That's more to do with the fact NBC is looking to run The Voice later this year too.


I agree. I think a general upward trend is important and it doesn't matter if it's large or small. Ratings can fluctuate across a series anyway, especially long ones.


People are almost willing the show to fail. Let's see what they do with this series. Why are people assuming that people will tune out for live shows? The contestants , the quality of the shows and the stories coming out of them might be enough to keep people watching.

According to one isolated story in The Hollywood Reporter (if I remember rightly but I'm probably not). That basically no one else really picked the story up and it hasn't really resurfaced since is pretty telling on that front. Plus if NBC were planning a Fall run of The Voice they would ideally need to have started the auditions process by now and signed the coaches up for it and as far as I know neither of those things has happened (although I think Aguilera has signed on for a third season). And we'd know if they had because you can't do either quietly.

It is also worth remembering that these same stories about running The Voice during the Fall circulated last year as well when the first season was on the air. But that came to nothing for numerous reasons which are still in place now. Not least of which is asking all four judges (or any combination of them) to commit to two runs of the show a year is a ridiculously big ask and would take up far too much of their year even with the Voice's relatively limited schedule (compared to the likes of The X Factor and Idol).

For now I'd take any scheduling rumours (particularly in regards to NBC) with a massive grain of salt and just wait to see what happens in May. Its not impossible they'll do another run of The Voice in the Fall but I'd be surprised and it would be a huge mistake. My guess is it'll stay midseason and they'll take another look at the Battle Rounds and live shows which have provided stumbling blocks of various degrees this year.

US TV Ratings Sunday April 15

In a night of spectacularly low ratings for the broadcast networks CBS' entirely original line-up just edged Fox's mixture of repeats and originals whilst NBC amazingly posted a close third place finish.

In the big headlines from Sunday night CBS' new drama NYC 22 debuted badly at 10PM which means that sound you can hear is fans of CSI: New York and Miami breathing a sigh of relief. Both shows chances at renewal just improved a little. In the same slot after signifcant Masters induced delays CSI: Miami managed a 1.7 for its season finale and a 2.1 when it last started on time. Meanwhile over on ABC the fourth and final part of the Titanic mini-series was up a tenth on its Saturday night performance but was still disastrously bad and appears to have taken the legs out from under GCB which dropped 21% to a series low at 10PM.

Elsewhere The Good Wife and The Amazing Race were both steady week-on-week. The Simpsons returned to Fox with original episodes down 8% but Bob's Burgers was up with an original lead and The Cleveland Show jumped 67% running out of a Family Guy repeat at 9:30 rather than a Simpsons repeat at 7:30. Hardly a huge surprise.

On NBC Harry's Law confirmed once again that its getting cancelled. It dropped a tenth and failed to crack a 1 despite reduced competition because of the Once Upon A Time repeat on ABC. From 9PM Celebrity Apprentice was even vs. last week again despite reduced competition but it was at least above a 2 which will give NBC some comfort.

ABC
7PM: America's Funniest Home Videos – 1.5 [6.27]
8PM: Once Upon A Time [r] – 1.1 [4.14]
9PM: Titanic – 0.9 [4.17]
10PM: GCB – 1.5 [4.48]

CBS
7PM: 60 Minutes – 1.4 [10.79]
8PM: The Amazing Race – 2.5 [9.18]
9PM: The Good Wife – 1.8 [9.99]
10PM: NYC 22 – 1.5 [8.90]

Fox
7PM: The Simpsons [r] – 1.0 [2.36]
7:30PM: The Cleveland Show [r] – 1.1 [2.67]
8PM: The Simpsons – 2.2 [4.86]
8:30PM: Bob's Burgers – 1.8 [3.78]
9PM: Family Guy [r] – 2.2 [4.63]
9:30PM: The Cleveland Show – 2.0 [4.33]

NBC
7PM: Dateline – 1.3 [4.82]
8PM: Harry's Law – 0.9 [8.11]
9PM: Celebrity Apprentice – 2.1 [6.62]

Like a yo-yo What caused the dips... what were ppl channel surfing to (in other words, what did I miss )

I think what will determine medium-term success is what happens to the winner. If by Series 3 (assuming we get a S3 ) the winner of S1 has disappeared without trace, had their album flop (ie not charted at No 1), been dropped by Universal... then I suspect the audience will be as cyncical and jaded as XF's and go elsewhere.

Titanic the mini series was a disaster for ABC. Viewers cheered on the iceberg!

The auditions for series 3 started last month
http://www.nbcthevoice.com/how-to-au...on-process.php




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You see AlexiR. I told you!

Impressed by the F1 figures, I have to say. I think the BBC will be delighted too - I was expecting the ratio to be difficult for them in the early morning when the audience skews towards the more hardcore fan. I figured the afternoon races would see bigger ratios because of the influx of casual viewers who will predominantly come to the BBC.

Sky can focus on improving that number - and I'm sure they will do. As those with the channel get more familiar with the coverage, they'll be less inclined to look for the BBC even where it's available - and get into a groove of watching Sky each race weekend regardless.


Good find. But Uh Oh. Surely someone at NBC realises this will end badly...

You'd think that wouldn't you? And yet......

John de Mol's quote came after the second Dutch season which saw an after Xmas dip surrounding the live shows. Criticisms reared that it had been running too long. What with 6 2-hour audition shows, 4/5 2-hour battle shows and having 7 candidates per team for the live shows. This coming Autumn the show starts a month later than last year so maybe the "twist" is reigning in the ever expanding number of shows. If they do want a large number of audition shows and number of contestants they could do with an extra "live" battle round in which the public chooses the final four contestants per team for the live shows.

Thanks, Steve.

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Ken

Looks like Good Morning America ''may'' have had a weekly ratings win over NBC's Today show last week. This could be the first weekly win for GMA in 16 years in total viewers.
The Margin was a whopping 16,000!




If it happens it'll be Christina V Britney [on The X factor] again I think its madness but then again I thought It was disaster for the BBC to wait till March to launch The Voice, so what do I know?



Both Australia's Got Talent and The Voice Australia were trending worldwide this Morning, It'll be interesting to see what happens. I'm going for a demo win for The voice but a total audience win for AGT.

The first Andrew Lloyd Webber show 'Maria' had a BBC 3 spin off too with June Sarpong and she also hosted the BBC3 coverage of Only Fools on Horses for Sport Relief.

Zai Bennet said at the Edinburgh festival that they would wait until after the first season of 'The Voice' was over to see if they would launch a BBC3 spin off.


With Holly Willoughby and Jake Humphrey iirc. Whatever happened to them?

Serves ITV's right with The Big Quiz. It's not often I say this but what was wrong with You've Been Framed? Benidorm v TOWIE is ITV2 fare at best. Titanic at least didn't sink below 3.5m but that's still awful for it. BBC One had a very good night and Homeland and Once Upon A Time performed strongly.

^^
This.


Although hardly the most surprising ratings news of the year.


The most pleasing, but not the most surprising.

The first (of several) rounds of production auditions started in March and at this stage I wouldn't read too much into that. Going on their current timetable the earliest they'd be able to do taped auditions in front of the coaches would be June but the availability of the coaches probably puts a spanner in that plan. Maroon 5 have an album out in June which probably takes Adam Levine out of play until sometime in July. Blake Shelton is touring this summer which makes booking him difficult until September. Cee Lo Green is mostly free over the summer but starts a residency at Planet Hollywood in Vegas in September so would potentially be out of play for the live shows in the Fall. Christina Augilera appears to be the only one without any commitments at this stage (which might explain why she's the only who's signed a deal for season three so far). Although she seems to be debuting a new single on The Voice either this week or next week which would suggest she may also have an album to plug over the summer.

Barring a recast of three of the coaches I think shooting auditions (and battle rounds) over the summer and running live shows in the Fall might be too big a logistical nightmare for them.

There's also the much bigger logistical issue of whilst they were doing the Fall edition of The Voice they'd have to be simultaneously auditioning and shooting the midseason or Spring edition of the show. One of the many reasons Fox has always resisted doubling up on American Idol is that from a production stand point producing two cycles of these kind of shows per season is a logistical nightmare that takes a lot of work and a lot of money.

Just a general point and observation after having a peruse of the BARB website this evening.

The main channels (BBC1 and ITV1 mainly) have become SO dull and formulaic during the weekdays - it's like they've ran out of ideas. 10 years ago today this was the BBC One schedule -
7.30 EE
8.00 Holby
9.00 Cutting It

And tomorrow, 10 years on:
7.30 EE
8.00 Holby
9.00 The Syndicate

Two similar dramas and two soaps who continue to recycle the same storylines over and over. In 10 years the ITV1/BBC1 schedules have barely changed. The seventies, eighties, nineties all had their own identities with a whole host of different popular programmes, reflecting the era.

But now they're so afraid to innovate, to risk take and launch new shows we're getting the same programmes going on for ever.

If Danny Cohen really wants to be seen as a great BBC1 controller he needs to take some big risks - axe Holby City, reduce Casualty, reduce The One Show and try and find some 21st Century TV - new comedy, new entertainment, new 'factual entertainment'. The innovation is coming from the smaller channels.

Declining ratings for the big two aren't inevitable, they have massive budgets and the rise of multichannel is petering out. Now the decline is self made, people getting bored of the same old same old. They seem afraid to make the big changes - but this is exactly what they need to do.

I don't think Holby City should be axed but I think it could run in alternate seasons with Casualty with both having 26 episodes a year instead of them both running all year round.

The dates posted in that link do suggest that NBC are considering a Fall edition of The Voice. I've seen it mentioned in a few different articles now and I can see it happening. I don't think it's a good idea but this is NBC and they're desperate, and with just about everything except The Voice flopping now I can see why they wouldn't want to go into the Fall without The Voice. They could schedule it for 2 hours on Mondays (8-10pm) and 1 hour on Tuesdays (8-9pm) like this:

Weeks 1-3: Blind Auditions
Weeks 4-5: Battle Rounds
Weeks 6-11: Live Shows

This would avoid it running too close to Christmas, but the auditions and the live shows would run for the same number of hours as they have this year (they'd have 2 fewer hours of battles but they need to be shortened anyway). With the battles they could do 2 coaches per week. As each coach has 12 contestants, they'd have 6 battles, so it'd be 12 battles a week meaning it'd be 8 battles on the Monday show and 4 on the Tuesday. Alternatively they could shake it up a bit and have all the battles on the Monday and reveal the results on the Tuesday.

I completely agree that doing 2 cycles per season would be a monumentally bad decision and would be too difficult logistically anyway. However what they could do is make The Voice a permanent Fall fixture from next season and bring America's Got Talent forward to midseason. I remain surprised that they've left it in the Summer for so long with great ratings (it averaged a 3.3 last year) whilst they're floundering during the main season, and with Howard Stern joining and the show being revamped it's looking pretty good for it just now. I can see why they wouldn't want it in the Fall as it'd either mean 2 seasons back to back which wouldn't work, or a ridiculously long gap between seasons. However running it in midseason would mean it'd still have a decent gap between series. Also launching in midseason is easier than the Fall (particularly late January/early February when AGT would launch) as ratings for shows on the main networks tend to have died down a bit after the Fall hype and there are more repeats around. It'd also mean it would have a good few weeks before DWTS (which isn't looking all that mighty these days anyway) returned. Again it'd cover 3 hours of the schedule (for 16 weeks) and for NBC right now I can see that 3 hours per week averaging 3+ (probably 4+ for The Voice at least) would really, really help them. Particularly on Tuesdays where they could launch a drama at 9pm out of the talent show in the 8pm hour. It would probably mean a dip in The Voice's average, but I can't see them caring too much looking at the stability it would offer them, particularly as The Voice would be back to a once a year show after that.

NBC seems to be the one channel that just doesn't learn about over exposure.

The biggest example of this is probably when the Apprentice was at its peak, and they ran two series a year, but also a spin off The Apprentice with Martha Stewart at the same time as an edition of the main one.

Look at NBCs schedules at the peak of Friends, it was littered with friends clones, to the extent that many now blame them for the then collapse of the american sitcom (as well as a glut of reality shows).


Im not so sure that should be his priority. Both Casualty and Holby City rate reasonably, and are cheap to produce, so its not like much money would be released by doing this. What he really needs to do is launch a big hit, returnable, weeknight 9pm drama. It seems that this is where both BBC1 and ITV1 are struggling at the moment. It also the main area where we have fallen badly behind the Americans, especially in risk taking.

My suggestion would be to swap Holby City and Waterloo Road's slots around, so Holby would run on Wednesdays and Waterloo on Tuesdays. My reasoning is that Holby could then get a solid c4.5m all year round on Wednesdays, providing more stability to that night as a whole (which, whilst much better than it used to be, is still a bit weak at times). Waterloo Road could get c5m for 30 weeks of the year, but the big thing is that they'd then have 22 weeks of the year to try new things out in a cushy slot with an EE lead-in and fairly weak ITV competition (the football won't be a problem and will prevent them launching anything half decent on that night for the rest of the year). The Wednesday 8pm slot is quite a difficult slot to launch a new show in for BBC1 as ITV1 is usually quite strong there and the lead in isn't great (and will be terrible when Corrie moves back to Wednesdays on ITV), so freeing up the cushy Tuesday slot for part of the year (whilst retaining stability there with Waterloo Road for 30 weeks) could make it much easier to launch new pre-watershed dramas and comedies, whilst giving Wednesdays a stable anchor to run all year round.

Didn't Holby City fall a bit the last time it was moved to Wednesday's? Though it was up against The Bill which had a Coronation Street lead in.

It would probably rate a bit lower than it does on Tuesdays now, but I think it's get similar ratings as Waterloo Road does in that slot now (so c4.5m), whilst with an EE lead-in and easy competition Waterloo Road would probably be boosted to about what Holby gets in that slot now (low 5s) but the move has the added advantage of providing a nice slot to launch new stuff in as Waterloo Road doesn't run all year round. I think they should do it this Autumn to tie in with Waterloo Road's relaunch and ITV's changes.