And on the subject of Sky Atlantic, it looks like it is very much here to stay as it's about to get substantial additional investment in ...... documentaries!

"Sky Atlantic HD is spearheading Sky’s commitment to documentary films with the introduction of a new peak time strand in early 2013. Up to twelve peak time landmark documentaries will form the backbone of the new documentary slate ......"

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

The Daily Mail and other newspapers are reporting The Voice results will be shown on Saturdays at 9pm. The BBC are angry that ITV has put a spoiler tactic of showing Philip Schofield's The Cube against his on-screen partner Holly Willoughby's show in yet another bid to dent The Voice's ratings:

sounds like pro BBC propaganda from the Daily Mail

In recent months, the Mail has been fully behind the BBC's entertainment productions. They were very much big supporters of last year's Strictly and have been firmly behind The Voice since it began too. I find it fascinating that the Beeb has now formed a much better relationship with some of these newspapers with regard to their entertainment shows in comparison to a few years ago. It is to an extent whereby even if Scd or the Voice lose the ratings among averages against Itv's shows, the mainstream press will still report on the BBC's shows very positively as if their shows were the bigger raters. This is an excellent example of how good BBC PR now are and how good they can be with the media game. Also the decision to have the Battle rounds over one weekend is an excellent scheduling move, they have learnt well from the mistakes other broadcasters have made with this phase of the competition.

Nice to see The Apprentice improving last night, not bad for UCL and the peak was very good. I got bored and flicked to BBC1, which was a slight improvement. A decent performance from 8pm-10pm for BBC2.

What was the rating for you're fired??

And E4 looks set to have a decent night tonight, if they're getting 800k for repeats, a whole night of it, with new episodes, is set to do well...

ITV are going nuts over The Planet's Funniest Animals all of a sudden, they're also showing it at 6.30 on Friday and Monday, in addition to all these daytime outings. Have they suddenly decided a million and one repeats is too much for You've Been Framed?

This week's Private Eye points out that schedulers do have a sense of humour:

ITV1, 25 March:

1850-2100 Dancing on Ice
2100-2200 Titanic

National Geographic 28 March:

2200-2300: Prostitution: The Oldest Trade
2300-2400: Banged Up Abroad

Oh, I do wish they'd quit their bellyaching. The truth is, ITV are doing the Beeb a favour. Outside of the celeb specials, The Cube's not enough of a ratings force these days for it to be a threat. And it's launching on a night which already offers a plentiful selection of rival gameshows at the moment such as Million Pound Drop (which it will clash directly with), Deal or No Deal and In It to Win It.

I would anticipate turmoil and potentially a complete management change at Sky News in the coming days, the channel has said this afternoon that managing editor Simon Cole approved the email hacking of 'canoe man' John Darwin by correspondent Gerrard Tubb.

Full Sky statement,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012...ent?intcmp=239

I was more surprised to see The Real Housewives of... turn up on ITV1 daytime. Channel 4 only show it very late at night.

The Cube as a spoiling tactic is one of the most ridiculous things I've read for a while when it comes to ratings in the media. Even when ITV go with pretty average scheduling, the BBC still manage to make themselves victims out of it.

I'm guessing BGT will have a couple of episodes on Sundays towards the end of April? Or do they have enough time to do 7 or 8 episodes on Saturdays before the live shows? I think they might be better served lengthening the Saturday ones and leaving The Voice on Sundays out on its own to see if what happened in the US for the results shows can happen here too (although such a big drop seems unlikely). .

They've got enough time to do 7 episodes before the live shows and as they haven't expanded the post-audition stage I can't see them bothering with Sunday shows, particularly as they'll probably have 2 hour dramas from 8pm anyway. I notice they've extended the audition shows to 75 mins for the next couple of weeks anyway, and I won't be surprised if they do a 90 minute show in the final week anyway as they normally do.

The final could be an issue for them though as it has to be off air by 10pm so if they stick with previous years scheduling it'll be completely against The Voice. So I'd be in favour of them doing a 2 night final, 8-10pm on both nights. Lemonaid, Cube and Family Fortunes are all due to end that weekend so they could have Lemonaid and ASFF at 6:15 and 7 on Saturday and Cube at 7 on Sunday or something. Putting the BGT Final completely head to head with The Voice would be a very bad move.


Agree with that. The World Series is a real pain, so at least they should launch XF a week or two early, so they don't have to rush the auditions and drag out judges houses as much. Agree about leaving Glee until midseason too, but tbh I can't see it lasting beyond next season anyway - it's dying already.

I think you have totally interpreted what has been posted. I dont think anyone has said Sky are losing money on entertainment programming, quite the opposite. Your statistics show how much income Sky receive compared to their spending on their entertainment channels, which again makes my point how little content Sky subscribers are getting for their money.

The simple point being made was that one show, Mad Men, didn't seem to be worth the significant outlay for it given the low ratings and presumable minimal rise in subscriptions and brand recognition increase.

I'm not sure how hacking Darwin's e-mails was in the public interest, he was hardly Al Capone. I see there's a huge scandal going on at RTE as well which has led to the departure of senior people and a huge libel payout to a priest as well as the axing of the prestigious current affairs programme Prime Time but we haven't heard much about that.....yet.


www.politics.ie

Sure there have been posts about Mad Men but there have also been a heck of a lot of posts about Sky Atlantic as a whole - many implying that it is not commercially viable.

And if you'd read my post you would see that I started off by asking three questions specifically about Sky Atlantic.

I then broadened it out to entertainment as a whole as we have stats for entertainment as a whole. The point being that if entertainment as a whole has a substantial gross margin, it seems extremely unlikely that Sky Atlantic can be losing much money.

Indeed anyone who knows the answers to the three questions I asked at the start of my post will realise that it's not.

Which is why Sky is now investing more money into it.

Big fall in Sky share price in reaction to hacking.

Down from 660p to 630p in a few minutes.

Now recovered about halfway back.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/m...82/default.stm

Good Sky.


Naughty sky.

It is a shame that Alcatraz in more than likely going to be cancelled this year as I am really enjoying it and it is pulling decent numbers for Watch.

Last post on this matter as its not really ratings relate but well worth reading this blog post from Sky News boss John Ryley. A fairly robust response to The Guardian,

http://skynews.skypressoffice.co.uk/...uble-standards

I think...

a) if the BBC are bellyaching then it's all an act and part of The Voice's ongoing hype. The BBC have been watching ITV in action and learning.

b) if ITV were really anxious to put Philip on against Holly they'd schedule The Cube for 7pm not 9.15pm.

The crossover audience between Dancing with the Stars and The Voice is infinitely greater than anything The X Factor faced at the start of the season. Equally the Dancing with the Stars clash is for the entire run time of The Voice and not just a 30 minute clash with the likes of Modern Family and Big Bang Theory. I'd agree that Dancing with the Stars isn't the only reason for the drop but I suspect its a big one.


Bones will almost certainly stay on Monday and serve as a lead-in for a new drama next season. I suspect if Touch is renewed (and I'm not convinced it will be) it'll stay on Thursday for at least the Fall. Tuesday night is really their big problem because right now they don't seem to have much of a foothold there any more.


I think Fox have been burnt by the two hour comedy block running right now so I'm not convinced they'll try it again. There's also the issue of how you juggle those shows when Glee returns midseason. Fox's schedule is a bit of a mess really.


Viewers seem to have flocked to iPlayer this time around.


The problem is that I don't think anyone is suggesting that Sky are losing money because of Atlantic but rather that they've spent and continue to spend vast sums of money on a channel that has no clear identity and seems to serve no distinct purpose. My point about Atlantic continues to be that there's so little (if any) ground between it and Sky1 (and Sky Living) at this point then I don't understand why it needs to be a separate entity when their entertainment profile could be dramatically strengthened by adding this content to Sky1 and Sky Living and even the likes of Sky Arts and Sky Movies. It is, after all, not the existence of Atlantic but rather the content that will have increased subscriptions. The only selling point the channel seems to have is that Sky won't let anyone else carry it and frankly I don't think the content on Atlantic is strong enough that Virgin customers for example will jump to Sky for it.

On the subject specifically of Mad Men I think that was an awful deal because they over bid for it. It was a non-competitive situation and yet they still moved to price everyone else out of the market on a show that has a incredibly small audience. I can understand why they make those moves on shows like 24 or Lost where there's a few million viewers to grab but the audience for Mad Men is so small and the competition for the rights so limited there's no way to look at any substantial increase on the license as over paying. Especially in light of the general lack of audience the show has gotten on Atlantic so far.


No doubt Fox need to look again at The X Factor scheduling. I think they'd probably be well served by stripping the auditions across a week or two as one hour shows and using them as lead-ins to new content at 9PM. I doubt they will though.

I think the clearest indication that The Apprentice is underperforming this series(despite registering a series best audience last night) is that it is trailing Emmerdale in the Wednesday night ratings when previously it was usually ahead.

But the point is they are not spending "vast sums of money" on it.

Sky Atlantic progarmme spend is well, well under 1% of revenues.

Non-availability to VM is a reason for keeping it separate. It's all very well saying it's not strong enough to attract VM people over. But it doesn't have to be on its own - the point is the totality of content not available to VM - it all adds up and in totality is enough to attract a certain number of people.

And what's the loss? The advertising revenue loss really is Mickey Mouse - when taking any decision Sky will think 10 times as much about subscriptions as they will about advertising or wholesale revenue.

Maybe the PR blitz worked for Sky Atlantic, extra subscriptions, but not extra viewers. They have programmes that not a lot of people care to watch. If it was available on VM, it would just be another channel that the vast majority would not bother to tune into. I am sure they have quality programmes, but ones that cater for a niche audience.