As far as I'm aware, yes. (a show called Blue Bloods appears to have a strong cult audience (cult cause the guardian are wanking over it *ahem*mad men*ahem* (and am a fan of Mad Men lol) of about 400k

And things like The Sopranos seems to be repeating well according to Barb. (higher than new content!) So the channel has some use there.

So there IS life in the channel, I just question if all these shows couldn't be swallowed up successfully by other channels Sky owns, and if there spending too much of shows that flop.

Incredible that 5 minute overlap with The Voice still made a big difference to BGT's overnight.

I must record This Morning on Monday to see if there is much tension between Pip and Holly. A 4 to 1 beating!


Ahh The Press Association they wouldn't have the same credibility as Pj Millar on DS

Who's rattled his cage?

ITV should start BGT a few minutes later than scheduled to avoid over run from the Voice

I'm suprised the Battle Rounds for the Voice rated lower than last week but still brilliant ratings for them.

BGT didn't up it's ratings that much.

Someone on here said it started a minute earlier. Maybe they want people switching over as the show starts?

But I agree, plus if The Voice is early - BGT viewers will leave the ads on knowing its coming on. Win win surely?

While I was watching The Cube they barely showed any adverts. Causing the show to finish a good five minutes early.

Both shows are roughly at the same level.

But, I do think its important to include +1 figures where available.

It's a strategic BBC choice not to have a +1 option available to the audience and its a strategic ITV choice to split their audience.

If +1 was not available, perhaps 0.5m people would have watched it on ITV1 an hour earlier instead? Or 0.3m would have? Or 0.1m would have? We don't know. ITV offers viewers two chances to watch one programme so both must be counted.

The comparison to internet TV players and repeats on digital channels are not the same. +1 channels are fundamentally different in that they run exactly the same ads in the same place, so they increase the commercial impacts of the original broadcast. So if ITV goes to back to someone who purchased one advertisement during BGT last night, they would give them a commercial impact including +1. For ITV these two broadcasts mean one and the same - it fundamentally does not matter to them whether someone watches on ITV1 or ITV1+1.

Obviously commercial impacts do not apply to the BBC. However, if we are going to compare the overnight figures for the BBC and ITV, we need to do it on a fair level. ITV's audience has been strategically split and it would be wrong to just ignore that.

How did Paul Millar get a job on DS, his bias is actually embarrassing. He's justifiably getting slated by all the comments under neath todays article. :roll eyes:
DS is generally SUCH a good source of info, but Miller continually lets the side down.

iplayer does not have ads as its the BBC
All other players are far far less popular.

BBC has the strategic decision to have iplayer.
My only point is that if we don't just allow them both to cancel each other out when 'comparing' two shows - theres a problem.

BGT had all those viewers on ITV/ITV+1. We can say that.
We can't say it had more viewers that The Voice as we know full well that iplayer is probably around 200k-300k overnight (this has been shown by Doctor Who, which gets around 300k on average overnight iplayer)

If we want to compare its just best to cancel both out.
Imo.

I know the audiences would only be tiny in comparison (ie a few 00k) but could World Champ snooker (BBC Red button + Eurosport) and Barcelona v Real Madrid (SS1) have had a marginal impact on TV and BGT? Both were high profile (for what they are).

I know the impact would only be marginal but could they have caused reductions for TV / BGT in the sort of 250k to 500k range? (which if they could have done would represent a high % of the TV/BGT falls explanation).

NB. Not saying I think these are an explanation, just asking if they might be!

ITV Player is the direct comparison to iPlayer and we do cancel both out.

Seems to me that programmes airing after 9pm post-BGT are hardly getting any uplift in their ratings. There's a few examples of this: Piers Morgan's Life Stories has been getting about the same number of viewers in its new Friday 9pm slot as it was last year post-BGT, The Cube had 4.2m last week which is about the same as it was getting last Spring in a Sunday 7pm slot with smaller lead-ins/out, Take Me Out rated worse post-BGT than how it was doing in an earlier 8pm slot with a much lower inheritence, the Benidorm repeat rated about the same as how repeats were rating in Q1 last year with a lower lead-in. Perhaps any potential increase these shows can have by airing after BGT is being wiped out by other factors which reduce their figures such as there being fewer viewers after 9pm than other slots, 1m BGT viewers tuning straight over to ITV2, more VOSDAL competition from same-day timeshifters at the time of the evening etc. Especially with BGT now finishing at 9.30/9.45pm instead of 9pm, it's turning out to be more difficult finding shows to air around that time which can make best use of that lead-in.


Excluding the +1 argument, it's worth remembering that adverts on commercial channels dent the programme's averages by about 3-6%, so commercial channels are already at a disadvantage in terms of the reported overnights if people want to know how many viewers actually watched the programme content itself (obviously advertisers themselves are more interested in the ad breaks bit of the breakdown though). For example, the difference between TVUK and BGT last night was small enough that the 0.4m difference literally would've come down to the fact that one channel was airing adverts and the other wasn't. So overnights are not a 100% 'level playing field' anyway (even excluding the +1 argument) if people want to know how many viewers actually watched the content of a programme on average.

El Classico could have definately had an impact. I saw more people I was following/friends with talking about that than The Voice.

LOL Not even ITV would spin that.

Indeed, if we include iPlayer then you need to include BGT's various ITV1/ITV2 repeats (and Voice's BBC3 repeat), which puts BGT even further ahead. Agree with what you said about +1 too.

ITV Player is used by a fraction of those that use iPlayer... ITV+1 and iPlayer cancelling each other out is just fine..

I'm neither anti Beeb or ITV, but sometimes it really grates on my how biased some people can be, especially when they completely fail to see a counter argument... As shown in today DS Ratings Article..

All this squabbling over a little drop. TV has been growing week on week, most were expecting a drop anyways, and it did, but not by the amount that some on here were expecting. It still peaked just over 11 million- So lets not cry TV a river just yet.

That's the kind of ratings TXF would kill for for their bootcamp episodes, where the ratings do traditionally tail off. BGT is doing just fine, TV and BGT are two different shows anyways. What'll be really interesting, to me anyways, is how the success of TV is going to affect TXF. Because we have been constantly told by TXF producers, and that cretin Louis Walsh, that the public want to be entertained by crappy acts as these are the things that pull in the ratings, and the squabbles between the judges make it the tv spectacle that it claims to be. TV has seemingly blown that theory out of the water (so far). It has gotten higher ratings than the first four xf (at least in their initial first episodes). So will TXF keep to their usual mix of blatant manipulation of the rules, bad auditions and manufactured tensions between the judges to keep their viewers... Or will they tone that down?

BGT has more legs to stand on than TXF (imo), as it's a variety show and can get away with rubbish acts because let's face it, variety has always been a little naff and that's a part of the fun.

P.s. Is there something wrong with this GeorgeS person? He seems slightly obsessed and rude to a lot of members here just because they don't follow his way of thinking? I'm pretty sure telling a member to "shut up" is against the DS T&C. Although having said that, I'm pretty sure I have said that in my younger days on here.

Itv player is so bad that even ITV news have dropped it on their website in favour of Vimeo

I'm only talking about iplayer overnight. Not the repeats.

Also am just going to point out everyones instant reactions to the idea of ITV player being competition for BBC iplayer as a sign that is best ignored


Am not saying we can't use +1, but we can't say BGT had more viewers when it likely didn't. Not everything has to be compared, as I've said earlier, those are great ratings for both shows! Just can't be used in the way some are just now.

The fact is that BGT had more viewers on ITV/ITV+1 than The Voice did on BBC One. It didn't have more viewers than The Voice. If you want to qualify it

Should indeed be interesting as Eamonn Holmes said on Friday This Morning presenters had been told not to mention The V****

Yeah I've noticed that too. What's more is that last year Piers Morgan's Life Stories would shed over a million viewers over the hour last year (on the 15 minute breakdowns) airing out of BGT, but this year the reported peaks for it have only been 0.2-0.3m above the averages (unsure if these are 5 or 15 min peaks) so it looks like the show is much steadier across the hour on Fridays than Saturdays, which suggests that Life Stories suits Fridays more than Saturdays and under 'normal circumstances' would rate better there, but BGT was boosting it on Saturdays which covered up the fact that it wasn't in the best slot for it. The Cube and Take Me Out seem to have experienced similar things, as for instance The Cube suits Sundays at 7pm better than Saturdays at 9:15pm, so whilst it was getting low-4s in the Sunday slot, it would probably get c3.5m in the Saturday 9:15pm slot with a normal lead-in, but the BGT lead-in boosted it by about +20% (a typical BGT/TXF audition lead-in boost) to its typical Sunday levels. Same goes for TMO which would probably have got c4m in a post-9pm slot, but BGT boosted it to the high-4s (although the very late finish for the last episode dented it further). So it looks like whilst BGT is boosting these shows, the boost is being cancelled out by the shows airing in slots that don't suit them.


That's why I find all this whining about a 'level playing field' so amusing from BBC supporters as the BBC already have an advantage in the overnights, so excluding +1 only tips the scales even further in their favour. I think in the official ratings BGT might just squeeze ahead of The Voice even without +1 because of the adverts dragging down its overnight.

That made me laugh. If you are going to remove all the obsessives from here its going to be very very quiet And I think its pretty clear there is NO moderation in DS. Why else would we have a ratings thread where about 50% of the posts are not about ratings?

Sorry, but what is the issue with this?

Both do the same thing, both are available to the same audience and we include neither in overnight ratings.

How are they not comparable mediums?

You can't say its just because BBC iPlayer is more popular. That is like saying we should ignore Channel 5 because it doesn't get the same ratings as ITV1.