Not bad? That's less than the reruns of The Sopranos get on the same channel!

Mad Men = massively overhyped, massively poor acquisition.

Sam Hodges on twitter confirms The Voice Battle Rounds start times:

@Sam_Hodges: #BBC1 confirms #TheVoiceUK Battle Rounds to take place over the weekend of April 21/22. Saturday show 7pm, Sunday 7.30pm.

I assume a 90 min Sunday episode and no Countryfile/Roadshow that week?

Dead Men more like.

Ken

I like Mad Men, I think it's a very good show, but I have to agree with you that the hype it receives is ridiculously over the top.

I do think it's a show that gives Sky Atlantic a good image though. It's a show critics love, it wins awards, so there is a bit of prestige there, but in terms of ratings it's clearly not worth the money they must have splashed out on it, and I wonder exactly how many extra subs it brought in. It's a box set show really and I imagine quite a few will wait for the DVD release (like myself).

When you look at the ratings Games of Thrones pulled in, that attracted a tiny fraction of the hype Mad Men's been getting in the build up to its return and yet it comfortably outrated it. On that basis those ratings can't be anything BUT disappointing.

And it's all well and good calling it a 'niche' show but the hype it was getting far surpassed most US imports in this country.

I'd suggest that the last part is a bit of a contradiction. Mad Men does get a lot of hype - not hugely surprising given that it's almost universally acclaimed by its peers - and carries a lot of prestige. All this "hype" is lending that prestige to Sky Atlantic - billing it as the home of premium drama. It's a brand building exercise more than anything.

Sure, it's rating a bit lower than I'd have expected but it was plainly never going to start delivering 300k overnights. If it's just about the ratings, then it kinds of misses the whole point. As I've said before, they need to be playing the long game. It's not even about how many people subscribe today because of Mad Men. It's about building Sky's entertainment brands over the next few years. And Mad Men does that a hell of a lot better than Rule Britannia or Cleverdicks.

you dont understand Sky's business model. Its not always about how many but it is about who they are. If they can add upscale light tv viewers to their sub's its well worth it.

I do think that's a good point. It does boost the brand massively - it's attracting attention to the Sky brand from people who probably wouldn't normally consider watching.

TVBytheNumbers reports The Voice US dropped to a season low yesterday with 3.2 [8.35m] for its first live results show, the 1st live performance show previous night had 4.1. The Voice US is now down to X Factor US levels.. XFUS last Fall had 4.3 for its first live show and 3.6 for its first results show.

The talent of contestants this season is better than last season so I think Voice US has just been unlucky with the way it's scheduled against Dancing with the Stars. It deserves to be rating higher than it has been.

Anyone know how Daybreak is performing this week against BBC Breakfast?

I think the other issue is going to be that the live shows last year had good lead-ins from America's Got Talent and that won't happen this year. So we've started seeing declines vs the first season.

The results show rating is a bit weak, IMO. That 9pm slot isn't the toughest in the world and DWTS held up far better from Monday to Tuesday.

It's still doing well for NBC, but they'll probably be hoping that they get a good reaction to this weeks live shows and things pick up next week. Since that surprise surge to a 6.2 for the first battle show, they've fallen rather sharply.

I'd prefer to comment on what we can actually see and as we can't see subscriber numbers, the TV ratings are the best indicator we have to assess its value as an acquisition. And I'm hard pushed to call a decline of around 75% on the BBC Four numbers anything other than a disaster for a show that has been bigged up as much as Mad Men. Who said anything about 300k overnights? Nobody in here. But for episode 2 not to clear 100k in the consolidated data? It's underachieving, pure and simple. And there's little evidence on these numbers to suggest it was a good buy for a channel that only has about one hit show.

What's the use in all this "prestige" you speak of and having critics falling over themselves to big a show up on your channel if it doesn't deliver a respectable audience? Six Feet Under was pushed to a graveyard slot on Sky Atlantic with numbers not much worse than Mad Men is now producing. And surely if it was that great a brand it would have a bigger default audience than 20 odd thousand?

Sky Atlantic the home of premium drama? If you believe the marketing maybe. The HBO deal - which sounded like a masterstroke when the news broke - has turned out to be a damp squib so far, delivering little of note. The best in the genre are still elsewhere - the likes of Dexter, Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead and True Blood will not be showing on Sky Atlantic any time soon. Furthermore, Breaking Bad is a Netflix exclusive now, and to cap it all off they missed the boat on Homeland too.

Sky Atlantic as a brand could just as easily be summarised as one that is overly ambitious and underperforming. Whilst I agree it has some good content, there is absolutely no need for it to be delivered via a linear channel alongside random UK commissions like Cleverdicks, especially when it's not the definitive source it claims to be. The likes of Netflix do a far better job of serving the consumer the very same kind of content, and compared to BSkyB especially represent excellent value.

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

Just because they're the only indicator we've got doesn't mean that they're any use. Whether we use 100k or 200k as a benchmark, it's pretty clear that it was never going to do the kind of business that Game of Thrones does. I'm not arguing that in terms of ratings, it's lower than I'd have expected. But they were plainly willing to pay for a show that wasn't going to deliver on the ratings front.

It's not exactly a show that you're going to get hooked on by watching episode 1 of season 5. In fact, it's the last show where that might happen! So they were only ever going to get the existing viewers who had access to Sky Atlantic.


You've already commented on all the hype - Mad Men is a brand in itself. While very few watch it, it is widely known because of the "hype". It's now associated with Sky Atlantic. As I said, they need to take a long term strategy here and build stronger entertainment brands over the next few years.


Breaking Bad would be good for them if it was cheap - but it's very different to Mad Men in the sense that it's nowhere near as well known.

Missing Homeland was a huge blunder, something I've said several times before. But the aim is to be associated with premium drama. Mad Men contributes to that.


It's absolutely underperforming - they need more ratings hits and they could use a few more "quality" series as well. In terms of new US series, they've not done anywhere near as much as they should have. And the weird extra series don't help. But the idea is sound and Mad Men fits in very well.

There's certainly no way you can spin that Mad Men number to look healthy - sure, the first episode was 35% up in Sky homes, but after the episode 1-2 collapse, it now looks like it's down in those homes too. Which is awful considering the hype. I wonder how much money per viewer Sky Atlantic spent on Mad Men's promotion? All those newspaper pages and billboards cost hundreds of thousands.... Let alone the rights costs?

To be honest - I'm not sure Sky Atlantic is worth it on any sort of business level. Either advertising or subscription based. Much like Sky Arts, it's more a vanity and promotional exercise - intended to become the chattering classes' favourite channel and make the brand a bit more palatable to them. Rather strengthens their case against the BBC.

I've never watched Mad Men, but I recently saw some publicity photos for it.

I don't know who this Christina Hendricks bloke is, but I like him.

Sky Arts 1 & 2 are other examples of Sky niche programming that dont get big numbers but cost a reasonable amount of money to run. I dont think any commercial broadcaster is going to be governed by gross audience figures alone anymore - demos and sub numbers are always going to matter

Sky Arts drives subs. Just cause they dont post on Digital Spy, it doesnt mean they dont exist. And the viewers who watch are an advertisers dreams. When you consider that 95% of advertising on some products is wasted (high end cars, premium finacial products, luxury goods, etc), Sky Arts gets you access to viewers who actually have the money to buy - a bit like CNBC does in some respects

Facejacker isn't much better really - C4 really should be aiming for more than 1.2m in the 10pm slot.

As discussed many times here though C4's comedy schedule is a mess - I'm sure both shows would do better as part of a traditional C4 Friday night line up.

Good move by the BBC to announce their scheduling plan early. That way whatever ITV put up against, the BBC can accuse them of being petty-minded, aggressive and not thinking about the viewers.

I'm pretty sure thats what you were planning to say anyway. Interesting to read today how much The Voice Ireland has gone off the boil in recent weeks - will be interesting to see if the BBC hype machine can keep it up UKwise

And The Voice Australia will be causing Cowell a bit of trouble down under going head to head with Australia's Got Talent, both of which are stripping auditions over their first week.

this post makes me wonder if people on this thread, watch TV for the sake of it, or just to be part of some tribal group, the X-Factors fans, the BGT fans, the the Voices fans, the Strictly fans?

You are all as part of football fans, from what I can tell.

ITV seem to have given up on Sundays at the moment - perhaps Titanic has taken the entire nights budget.

And looking at the 14th/15th The Cube takes the 9pm slot after BGT with Sunday night having the FA Cup and TOWIE v Benidorm Big Quiz. Looks like Celebrity Deal or No Deal is a one-off at the moment - Marley and Me take the slot for C4 (surely nobody who has seen that once will put themselves through it again!).

I think its a fantastic show and leagues ahead of any of the other new content that's aired on Atlantic so far. However I'm not entirely sure what Sky were thinking when they brought it at such a needlessly inflated price. It was never going to be a big ratings winner for them and I can't imagine it driving that much traffic to Sky in general. Mad Men (like The Wire in fact) is one of those shows that everyone gets told about and told they should watch but probably never will until they appear on Netflix or someone gives them the DVD's.


I don't think in and of itself Mad Men is a poor acquisition for them (I think the opposite in fact). The problem is how much they spent on the show. I'm not sure what compelled them to make a bid for the rights that just completely blew the BBC out of the water. There was no way on earth given the general budget climate at the time that the BBC was going to get into any kind of bidding war with Sky for the rights to a little watched US import and as far as I can remember nobody else expressed any kind of interest in the show. At times it seems that Sky are just their own worst enemy when it comes to buying shows. They decide they want something and to scare everyone else away they buy them at ridiculously inflated prices.

The bigger problem Sky have with Mad Men is that I don't know how jumps into a show like this at the start of the fifth season and frankly I'd be amazed if any new viewers that tuned into episode one had any idea what was going on or cared about it (that might help explain the drops we saw after episode one). Did Sky's rights for the show not extend to seasons 1-4? If not you have to wonder how they managed to pay so much money for the show and not get the rights to the first four seasons and if it did why on earth have they not repeated them? That I suspect would have been their best/only way to make Mad Men a decent ratings story for them. Give a big promotional push to airing the whole show from episode one. God knows they've had time to air all four seasons before the fifth one started.


The X Factor (by and large) didn't have the same level of competition and NBC haven't spent anywhere near as much on The Voice as Fox did on The X Factor. Dancing with the Stars was always going to be the big stumbling block for The Voice and its one that was flagged up at the up fronts. By and large I think they made the right decision with the Monday night slot but Dancing... was always going to dent it at least a little.

Regardless of all that these numbers are still sensational for NBC. Worth remembering that last night they averaged a 2.2 in 18-49 up from a 1.8 on the same night last week. If I were them I'd be more concerned that The Voice didn't give a better boost to the entire Tuesday night line-up.

And of course Fox had (another) absolute nightmare. Raising Hope at a 1.6 and New Girl dropping to a 2.3. In general Fox have had an absolutely terrible season this year. The X Factor under performed, Glee in free fall, Idol dropping massively, House ending and nothing new breaking out.


Given that Netflix tied up exclusive rights I doubt Breaking Bad was sold for a fortune. In fact at this stage the list of shows that Sky Atlantic missed out on is much more impressive than their actual original content.

The Radio Times has Celeb DOND down as 1 of 8 although it also continues to state that Silent Witness is a 12 part series where all other sources say it's a 6-parter, so what do they know?

All ITV's other Sunday night dramas are probably 2-hourers - Lewis and Vera and the likes. So ITV probably think that 3 hours of drama on a Sunday is overdoing. Lewis followed by Titanic would be a bit of a bank-bursting line-up.

Big Quiz is something that can easily be cancelled if the FA Cup goes into extra-time. I gather Chelsea are trying to get this match moved to an earlier time, officially on the grounds of safety and convenience for the fans but unofficially cos they would be playing Barcelona in the Champions League on the Sunday and want as much time to prepare as possible. If they succeed in their aim ITV will be a little peeved. I guessing though, that in the end, money(ITV's) will talk.