But is the itv player available on other platforms like the iplayer. Samsung tv/blu-rays or sony/panasonic etc. I believe all the major game consoles have the iplayer as well.

I agree but they need to do more with the format and get better acts. I think they should go to a studio like The Voice has and maybe just allow you know - variety. X Factor last year dropped ratings because its not as 'part of the fun' as you say, in the end it has to be a bit more serious and thus good.

BGT can quietly go on doing its thing, which were seeing here. Its up this year and no ones noticed!


I think actually BGT is just very popular on recordings anyway so I think it beating The Voice isn't so much down to the ads getting cut out.


...no were talking about cancelling things out. Your the one ignoring BBC iplayer...
My point is just that if we talk 'strategic' BBC have gone with an online model, and ITV haven't invested as much in theres, instead there main way of getting catch-up viewers is +1 and repeats.

I don't want a big debate, its just how I personally judge things. I like clear winners, where its not clear it means both are doing well and everything else is background noise as people pretend its extreme.

Last week was clear, this week no. My only point is that with iplayer The Voice probably did win, so you can't say BGT won, but as I say - 'probably' so you can't say The Voice won.


But anyway, the main point is am not saying to ignore ITV player. Am saying it doesn't make a difference in anyway - its a tiny decibel whereas iplayer overnight is comparable to ITV+1 from what I've seen.
Your the one suggesting we ignore iplayer, am just saying it lacks clarity and your argument about 'strategy' is hypocritical and misses its own point.

Barb counts them in the finals
Just not if you connect through a browser - its quite absurd.

If there was a system in place where at 10/11am the next morning we got figures through from BBC iPlayer and ITV Player saying how many people watched their shows last night - then fine, add them in.

Until then, I think we need to stick to comparing TV overnights.

And adding this to your post... ... does not make you appear clever.

Very promising start for the Bridge on BBC4 (especially when compared to the thrashing it handed out to Smash on Sky Atlantic).

do we know if the BBC4 figures posted on here include BBC HD?

It seems DS has done a little bit of an editing job now on their lead article... Now says BGT "pipped" TV but they are still "head to head".

Seems like they do listen to the criticism on here.

I think its likely another writer read the piece and realised how extreme it was

The edit gives a fair representation of things. The term unprecedented has also been removed!

Not sure Smash was ever going to be a 'mainstream hit' but the 10pm timeslot on a Saturday night was bizarre. I know when they launched the idea was to premiere shows on Saturday so that people who didn't like The X Factor et al would have an alternative - but for the most part is hasn't worked.

Obviously most will watch in on time shift and on demand but nonetheless I think Sky should be trying to maximize the overnight audience and that was never going to happen in the timeslot they chose.

Hopefully Veep and Newsroom will be given a better shot in better slots. Regardless of the profability of the channel, I suspect there will be some concern that the key launch shows - GoT, Boardwalk and Blue Bloods - remain the channels only real success stories. But I guess if Smash could time shift to 250k and stay at that mark throughout the series (unlikely I suspect) it would be a moderate success and the addition of Smash, Awake, House of Lies, Veep, Hit and Miss along with some original Sky content in the next two months should at least freshen up the schedule a bit.

Any figures for Barcelona v Real Madrid last night? Suspect it might have had a slight impact on The Voice, I recorded it and watched after the match.

They do.


BBC Four have had success with it (as does BBC Two in the autumn with repeats). I don't think Smash would have done better anywhere else tbh.

Yes the other article was extreme. I think it is quite fair to say that the two shows are neck and neck with each other with little to no difference between them really in the ratings... Including timeshifts etc. None of them are really giving the 'thrashing' people have been expecting.

As I have said, the real comparison will come latter on this year with TXF. As it is more like for like.

I doubt it as that is an international match, and also very different audience/demographic to that of TV. However, it will be interesting to see the PVR figures and iplayer figures for TV. Because I watched it online too.

Its not intended to

Or to put it another way if there was a BBC1+1, there is little doubt that The Voice would have had more than 100,000 on that channel, which would have given it more viewers than both the ITV1 and ITV1+1 showings of BGT, according to DS.

If you want a fair playing field then it should be fair to add in the BBC3 repeat of The Voice, both programmes get two showings then.


Good to see ITV1 making the most of their lead-in and lead-out of one of their biggest shows.

Well, both those ratings for TV and BGT are lower than I was expecting. I wonder why they both dipped with the clash removed? And why didn't TV end until 20.34? Very sneaky from a channel that doesn't chase ratings. Anyway, both good figures and hopefully next week both will be back up. Not sure how TV will do tonight - maybe slightly more than last night. The Cube totally died in that 19.30 slot. Its a shame as last nights episode was rather good I thought. Is that 2.6m its lowest rated episode ever?

It'll be very close in the officials for yesterday. BGT needs to timeshift 0.4m higher than TVUK to overtake it into the officials (exc +1). So far, episode 1 of BGT timeshifted 422k more than TVUK's timeshift, episode 2 was 328k higher and episode 3 was 700k more than TVUK. Episode 3 was the Easter holidays so I won't take much notice of that, but episode 1 and 2 were around the 400k mark. So it'll be very tight as to who moves ahead in the officials.

Talking of The Cube, 2.6m was dire for it. After how All Star Family Fortunes and TV Burp did in that slot recently (3-3.5m), both of which are more popular shows, The Cube was looking set for a c3m/high 2's rating. I guess something has to go in that slot against TVUK but they just don't have the shows available to them right now to put something relatively cheap against it and still get a respectable c4m or so. ITV will have the same kind of problem this Autumn too up against SCD due to no TV Burp.


That's assuming TVUK would've still had 9.9m for the BBC1 showing which might not have been the case as with a +1 service available, some viewers would use that instead of watching the initial showing. So it might've gone down to about 9.7m on BBC1 plus c300k on +1.

Can't imagine Schofield wanting to have very much ratings banter with his This Morning co-host tomorrow.

Only that would be a ridiculous comment because Titanic was never envisioned as a returnable drama. Plus no one at the BBC is suggesting that Upstairs was cancelled because the writers schedule. Indeed not even she's said that it was cancelled because of her schedule. She made the observation that removing commitments to Upstairs has been something of a relief because it gives her more time to do other things. That's hardly a bombshell or astonishing piece of spin.


Explain to me why the rules should be different. Why should a publicly funded broadcaster be forced to ignore what a an audience (mass or minority) wants to watch? The audience dictates that specific genres and formats are popular at any given time so why shouldn't the BBC deliver those types of shows as well?


Of course if we did that then we'd also have to strip all timeshift viewing out of Britain's Got Talent as well and not just the +1 audience and I wouldn't be at all surprised to discover that more people watched The Voice live than Talent. In fact I'd be pretty surprised if more people watched Talent live than The Voice.


I don't think that's particularly shocking at all.


Indeed. Spectacular launch figures for The Bridge which will unfortunately be lost in the shuffle of the Saturday night talent show line-up and potentially another disastrous overnight for Sky Atlantic. Although in fairness there's not really much room for discussion with The Bridge beyond saying it did brilliantly.


Here's my question – if ITV have 'strategically split their audience' then why are we reuniting them?

Personally my view on all this is that we should treat the +1 viewers as the +1 viewers, we should treat the repeat screening viewers as the repeat screening viewers and people who watch online via iPlayer etc. as people who watch online. I'm not even overly enamoured with combining the overnight and timeshift viewers in the officials. I'd much prefer to see them as two separate audiences and numbers because ultimately they are but that's not the world we live in.

Moreover I'm not entirely sure why it matters who or what show 'won' on any given night. ITV don't command a higher ad rate for Britain's Got Talent just because it has more viewers than the BBC competition. Coronation Street doesn't command a higher ad rate if its watched by more people that EastEnders on a Monday night. And I can't even begin to imagine what the BBC would get out of 'winning'. The whole thing (just like arguments about +1 etc.) is really rather meaningless and just disguises the fact that in this instance two shows are getting fantastic ratings.


Which by extension means that's really all ITV care about as well.


I don't know if people are suggesting the two aren't comparable mediums. I think the suggestion (and certainly my argument) would be that the fact that the BBC don't have a +1 channel drives a lot more viewers to the iPlayer and so when you exclude iPlayer viewers you're excluding a number of viewers that would potentially watch on a hypothetical BBC1+1.

In addition to that the relatively huge popularity of the iPlayer in comparison to its commercial rival means you're excluding a sizeable additional audience for BBC shows that don't necessarily watch commercial broadcasters in the same way. Didn't the opening episode of this years Apprentice for example get more than 1 million additional viewers during its first three or four days on iPlayer? That's a huge number of viewers that I suspect ITVPlayer has never even come close to.

Of course the obvious problem with the iPlayer argument is that we simply don't see enough iPlayer stats nor do we see them consistently.


If they went with Saturday launches to offer an alternative to the big reality shows you have to wonder why they decided to push Smash back to 10PM when the big reality shows had finished. More pressingly why they felt launching a new musical drama against The Voice and Britain's Got Talent was a good idea I'm not sure because presumably part of the audience for that show is watching The Voice and Britain's Got Talent. I could see the argument for airing Mad Men against that kind of competition though because its a clear alternative and you can make the argument that the natural audience for the show is very different to the big reality hitters.


I do wonder if Atlantic might be better served by Sky just adopting HBO's strategy of repeating their prime time block throughout the night. So on Saturday night have three airings of Smash across the night and try and pull people away from time shifting it that way. Then you get to play the trick of combing the over nights from multiple airings into one slightly increased number. Plus if you get the right show there's potential that word of mouth from an early airing drives viewers to one of the later screenings.

And then on Monday nights have Game of Thrones at 9PM, Morgan Spurlock at 10PM and then Thrones again at 11PM and Spurlock again at 12AM (or maybe repeat the Seinfeld double bill from earlier) and then Thrones one last time at 1AM.

The Borgias, Mildred Pierce and the repeat of The Pacific all performed reasonably well in the Saturday 9pm slot.

Of course the overnights were usually poor. But if the vast majority have Sky+ it's not surprising.

I watch a fair amount on Atlantic, and my overnights since launch night would be zero.

Caught up with the thread now... So, shall we call it a draw?!

It's quite a different Sunday anyway - I'd have thought that when they're not spinning, both sides are scratching their heads a bit with those ratings and the drops from last week. Could just be a blip, though. Hard to draw conclusions on one weeks ratings. I daresay ITV will be a bit pi*sed at the deliberate overlap when they'd gone out of their way to end it but I don't think it hit any of their commercial breaks so it's not the end of the world.

The Voice still number one but not like last week when it was definately the undisputed number 1. The battle stages are great and ratings dropping have nothing to do with people getting bored of the show, it is still entertaining the masses. Tonight can get a big rating over 10million, reviewers have said its even better than yesterdays episode. Britains Got Talent failed to rate better without the clash, Itv wont be happy by that.

I would think the vast majority of viewers of all channels have PVRs. Or video recorders.

If The Voice was up last night I'd be predicting big tonight, but it didn't so am a bit 'hmmm' about tonight now. But most likely its all in my head. But still I think a soft prediction is best tonight, its a new specimen and I wouldn't be surprised if it rates within the 9 mills, even the lower end - just because like with the first episode of The Voice, the audience needs to get used to it.

But in saying that am not gonna mock surprise tomorrow if it pulls 10 million

In terms of the ratings, I actually think last weeks was maybe inflated, I made the point before that actually 9.5-9.8 seemed to be the general image we've been seeing and things seem to be jumping around that. (from the Easter drop for BGT (can't blame Easter, everything else did fine). So I wonder if the shows are down really, or if last week there were just external factors which caused the mega boost (remember how surprised we all were?)

DVR penetration is 46% of homes (Ofcom Q1 2011) which includes DVD recorders.

Ofcom don't report VHS.

I think on BBC4 or 2 it could have easily doubled that, and could have trailed it to a lot more viewers....

Wow, 46% of homes is... high. They really should monitor PVR viewings. BARB really need to come into the 21st century. I PVR almost everything... Almost everyone I know does as well (those that have a pvr)