Border Lookaround is a case on point for keeping regional news. A 40 pc audience share is something only Coronation St can achieve on a very good night. However, I'm not surprised ITV regional news is faltering in other areas where super regions have been created and where news departments have been slashed to the bone.

It's probably slightly less than 22 (I make it 18) as some of the FA Cup Replays will clash with Champions League weeks.


Kind of nearly sensible then, though it is a shame that having avoided them for so long they've sucumbed to the celebrity special.


Thanks rzt. No surprise really ITV performs strongest where regional identity still exists, though interesting that UTV's 10.30pm bulletin has twice the share of that of STV. I know UTV's bulletin is more established and perhaps BBC Scotland offered more competition at 10.35pm, plus there is Newsnight Scotland at 11pm as an alternative (any ratings for that?)

Not quite the blatantly obvious pattern though I expected of the national bulletins success in each region being relative to the local bulletin with a few anomolies amongst the figures.

Also worth noting the raw figures in most regions are comfortably in the few hundred thousand mark - figures digital stations can thrive on. I don't believe for one minute there is a viable market for the local TV channels Jeremy Hunt is robbing more money off the BBC from, but I do think the market for well made regional TV is definately still there if ITV still served it up.

Also bear in mind we are talking about the warmest day of the year so far and the first weekday since the clocks went forward, I expect regional news ratings are usually much higher.

Lack of appetite for regional news in London is fairly well known, a combination of long commutes and a lack of 'local' feel - any major stories make the national news, the cosy 'two presenters having a bit of banter' format that works really well up North doesn't work in London (hence the programmes are single headed)

Anyone know what sort of ratings the Sunday afternoon omnibus usually gets?

BBC1 news suffering more in the warm weather, although share hasn't dropped a huge amount.

So three episodes of Deal or No Deal in 25 hours, albeit one a repeat showing. Classic Channel 4 that.

I doubt many DOND viewers also watch Homeland, I'd be astonished in fact if there was much of a crossover at all.

Channel4 must be worried about the state of their entertainment shows. Deal Or No Deal is five years past its best, Million Pound Drops ratings have halved in two years, Big Fat Gypsy Weddings has lost 2million from last year and The Bank Job can barely just get 1million viewers. They must find new hits soon, this cant just go on.

Although the cosy two presenters having a bit of banter on The One Show beats Emmerdale in London.

Yep, it ain't looking good. I wouldn't be surprised to see regime-change at C4 by this time next year.

I would imanage, Londoners think that Emmerdale village is some sort of Sci-Fi show, and are too confused by the concept of a village, to watch it.

Channel 4 are not short of hits right now, they could do with a couple more 2m+ rated shows, but I imagine their advertisers are pleased with a lot of the ratings. I personally don't watch any of the above, but in this multi channel age C4 portfolio are getting a decent share each night, last night they had 11.9% share.

Here's the regional breakdowns from Monday 26th March:
The One Show was most popular in the South, South East and Channel Islands. It was least popular in the Border region and North West of England. Emmerdale was most popular in Ulster, on the main land its highest share came from the North West of England. It was least popular region was London. Emmerdale beat The One Show in 12 out of 13 areas, with fewer viewers in just the East of England. Although the ITV Evening News lead-in does poorly in the Westcountry and South West, Emmerdale seems to do pretty well in those regions.

Thank you for the figures.

As much as I hate the programme, you have to give it to Emmerdale, to be able (in share terms) to be able to more than triple its leadin in the west, and more than double it in several regions is pretty amazing. You can now see why it's on every weekday.

One thing these regional ratings seems to show is that Itv 1 is predominately a northern channel, and BBC 1 the southern channel. I'm guessing this must be some concern of the advertisers and itv itself (and it's finances), as I'm guessing that London and he south east is probably the most important market for most big advertisers.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned this but BGT is back to 75 mins on 7th April, but still at 8pm, with a 90 minute Take Me Out finale at 9.15pm. Lemonaid is at 6.15pm, with YBF and Best of TV Burp 362 at 7.30pm.

Shrek is the pre-Voice filler on BBC1, while it's business as usual on Easter Sunday with Countryfile and Antiques Roadshow - is that what they aired last year?

They could have done really with a Doctor Who special to fill the gap until the new series - or even delaying the Christmas Special to Easter. I'm guessing that "delayed" Royal Family episode never got made either then as in times gone by stuff that didn't quite make the cut for Christmas would find itself airing at Easter. Heck, Easter is so bare on the BBC they could even do with Absolutely Fabulous. Or The Royal Bodyguard

For most of the year, the US version of HBO gets significant ratings for an hour a week on a Sunday and little else!

Launching a new channel is always incredibly difficult but I don't think there's any doubt that even at lower viewing levels, Sky Atlantic has the potential to provide more value than Sky 2 or 3 or whatever had that slot before.

They've made some mistakes in year one - I think they put too much into the HBO basket and they've missed out on Homeland which is the best drama to come out of the US this year (indeed, perhaps for a few years). There seems to be some ambiguity over what is a Sky1 show and what is a Sky Atlantic show. Unscripted stuff has to go - it just doesn't sit with the brand at all. I think they could maybe look at introducing some films to the line up.

The HBO deal didn't bring in a huge amount of original content so like any new channel, they've got to build on that and it will take a while. For a relaunch I'd go with "no ads", at least in primetime. But not before they build up a stronger line-up of original content.

Which Shrek film is on? The last one was a flop, I think

Shrek I (5.35-7.00pm) which could rate 3.5m for BBC1 up against - Two Mules For Sister Sarah, Come Dine With Me, Dad's Army and Keith's LemonAid which could very easily rate 3m for ITV1 - but ends perfectly for The Voice fans to switch to BBC1 around 6.57pm.

Q. Are there any BBC1 programmes that actually win the slot in Northern Ireland?

The good news is that it looks to me as if Comedy Central are preparing to bow to pressure and take over the rights as and when they can. I think they'd be wise to just import the Daily Show/Colbert Report block to the UK channel. Part of the problem the show had on More4 is that it was always incredibly isolated on the schedule and just stuck out like a sore thumb because there was nothing remotely complementary to it on the schedule.


The big stumbling block is that they can't actually tell if anyone is watching at all. The only data they can get is how many boxes were tuned into Atlantic in the period and not how many of those boxes were connected to televisions that were turned on.


Big Fat Gypsy Wedding is one of the few genuine 'water cooler' shows of the past decade. The fact that it drove so much conversation is the only reason the ratings got so big as we're seeing now the novelty has worn off the ratings are coming back down to earth.


But the real problem is that they only have themselves to blame. The way they've bungled Million Pound Drop is just staggering. Not only have they overexposed a successful format but they've managed to do it in what might very well be the worst possible slots. I'd honestly love to know what the thought process was that landed Million Pound Drop on a Friday and Saturday night. Its depressing that over the past few years Channel 4's speciality has become taking mildly successful formats and running them into the ground. And now with The Bank Job they're taking not even mildly successful formats and running them into the ground.

I half wish they'd renewed Big Brother at this point. At least that gave them some sense of structure. Right now the whole channel is just drifting and in fact all of the C4 channel's are just drifting.


They could do with finding a third family drama for Saturday night to sit alongside Doctor Who and Merlin. Its a shame Robin Hood died (or never really got off the ground) because that would have been a brilliant trio for the BBC to run on Saturday nights throughout the year. Hopefully if The Voice holds up this year the BBC will invest in trying to find a Merlin to pair with it for series two.


That's not entirely fair to HBO (and at the same time also overstates their ratings success).

Having said that it highlights the problem with creating a 'British HBO' and specifically with Sky trying to create a 'British HBO' – HBO is essentially the entire Sky platform in one package. The bulk of its content is films, concerts, comedy specials and boxing and their original scripted content is fairly limited. Sky was never going to be able to effectively replicate that because they already have Sky Movies, Sky Sports, Sky1, Sky Arts and everything else in between which left them with this weird channel that basically had no content.


Does it?

I keep coming back to this idea that there is some inherent value in Sky Atlantic as a concept and I'm not sure I see it. I think there's value in some of the content on the channel but I'm not sure that value would be decreased if it were to air on Sky1 or Sky Movies instead. Is there really a significant number of people who weren't already Sky subscribers now signing up so they can watch Game of Thrones or Mad Men?

Increasingly it seems to me as if Sky have shot themselves in the foot with Sky Atlantic. They passed on the chance to dramatically strengthen Sky1 so they could create a brand that very few people seem to care for or understand (including the people who work at Sky). There just seems to be no coherent point to Sky Atlantic. In fact it seems to me that the Sky Atlantic content could all be on demand and very few people would actually notice the difference.


The thing is it can't possibly have come as a surprise to them that the HBO deal wasn't going to bring an avalanche of original content. They must have had some idea of how much new content they were actually buying when they signed that deal and that it wouldn't all be coming at once. Hell a quick glance at the HBO website would have told them that.

It seems to me that the glaring mistake they made with Atlantic was that they launched a brand new channel with next to no new content. If memory serves Boardwalk Empire and Blue Bloods (which was a truly bizarre choice for the channel) were the only genuinely new content they had upon launch. It just seems insane to me that anyone at Sky looked at that schedule and thought – 'this the strongest possible launch schedule for our brand new heavily promoted channel'.

And even now they still have next to no new original content on the channel.

Also for the record I don't think the unscripted content needs to go I just think they need better unscripted.

I don't think it alone is going to make people sign up - maybe a few, but not many. I'd say the same of most channels. But it might help. I think if you're selling a package, then a channel of premium US content (the theory behind it anyway!) is going to draw in more people than whatever Sky3 was.

Mad Men wouldn't be on Sky1. I don't think it fits with the channel as a whole, I don't think there's room for it on their schedule and I don't think it would rate well enough for that channel. Also, I'm not sure something like Boardwalk Empire would have been acquired by Sky1.

Sky Atlantic and Sky Living broaden the output of the Sky entertainment channels. They offer something a bit more distinctive than just "Sky1 repeats" (which are still available). In the long run, they are potentially brands which can be used to sell Sky (alongside movies and sport) and create a stronger, more rounded impression of their entertainment package. Obviously there's a lot of work to do, but I think the theory is reasonable.


I'm not sure there's much on Sky Atlantic that would significantly strengthen Sky1. Game of Thrones obviously but little else. There's going to be a bit of overlap but it's the same situation with Sky Living - some of those shows could be on Sky1. They just need to be pushing these 3 brands forward. Sky1 is probably going to push ahead on original UK series as well so there will be room for US imports on another channel.


I think by this stage they should have done more to expand the original content on the channel. With HBO, maybe it was the whole "HBO UK" angle or the catalogue to fill the rest of the schedule but they seem to have put too much money into that. I keep coming back to it but missing Homeland really is unforgiveable for a channel like this. Shows like that don't come around very often. Where is Sky's Showtime deal or AMC or FX? Those channels are just as (arguably more) likely to provide the kind of shows that Sky Atlantic will need and they have perhaps zoned in a bit too much on HBO.

Next week is better than most - Game of Thrones on Monday, Mad Men and Blue Bloods on Tuesday and while not original The Sopranos does OK for them at 9pm on Wednesdays (and has a lead-in from The Devil's Dinner Party... :sleep . But it's still not good enough especially when Blue Bloods is one of the 3 original hours (and following Friday Night Lights and Mad Men seems somewhat out of place!).

Having things like The Sopranos and The Wire on repeat is good - but they need to find maybe 3 nights from 9pm to 11pm which are going to be marked out for original content that is, to use a phrase I hate, "on brand" (i.e: not Blue Bloods). It all seems a bit haphazard just now. They need to redraw the lines in terms of what is "Sky Atlantic content" because I'm not entirely sure just now.

Gold has commissioned a new series of Yes Prime Minister according to The Sun.

The HBO deal I believe is £30m per year and for that they're getting all the new stuff and the archive. The cost per hour is tiny especially when it includes high rating shows like Boardwalk and Game of Thrones.

Makes the price the BBC paid for the Voice format(£11-12.5m per year) even more incredulous.

As for Homeland, perhaps NewsCorp wanted to sell it to an independent third party, rather than a company they have a large financial interest in?

Not uncommon for hot Fox owned shows not going to Sky.

Both main stars are dead - how will that work?

Presumably the main roles will be re-cast

ITV are making a pilot Naked House which will feature Jason Manford who discovers his parents are nudists when he moves back in with them.
Karl Pilkington has signed for The Short Way Round in which he cycles the world with Warwick Davis in the basket.

Ricky Gervais to play a retirement home worker in a new C4 comedy Derek.

well ok, but the casting was perfect and it was also of its time. The civil service and government is much different today as characterised by The Thick Of it.