Well the last two weeks will be during Euro 2012, so for the 19:45 games:

Sundays (10th and 17th) - 2 x ITV
Mondays (11th and 18th) - 2 x BBC
Tuesdays (12th and 19th) - 2 x ITV*
Wednesday (13th) - BBC
Thursday (14th) - ITV
Friday (15th) - BBC

* Tuesday 19th is England

That suggests that Sunday or Thursday would be more likely, putting the last two episodes against football, one of which will be England vs Ukraine doesn't seem like a sensible move. (although the previous week is Poland vs Russia which surely will be one of the lowest rated games of the tournament, so maybe it balances out )

I'd imagine there would be a few broadcasters (certainly ITV and Sky, perhaps C5) who would like the rights to those games. Given the BBC's resources will be so focused on the Olympics and rather stretched at the time - and the BBC's limited rights budget at the mo, I'd of thought it likely to be on another channel.

Also the BBC will have the Open Golf that Thursday-Sunday.

Not long at all, a week or so.


True but of those three, The Royle Family is still the most established and proven ratings winner so I think the Beeb will be very eager to have that as their 9pm Christmas Day offering again.

Yes Robbie's favourite conspiracy theory.Do you also believe the moon is made of cheese and there are little green men on Mars ?

I am sure ITV will give Sue Johnstone time off to film Royle Family just as they have done this year already so that the new series of Red Dwarf could be filmed with the main character Lister in it. They even told John Michie when he joined the cast last year that he would be allowed time off to shoot more Taggert if it ever returned.

They should call the US Only Fools - 'Cushty'. That has a nice ring to it. And if the main character keeps saying it like in the UK version it does not matter if it means nothing at the moment over there. It was hardly everyday speech in the UK before but helped establish the character and became a catchphrase. It will also be a title that gets people talking before the show airs, Like asking what it means! Let's face it this is going to need all the help it can get to work.

As for the BBC moving East Enders out of London - like Waterloo Road's move - recall that Five's soap Family Affairs moved overnight from somewhere near Reading (where it had been set for a year or two) to west London in the hope of boosting ratings by giving a London hook. But the cast and audience were both meant to pretend the sudden switch never happened as it was not even mentioned in the scripts!

That lead to the axe, of course...so maybe the BBC should beware - but at least Waterloo Road is not being quite that absurd.

Very good!

IIRC the initial working title for OFAH was "Readies" and I think John Sullivan had quite a battle to get eventual title agreed.

The Royle Family is an ITV Studios production so I imagine they'll allow Ricky and Sue to do Royle Family, I'm sure it doesn't take that long to film anyway as it's mostly set in the Royles house, they usually shot it in November but again Caroline Aherne needs to come up with a script first.

There was a plan at one time to move EE to Pinewood, which is near Slough, but the studio could not get planning permission for the extra land it needed for the Square etc and the idea was quietly abandoned.Instead the BBC re-equipped Elstree for HD and refurbished the regular sets.

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It's probably been posted already but here is some promising news on the state of BBC Daytime.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17857585

This may mean that they mix it up a bit more to make the schedule overall more interesting. In this day and age daytime is probably one off the most important times of the day. It can vastly help the old channel share.

Ken

It takes two weeks to film one episode. They usually do the Christmas ones end of October/start of November.

Sky entertainment boss Sophie Turner Laing is talking about Sky Atlantic at a Broadcast event tonight. She revealed the idea for the channel was only thought of 3 months before it launched.

Also in news that will shock and upset many,

But some drama commissions (which is where the focus should be) are in the pipeline,


The key, and perhaps most damning, statement from Laing,

https://twitter.com/#!/CatNeilan

There'd be nothing to stop the entire series being on Tuesday and the final episode on another night, schedules go out of the window during the Euros anyway.

The problem is they only have 5 programmes in the morning between Breakfast and The One O'Clock News so even if they restrict all type of programmes to no more than 2 of them per day they could still end up with the same shitty morning schedule they have now, consisting as it does of two property programmes, two antiques and collectable programmes and a consumer affair show. (Is it just me or are all BBC Daytime consumer affair programmes presented by Dom effing Littlewood?) It's cheap, lazy scheduling and cheap.lazy television.

They could do with a quiz show in their morning mix.And I fail to understand why the daytime schedule has no natural history in it whatsoever. At the very least they should have a Springwatch programme on in daytime during the three weeks that runs. Cookery, fashion, transport - any of these would make a change from their non-stop diet of f****ing houses and f***ing ornaments. I fail to see how this plan will make any difference to Daytime.

Talking of Sky, I know that there's certain people there who are really annoyed by the reporting of overnight ratings. They'll even go as far as to ask people to reduce how much they mention/post overnight ratings for their shows (!). I know that official ratings/subscriber numbers are the most important thing for them, which is fair enough, but there's no point of them getting so touchy over the reporting of overnights. I guess they're fed up with how the media reported Mad Men's terrible overnights and the fall out from that is that they'd rather the media report official figures for their shows (not that they were much better for Mad Men anyway). It's also quite hypocritical given that when their shows do rate well in the overnights, they really make a big deal out of it and even write press releases like this with overnight ratings data. They can't have it both ways.

I predict Silk will run on Thursdays. BBC1 hasn't had any new drama on Thursdays at 9 for ages, First they had to stick factual on in that slot whilst BBC2 ran White Heat and now they're showing New Tricks repeats.

Also they like to move their drama series around the schedule (which, considering how much of the schedule is fixed all year round, is not a bad thing). New Tricks, Silent Witness, Spooks, Hustle - they've all gone wandering over the years.

And when they aren't busy complaining about this apparent unfair treatment that exposes their minimal appointment-to-view status outside of live sport for all to see, and something crops up that they don't like, they pull a few strings and get a robust response published in the form of a news article.

Trying to bully and control the media? Surely not. They are normally such a lovely bunch.

Although ratings are hit and miss with their acquisitions their commissioning seems to hit the mark - it's just their original content that seems more out of place. They could do with something like US based travelogues or shows where there are links with the US and UK.


The BBC Trust recommends all sorts but lets see what happens. I don't think short run shows of 3 weeks or less is the way forward (assuming by 15 episodes they mean stripped as you'd expect in daytime). Generally speaking I think a daytime series should probably run for 6-8 weeks at least - and it's better to have one say Bargain Hunt rather than a couple of weeks of Bargain Hunt, then Cash in the Attic, then Sun, Sea and Bargain Hunters - all the same show in many ways, but commissioning short series will surely just encourage even more copycat formats.

Also at a time of cost cutting surely it's more economic to have fewer longer series than many shorter series. Personally though if revamping weekdays the first thing I'd do is rework Saturday Kitchen into a daily format and then they can clear Saturday morning for the live kids TV show it desperately needs (and quietly drop the afternoon CBBC slots at the same time).


P.S. ITV have picked up My Man Can with Melanie Sykes and Mark Wright for six episodes to air in 2013: http://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=5633 http://www.c21media.net/archives/80847

And Dancing in the Stars (US) in the fall is reported to be an All Star season - surely an attempt to regain some viewers lost to The Voice:
http://www.realityblurred.com/realit...ll-star-season

C4 have commissioned a new daytime quiz show - 1001 Things you should Know, which sounds a bit like 100% with a few questions asked by celebs:
http://www.c21media.net/archives/80881

I've long thought Sky's buying process was very very poor. The news Sky Atlantic was just worked out in 3 months (an entirely new channel and huge investment) I find a real shock still. I just thought they were making bad decisions.

I've been saying for about 2 years now, BSkyB need to start looking at their actual profits, they keep increasing the cost of things, and ultimately the cost for them. I just think they are wasting a lot of money that could be better used elsewhere or just as well...profit!

All they are doing is being uncompetitive and inflating the market.


The reason Sky are pissy about the overnights is people are picking up that Sky are using their subscribers money to buy up programmes that are failing to keep their viewers when moved behind the pay-wall.

There is however still some childish egos at work. If they really are happy, then why complain? Seriously its ridiculous.

I'm on the cusp of taking the plunge on Virgin Media TV. We already have phone and broadband with them. I'm tempted by the carrot of C5 HD, ESPN HD, Film4 HD and a bunch of other SD channels I don't currently get for only £7 more than I'm currently paying for ESPN (SD) alone- yes please!

I wouldn't even consider Sky. I simply don't like how they operate. I'd rather miss out on the content, or wait for it to become available elsewhere. I think a lot of people would feel the same if it wasn't for the Premier League football, and with a bit of luck that stranglehold won't last much longer.

I liked 100%. Sometimes the simple formats are the best.

I still think if C5 are to revive one of their gameshows it has to be The Mole, probably the most criminally underrated show in the history of the network.

Nice to see Doctors is an Exception
I do hope the new plans will include a 6:30PM BBC2 Doctors repeat though. About time the BBC put some more money into the show and gave it a repeat slot

Or they could just scrap Daytime Television altogether. Seeing as how DQF stands for Delivering Quality First and aside from a few token dramas there's no quality there.

They didn't bother with Daytime television in the days when there were only 3 TV channels so why they bother in the digital age when the minimum a person will have is Freeview or Freesat with a couple of dozen channels offering daytime TV (plus a similar number of radio stations) I don't know.**


**(Yes, I do. It's for audience share purposes.)

Interesting from someone who always lectures about complimentary scheduling, you want BBC to make shows on topics already covered by ITV at that time.

They already show nearly 3 quiz shows[Eggheads/Pointless/Breakaway/Perfection] in their daytime schedule. You want more!

Right so you want more of what you like and less of what you don't like. Who cares about everyone else! Amazingly self obsessed.


Yeah axe it because you don't like it. Old/Sick viewers can go piss off!


So a quiz show like Pointless is quality but Bargain Hunt isn't. I think you're mixing up taste and logic there.

I didn't watch The Mole but from everything I've read about it I agree on both counts. I'm surprised Challenge hasn't done 100% itself - must be cheap as chips. Be interesting to see how the new Blockbusters does in a couple of weeks.


That's three quiz shows from 4.30-6.30pm though. BBC1 through to 1pm is a different area of the schedules and for many years they had quizzes in the hour before the One o'clock News, and also regularly in the post Neighbours slot (Going for Going for Gold!). I think quiz shows could fit in quite comfortably at either 9.15am or 12.15pm - probably better the latter as I think they've got a pretty decent mix of shows at 9.15am, and while Homes under the Hammer may be a bit too comfortable at 10am I think 11am-1pm is where they really need to work.

I've nothing particularly against Bargain Hunt but perhaps that could move to 2.15pm, and then I'd like to see something other than Pointless repeats rotate with Pointless at 5.15pm. Until we know what is happening with CBBC on BBC1 though it's difficult to say what they should do in the afternoons - but BBC1 shouldn't be competing with BBC2 at 5.15pm for essentially the same audience.