strip it across the week for this reason, people wouldn't bother, but people are more forgiving over a week). I doubt it'll happen mind.

You didn't miss much! Fast forward to the last 15 minute.

I seem to recall saying just that a year ago when news of its commission first surfaced.


The trailers really did make it out to be something "special". What was all that guff about "the truth"? All we got tonight was dire and cliched period drama, with a vast confusing cast of characters, spouting some laughable dialogue, which just happened to be set on the Titanic.

ITV massively oversold it. Then again, BBC1 did exactly the same with The Royal Bodyguard, putting David Jason rather awkwardly front and centre in its entire seasonal push, in both trailers and idents.

Breakdowns from The Sun newspapers (of all places!):

The Voice
19:00- 5.27m
19:05- 6.41m
19:15- 7.37m
19:25- 8.56m
19:35- 9.11m
19:45- 9.29m
19:55- 9.82m
20:05- 8.78m
20:15- 9.14m

Britain's Got Talent
20:00- 5.87m
20:10- 7.29m
20:20- 10.52m
20:30- 9.26m (adverts)
20:40- 9.56m (adverts)
20:50- 11.12m
21:00- 9.03m (adverts)
21:10- 11.51m
21:15- 7.47m (end + adverts)

(BGT breakdown varied more depending on if there was an advert in the 5-min interval or not)

Simon Cowell said:

Interesting that BGT's peak came at the end of the show - I thought it would've hit the high point at around twenty past eight.

If I've done this correctly, the average for BGT between 8pm and 9pm last night was 8.94m. If the usual second episode dip takes place and The Voice gains viewers for the second episode as it has in other countries...