However, it's probably a truism that commercial TV takes more account of the overnights and the Beeb/subscription TV can afford to wait for the "officials" before deciding such things as recommissioning a show...

K

I was too polite to mention that heh.

and yet not really surprising as there must be considerable audience overlap.

Scott & Bailey might have a huge +1 figure?

Yeah, there does seem to be a big audience overlap between the two shows: both down about 1.4m compared to their previous episode. Timeshifts will be large though - I reckon Silent Witness will timeshift up to about 7m and Scott & Bailey to about 5.8m/6.4m (exc/inc +1).

I think its actually Titanic's fault that Scott & Bailey performed badly. People are not going to watch the first part of something on the Sunday and don't bother to tune in 24 hours later. Titanic boosted Silent Witness, which carried on into Monday, denting Scott & Bailey heavily.

Had ITV1 been a million or two higher on Sunday, then the results would have been reversed.

The big problem for ITV is how to carry on depicting Scott & Bailey as a massive hit, and part of the drama revival the channel is trying to convince the media it is generating.

The reality is that, behind the scenes, all those new dramas ITV held up as being 'hits' - Vera, S&B, Monroe, DCI Banks - have been rebooted to try and remedy Series 1 problems. S&B arrived back with some hysterical promotion - did ITV's Laura Mackie write Radio Times' Alison Graham a blank cheque? - and performed respectably ... but SW's presence in the same slot rather reveals how little viewer loyalty S&B actually commands. In other words, people will watch if there's nothing else on ... but it's not appointment-to-view television.

And, of course, if it was, it wouldn't have suffered in the way it did last night. ITV drama has a quality control issue - which, of course, they are trying to cover with their feeble claims of 'aggressive scheduling by the BBC' ... What exactly is the BBC supposed to do? Air the Test Card while a new ITV drama is on?

You can add Kidnap & Ransom to the list, great first series ratings and huge drop-off for series two. Are they all too alike I wonder? Whitechapel too, while still successful, is alot lower than its first two series.

Interesting announcement from the BBC this morning that they will make their HD streams from the Olympics available to platform providers,


http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat...c-streams.html

Not sure if Virgin Media have taken up the offer, or if they have the space to do so, but Sky have announced they will launch 24 new channels in the Sports section of the EPG from July 24th to offer the BBC coverage,


http://corporate.sky.com/media/press...mpics_channels

Its unlikely to have a huge impact on the overall BBC 1 average for the games but its an intriguing move - particularly on the BBC's part as presumably Sky will advertise this to the high heavens for their HD service.

Edit: Just to add, Sky will be paying for the satellite distribution and 'discussions are still continuing' with other platform providers,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/rogermose...rt_of_our.html

I would agree - and I think it's fair to say that the tastes of those in charge of ITV drama are significantly narrower than those commissioning drama for BBC One. At a presentation a couple of years ago, Laura Mackie went out of her way to stress she didn't want anything too 'blokey' or male-orientated for the channel ... which, considering ITV was once the home of The Sweeney, Minder and London's Burning (to name a few), seems a remarkable decision. Why willingly ignore a large part of the television viewership?

Despite all the spin, ITV drama is far from being in rude health - and the last two nights' ratings are testament to that.

As far as commercial TV channels - and their advertisers - are concerned, the overnights are the crucial figures, as these show how many people were watching 'live'.

If people record a programme and watch it later, they're much less likely to sit through the breaks and watch the ads.

600,000.

Game of Thrones was Atlantic's best performer in a good while, although I think that figure is a good 200k or so down on the opening episode last year - however I think I am right in saying S1E1 was not up against live premier league football.


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

I didn't know ITV are bringing back the civilian Who What's To Be A Millionaire? Live across the week in the summer!

Ken

Although the overnights include those who watch the same day and spin through the ads.

To be fair though, both S&B and SW lost a considerable number of viewers. It's not like one lost many more viewers than the other. The reality of it is that generally if two similar dramas go up against each other, there's bound to be an audience crossover and they'll lose viewers - there's only a finite number of viewers that these shows can compete for in that 9pm slot after all. Both lost more viewers than I expected (I thought SW would be at c6m and S&B c5m) but what that shows is that there's a considerable audience overlap between the two programmes. Viewer loyalty, if we take the audience drop compared to the previous episode into account, was quite similar among both shows. It's easy to say that this means the show's not appointment-to-view, which you're right in a way, but you could use this same criticism for 90% of dramas. Even big shows like Doc Martin and Downton Abbey rate lower when against another drama than when not facing a drama, although obviously because they're so big in the first place it doesn't really matter for them.

Regarding S&B itself, the first two episodes of this series had consolidated averages near 8m (even excluding STV) - yes, it was up against easy competition but those sort of ratings are excellent nonetheless (many dramas fail to get 6m even against weak competition) and shows it has potential. You have to remember Silent Witness is BBC1's 2nd biggest weeknight drama series, only behind New Tricks - it's been a big-hitter. It's pretty much the 2nd hardest competition S&B could've possibly faced all year on weeknights: it can hold its own when against an average drama - as it did last year against Case Histories so it's not only when it's against sub-3m competition that it's done well. But facing a show like SW, which is a 2nd-parter as well, is difficult; I suspect not many other weeknight dramas can hold up better against a drama of SW's potential (of up to 7m). As long as S&B holds up for the rest of the series in the overnights, continues to pick up a hefty +1 figure and consolidates to around 6m, it's on course for a 6-7m consolidate series average which I'd call a solid 'hit' status and worthy of a recommission. It's not the New Tricks style of hit a few people were expecting - why it would jump 3m this series from last year's most common mid-5's overnights I'm not sure - but it'd still be one of the higher rating weeknight dramas on TV.


Whitechapel series three had a consolidated average of 6.68m/7.03m (exc/inc +1) which is higher than series two, and that figure is even without STV showing it - it'd have averaged over 7m if it had been fully networked like the previous two series. It's down from series one though, but I think we all knew that would be the case after how series 2 rated.

I suppose its true that there are only so many crime dramas you can watch. The trouble is with the exception of Downton its not as if any of ITV's non-crime dramas have done particularly well either. Its increasingly clear that ITV need a new drama strategy though.


I think it becomes more confusing when you consider how much they're paying for football rights to attract a male audience. You'd think they'd use the football as a promotional platform for more male friendly shows elsewhere on the schedule.

Wow, the two dramas hurt each other much more than I expected. Worth noting with S&B though that it still averaged 5m including +1 which really isn't bad at all, and it knocked SW just as much as SW dented it.

Dear all

if you have a spare moment please read MediaTel's overnights story

my mate writes them and he's pretty funny, especially considering he doesn't generally watch live telly much

http://mediatel.co.uk/television/new...-1-4m-viewers/

Monday 2nd April Overnights
BBC One
13:45- Doctors: 1.31m (17.6%)
19:00- The One Show: 4.53m (22.2%)
20:00- EastEnders: 8.01m (34.1%)
20:30- Panorama: 2.72m (11%)
21:00- Silent Witness: 5.31m (21.21%)

BBC Two
20:30- The Little Paris Kitchen: Cooking With Rachel Khoo: 1.3m (5.5%)
21:00- Modern Spies: 1.14m (4.7%) inc HD

ITV1
17:00- The Chase: 2.47m (inc +1)
19:00- Emmerdale: 6.66m (32.7%)
19:30- Coronation Street: 8.8m (39.8%)
20:30- Coronation Street: 8.87m (36.3%) , +1: 146k (0.6%)
21:00- Scott & Bailey: 4.41m (17.61%) , +1: 546k (3.01%)

Channel 4
18:30- Hollyoaks: 1.1m (5.8%)
20:00- Damien Hirst: the First Look: 600k (2.5%) , +1: 96k (0.4%)
21:00- Embarrassing Bodies: 2.44m (9.7%) , +1: 403k (2.2%)
22:00- Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA: 1.65m (inc +1)

Channel 5
13:45- Neighbours: 649k (8.6%)
17:30- Neighbours: 1.02m (7.0%)
18:00- Home and Away: 714k (4.1%)
21:00- Little Nicky: 650k (3%) , +1: 74k (0.53%)

Ratings include HD and are tape-checked where necessary

Multichannel
5*
18:30- Home and Away: 507k (2.7%)

BBC Three
22:00- EastEnders: 750k (3.7%)

Dave (inc +1)
21:00- Qi XL: 327k

E4
18:30- The Big Bang Theory: 810k (inc +1)
19:00- Hollyoaks: 422k (2.0%)
22:00- Made in Chelsea: 559k (3.1%) , +1: 56k

Film4 (inc +1)
18:45- Hairspray: 294k
21:00- The Reader: 281k

G.O.L.D
21:00- Ali G Indahouse: 156k

More4 (inc +1)
21:00- Grand Designs Australia: 334k

Sky Atlantic
21:00- Game of Thrones: 522k (2.1%)
22:10- Morgan Spurlock’s Britannia: 88k (0.5%)

Watch (inc +1)
21:00- Grimm: 423k

Sources: Broadcast, C4Sales, DS, MediaTel

Sorry but what use are timeshifts to Advertisers? Consolidated figures for dramas shown on Commercial tv [which even exclude ad breaks] are pretty meaningless and often only used for spin purposes.


Surprised to see S&B fall so low especially when you consider the big difference in lead in. 2.7m v 8.9m!

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

About 30% of recorded commercial TV is watched at normal speed through the ads, so there is a significant commercial increment to time shifted viewing, even if the majority of people do skip through the ads.

Great news, cheers for posting.

Not a bad night, for the soaps, but I think the fall in Emmerdale's ratings (or should is say the Emmerdale rating s "crisis"), is down to the resilient One Show, and EE is back over the 8million mark after a small wobble last week...

S&B and SW, last night showed what happens when two similar programmes go head to head, this isnt Spooks vs Downton, this is more like Call the Midwife vs Downton...

On the multi's E4 had a half decent night picking up 600k+ (inc +1) for Chesea, after a very decent TBBT repeat and an awful first look at Hollyoaks. Meanwhile Grimm and GOT show that US imports can rate decently wherever there on, and for channels as limited as Atlantic and Watch, a 2% share is not to be sniffed at...