I admire him for this, better to quit while you're ahead than see your show go into decline and see all your former friends in the tabloids laugh at your misfortune. I think maybe when the contract ends next year, and if the show no longer tops the ratings, then Simon does right to call a halt to TXF. Nine years will be enough.
Maybe one way forward would be for him to launch a new show where bands and singers actually play and perform their own material with Simon as head judge. It might not be as mega, but it could do well and I would like the idea.

Yeah right .......... only if hes got another iron in the fire ......... talk is cheap.

He says it every few years, usually when people start talking contracts (ITV only has a BGT and XF deal until next year).

Anything to strengthen his bargaining position.

He knows he can't be as commercial on the BBC, he can't take the shows to Sky and limit the audience and no other commercial channel has ITV's money - so ITV hold all the cards and will be looking for a reduction in the amount they pay given lower ratings.

All he can do is threaten not to run the shows at all - that'll make ITV stump up cash.

That was 12 years ago though. Times have changed and Millionaire is no longer the exciting new powerhouse that can sustain a run like that. I think they'd be better of limiting it to a week but we'll see what happens.


There's no way they convince Ramsey to do it. I'm not even sure if he'd be allowed to – what's his deal with Channel 4 over here? Reviving Hell's Kitchen in non-celeb form isn't a terrible idea though. The problem of course is finding the right chef to anchor the whole thing...


I have my doubts. Personally I'm more interested in the 'we have something in development to replace it' line. That's interesting given that the last big show SyCo was developing turned out to be Red or Black...

My guess is the truth of the situation is – I'll pull it from air as long as I have another format that will replace it. I'm sure he'd fight to keep it on air if ITV hinted they'd fill the void with a Pop Idol or Popstars revival.

I wonder what he would've done if ITV had gained the rights for The Voice. Suddenly the singing contest in competition would be on 'his' channel. That would've made for some interesting negotiations.

I believe his new deal with Channel 4 was only a year so he could move from Channel 4 to ITV1 if the money was right, depends if Channel 4 want to keep him or not. I believe they signed Jimmy Doherty but no programmes have appeared with him yet.

Confirmation the BBC has lost the Grand National, the Derby and Royal Ascot.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/horse-racing/17423844

I still wonder what ITV would have done if they'd actually won the rights to The Voice – can anyone work out where they'd have scheduled it? I can't.

January is too close to The X Factor and then its Dancing on Ice and Britain's Got Talent and the license fee and proximity to The X Factor would have made the summer a non-starter (not to mention the sport) and then its The X Factor. Presumably they would have had to shift Dancing on Ice somewhere else (maybe January or the summer) or pulled it completely to accommodate The Voice. The whole thing is just madness and would have made ITV wall-to-wall phone votes for the entire year.

Anyway...

To be honest I'm always slightly amazed that ITV haven't more overtly leveraged Cowell with a Pop Idol or Popstars revival when it came time to renegotiate The X Factor. It always seems like that would drive the fee down somewhat because as has been mentioned ITV is really the only viable UK home for The X Factor (and Britain's Got Talent for that matter) so Cowell really does need ITV as much as they need him.

Also it just occurs to me that the only new format we've heard about as being in the works at SyCo is that awful sounding 'DJ Idol'. Have they got something completely secret up their sleeve or has Cowell genuinely lost the plot and believes that could be a big new format for him?

Possibly between Britain's Got Talent and Euro 2012? They could have started it on Britain's Got Talent final night (using BGT as a lead in - Cowell would've been impressed ) and stripped the auditions/battle rounds across the following week. They could've had double eliminations like The X Factor to get numbers down quickly and have it over within the month. It would've been very messy though.

I think they could have stripped The Voice across a couple of weeks - maybe around now - like I'm a Celebrity but for Spring.

Or maybe tried it midweek - ITV keep saying they are going to do more entertainment during the week. Mind you, they keep saying they are going to do Comedy as well and Benidorm aside haven't really got round to doing it.

ITV probably never had clear plan themselves.

Hell's Kitchen in the US format is definitely something to look at - especially when Ramsay's C4 deal comes up.


They'd probably have started by sending the rights bill to Syco Entertainment.


I'm not sure that Pop Idol is a credible threat, tbh. I think it's a hard one to do after X Factor and with an entirely new team required. There's also the involvement Talkback Thames who are definitely "Team Cowell" when it comes to the two Simon's and would definitely push the case for XF over PI. Then the arrival of BGT (particularly as ITV missed that one first time) strengthens his position.

Plus, I'm not sure Syco are taking the pi*s when it comes to license fees on the shows. You look at Big Brother when Endemol got that massive deal and clearly didn't put anything significant into the production budget - the same couldn't be said for Syco in the past few years and it has paid dividends for ITV. Certainly Cowell's talent deal with ITV was never that huge.

In terms of development, that DJ show isn't going anywhere. I have a feeling it won't be made. I've never been able to see where it could sit in the UK (and Cowell seems determined to limit his options to ITV1!). There's some kind of cookery show that has been mentioned a few times. But Syco have been atrocious when it comes to development in the past few years so who knows. Somehow they got through 4 years from Got Talent to Red or Black without doing anything new. Most producers follow up every hit with a deluge of new shows (most of them hideous) trying to capitalise on their initial success. It works a lot better than what Syco do (because generally, it takes a lot of swings to connect with a hit format). Tbh, I think their bigger focus might be this Nickelodeon development deal for Rachel Crow (the kid off X Factor USA) because that could open up a whole new area for them (one which Cowell has been desperate to get into for years) and it's a healthier genre that the reality format business at the moment. Whatever else they might have, I'm far from convinced that they've got X Factor 2.0 sitting on the shelf.

TV Burp not ending after all...

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage...p-is-back.html

When the end of TV Burp was announced last year some people on DS did suggest the whole thing was a stunt

I have to say I had a feeling this might be the case given that there has been no hype from ITV at all about the 'last ever episode' - now we can see why. I'm glad it isn't finishing for good, but I hope he only does one series per year to keep it from going too stale.

Was it ever confirmed it was ending? Or is just one unnamed source in the sun saying that their previous unnamed source was making stuff up?

I have absolutely no idea why they didn't just keep the football coverage running until 6.30, which with the draw and the highlights of the Chelsea match (as there wasn't a highlights show) they could have easily done, without rushing off at 6.15. And for a ridiculous choice of filler.

It's not the first time it's ever been in primetime before, though, I remember them shoving a couple out on Saturday nights in the early noughties when the hidden camera show Hotel Getaway was a stinker and shoved at 5pm, with that after it.

So farewell horse racing then. A fading mass appeal sport, as evidenced by the almost continuous decline in ratings over the past 20 years. Once a 16-17m banker, everyone starts getting excited now if the National touches 9m.

It will never do so again, with the sheer weight of the BBC largely ignoring it. And if the race delivers 5-7m at peak for C4 next year, then the tabloids will see it as a declining event too. Hopefully the BBC will substantially run down their coverage next month from Aintree and the other two later in the year.

Cruel sport anyway, at least when jumps are involved. Time it was banned...

BBC1's F1 highlights peaked with 3.2m yesterday.

3.2m seems a decent enough afternoon re-run peak figure but I have a feeling the average was of that order in 2011

hah! you didnt have a problem with the horses dying to boost the BBCs ratings. Total hypocrite.

you can tell its not good news when Hodges ignores the average. Maybe he was too busy pimping the X Factor One show cross over tonight. The mind boggles.

I'm not certain a decline like that is evidence in itself of its mass appeal fading. I don't see why horse racing should be expected to be immune from the way more viewer choice has eroded viewing figures in the last 20 years. You could pick out literally any programme, from Eastenders, to Who Wants to be a Millionaire to FA Cup football and make exactly the same argument - edit to add: depending on which programme you dislike the most!

Sky Sports F1 live coverage averaged 246k, peaking at 455k.

Homeland hit a series high of 2.46m inc. +1. Great rating!

Dancing on Ice- 7.2m/30pct and 6.0m/23.4pct, WWTBAM- 5.6m/22pct (all include plus 1)