I wonder what Boyd Hilton's review was like? Usually his friends shows get surprisingly good reviews even when they're awful. He was the only critic in the country to give The Marriage Ref a good review .'genuinely entertaing' 'great stuff'

Well Cowell must be THRILLED by that, Bussell has zero personality, unbelievably she was actually a worse judge than Alicia. BBC really are doing their best to kill off SCD!!

Hidden Talent certainly an appropriate title for any programme involving Bacon

Not entirely sure how The Syndicate could be recommissioned as it was a self-contained story at the end of which one of the characters died.

Its success will, however, have helped restore the standing of Kay Mellor after the embarrassingly bad television version of her play 'A Passionate Woman'. All she needs now is to get back the quality she achieved in the early episodes of Band Of Gold ...

I can't believe the amount of airtime Jessie J and Tom Jones have been getting on Radio 2 lately. They've just played Tom Jones' new single again and run an advert for an "event" featuring him and Jessie J. All purely coincidental I'm sure...

Trevor MacDonald's a poor presenter imo. Good subject matter but someone far less full of their own self-importance would have been a better choice.

In real life more than one syndicate has won the lottery.

They could connect the two series by making one of the new syndicate lottery winners a relative (cousin, perhaps) of one of the main characters from series one.

Well, it's an option.

SS 2 Chelsea v Barcelona
[LIST][*]7pm -10.15pm, 2.28m (10.21%).[*]Game average 2.77m (12.19%)[*]Peak of 3.64m at 9.30pm.[*]Biggest audience of the year for Sky Sports 2.[*]Coverage began at 7pm with 300k viewers but this grew to 1.77m (8.18%) for the first five minutes of the game[/LIST]

You've missed your calling Iain, the soaps could do with an imagination like yours on their writing teams

Er, yeah ... a kind of desperate option!

The whole point of The Syndicate was to dramatise the effect of sudden wealth on people, what it does to them, how it changes the attiudes of their nearest and dearest, etc. The serial did that - so doing another run with different characters would merely be the same thing. :yawn:

Mellor isn't an incapable writer and would, I should have thought, other ideas up her sleeve ... particularly as The Syndicate was made by her own production company.

The Syndicate must be almost unique for a Kay Mellor production in that it did not feature her daughter

I'm only thinking of TV bosses and how they appear to make all their decisions based purely on ratings.

Didn't BBC1 have a documentary series about enviromental health officers that kept coming back for new series? It was recommissioned purely on the grounds of ratings when the criteria should have been, "Will a new series tell us anything new or will it just be going over the same ground?" (No, wait. I'll answer this one....)

Clearly The Syndicate was only intended by Kay Mellor to be a one-off but its success should make it a little easier to sell her next idea to the BBC.

Clearly you didn't watch the end credits: Gaynor Mellor was the script editor ...

So she's now calling herself Gaynor Mellor - she used to call herself Gaynor Faye. Talk about keeping it in the family

If they do the instant elimination that's been done in the US one, they could split the top 16 over 2 weeks with 2 going from each team and still finish on the June 2nd (is that confirmed?). Although since audiences over here always seem to be looking for something to complain about, it might be better if they didn't risk it.

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Overnights

BBC1
13:45 - Doctors - 1.4m (20.8%)
19:30 - Eastenders - 7.63m (35.8%)
20:00 - Holby City - 5.09m (22.2%)
21:00 - The Syndicate - 5.37m (22.4%)

BBC2
20:00 - Hairy Bikers' Bakeation - 2.9m (inc HD)
21:00 - Meet the Romans - 1.6m (6.7%)
* + 66k on HD

ITV1
19:00 - Emmerdale - 6.45m (32.6%)
* +1 120k (0.5%)
19:30 - Countrywise Kitchen - 2.2m
* +1 (2.3m)
20:00 - WWTBAM - 2.1m
* +1 (2.2m)
21:00 - The Mighty Mississippi with Trevor McDonald - 2.44m (10.2%)
* +1 257k (1.6%)
22:00 - News At Ten - 1.8m
* +1 (2m)

Channel 4
18:30 - Hollyoaks - 781k (4.3%)
* +1 106k (0.5%)
21:00 - Hidden Talent - 990k (4.1%)
* +1 196k (1.2%)

Channel 5
13:45 - Neighbours - 692k (10.2%)
17:30 - Neighbours - 920k (6.5%)
18:00 - Home & Away - 693k (4.1%)
21:00 - CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - 1.59m (6.6%)
* +1 152k (0.9%)

Sky Sports 2
19:00-22:15 - Champions League: Barcelona v Chelsea - 2.28m (10.2%)
* match average - 2.77m (12.2%)
* peak 3.64m at 9:30pm
* highest SS2 rating of the year so far

BBC3
22:00 - Eastenders - 979k (5.1%)

E4
19:00 - Hollyoaks - 472k (2.4%)
* +1 121k (0.5%)

5*
18:30 - Home & Away - 521k (2.9%)


Source: DS, Broadcast, Bushmills' post


The football on Sky was the obvious stand-out rating for the night. A great rating by Sky Sports standards and bodes well for a big final rating next month on ITV1 (I think it's simulcast on Sky too). Looks like the football took ratings away from Channel 4 and ITV1, leaving BBC1/BBC2 largely unaffected, with a small dip for C5 at 9pm.

A decent night for BBC1, The Syndicate has remained remarkably steady across its run, ITV1 suffered its traditional Tuesday flop-zone, with WWTBAM doing particularly poorly even for a repeat episode. Over to the tea-time soaps and with Neighbours up to 920k, it was Hollyoaks turn to take the horrendous rating prize. CSI did decently for Channel 5 at 9pm, although not the big hitter it once was, it still pulls very good ratings for 5 and offers good repeat value.

I seem to remember you slating Reggie Yates and Holly as Voice hosts too and predicting it would flop...
'No doubt about it' was your quote iirc.

Are you really trying to say they were better options than Darcey (who you are judging on 3 nights v 3 years for Alesha.). Karen Hardy and Karen Bruce would be just the same.
Past contestants like Kelly Brook and Kara Tointon struggle to put a sentence together, so they couldn't be picked either.

Yes Darcey is bland but Alesha's 'personality' saw the ratings fall in her debut series.
They only rose again when the casting of contestants was right. The judges are important but not pivotal to the show.

Which is why on both sides of the Atlantic the 'SCD' judges are paid peanuts in comparison to their X Factor/BGT/The Voice counterparts.They're not the stars.
It's the contestant line up I'll be watching.

If they had replaced Arlene Philips with Darcey Bussell it would have caused ripples but at least it would have looked right at that time. Now though SCD is far more of a pantomine and its hard to see her fitting in if her first appearance was anything to go by. They should have been far more adventurous imo.
And yes, I think Mr Cowell can allow himself a satisfied smirk at the way this has panned out.

Like who Chris? Jennifer Grey? Louie Spence?
They worked out so well.... on Scd/DOI


Yeah the nation were watching for Alesha despite the ratings diving on her debut year.
Get a grip.

I have a stalker Seriously that is freaky, I posted that ages ago, and with regard to Holly & Reggie they are only on The Voice for the blink of the eye in each episode, I thought they would have much bigger roles.
Karen Hardy would be much better than Darcy IMO, I'm not the only one that thinks that, check out the FB page, every other person is disappointed. I would have preferred Arlene or Karen, I'm entitled to my opinion.

Personally I wouldnt want to watch Louis Spence in anything.

Jennifer Grey has judged but didnt come off.

Darcey didnt impress when she guested, and although it may be unfair to judge on one appearance, I just cannot see her having the necessary bullishness that seems to be a requirement these days.

As for being adventurous, well by that I meant another non-technical judge. In the end Alesha just about worked and the show is quite different to the one Arlene was dumped from.

The ratings dived, but it was little or nothing to do with Alesha. And perfectly happy with my grip thanks.

If Chelsea vs Barcelona peaked with 3.64m, then one could assume that Man U vs Man City may well peak at over 4 million on Monday.

Sam Hodges: Saturday May 5th, #TheVoiceUK confirmed for 7.10pm with the results show at 7pm on Sunday 6th #BBC1

Source: Twitter

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/rogermose...single_th.html

Chelsea v Man Utd a couple of months ago peaked at 3.97m and that was Sky's highest ever Premier League rating (in terms of match average and peak I think).

Whether Man City v Man Utd goes higher we'll have to see.

It's fairly rare in general for Sky's biggest club games to be on a Monday night. We'll have to see whether this helps the rating say compared to a Sun 4pm game (*). I guess there is the advantage of more total people watching TV but set against that there is greater competition.

(*) - Chelsea v Man Utd was Sun 4pm. Of course quite often the biggest games are police risks so end up being Sat 12.45pm or Sun 1.30pm for police reasons. But those timeslots prevent those games getting the highest ratings so historically almost all the biggest Sky PL ratings have been for Sun 4pm games. (eg Liverpool v Man Utd is never Sun 4pm).

Which kind of invalidates your whole argument. She didn't increase or decrease the ratings. So her departure will have zero effect which is the opposite of what you said in your first post. -------''I think Mr Cowell can allow himself a satisfied smirk at the way this has panned out'' -----

Strictly's ratings went up in 2010 because the show revamped itself to ape the US version it had nothing to do with the panel and all to do with the production and casting.
If it had been down to the panel then the 2009 series which had the same panel and style of comments from the judges [ie Alesha Judging on Entertainment value]wouldn't have seen its ratings fall and I say that as someone who actually liked Alesha.

I seem to remember you being similarly OTT when Christine Bleakley went to ITV. ''The BBC would miss out on her presenting a Saturday night show....'' Yeah they really missed that boat