I think E4 needs to take some risks at this years upfronts, personally I would like to see Arrow, and The Carrie Dairies would be good for E4 as well.

The CW's schedule does seem to be a shift away from the female skewed shows that dominated their schedule with the exception of The Carrie Diaries but I think that's been the case for a few years now but it's more prevelant with these pickups like Arrow. I won't be surprised if they start developing comedies for the 2013/14 season but I imagine they'll want to get rid of Gossip Girl first.

Gossip Girl is set to end next season. Reports are its been given an 11 episode final season.

The CW did have some comedy scripts in development this year but ultimately didn't order any of them to pilot. The problem for them, I think, is going to be working out where they schedule a comedy block given that everyone else is now investing pretty heavily in comedy every night of the week. As things stand every night (excluding Saturday) is going to have at least an hour of new comedy across the four major networks. Most will have more. That's a scary field for The CW to try and break into with no foothold to work from.

Also more news from the NBC up front.

The Voice will return for its first Fall cycle on September 9. And new pilots will air during NBC's Olympics coverage over the summer giving that audience a sneak peak at what's to come on NBC's Fall line-up which looks like it'll kick-off proper the week of September 9.

Don't want to see it anywhere!!

Luckily Mrs derek500 is away for a five weeks and I've been spared The Voice, BGT, American Idol etc. etc. for the last couple of weeks.

She'll be back in time for Strictly and X Factor.

So true!!

Neil Cross' (Luther) pirate drama Crossbones has picked up a straight to series order from NBC. It'll get 10 episodes and focus on legendary pirate Blackbird and the formation of the rouge pirate state of New Providence. Look for it to be shopped internationally over the summer because of the way its producers are financing it. ITV should consider it (possibly for Saturday night) since the lead is likely to British.

I hope the ratings for EastEnders will be back to normal tonight as it looks like another great week.

comedys would be interesting, but not for this season, too many new one elsewhere, unless they find something really good.

That said The CW pickups are done, so there was never going to be any, anyways.

As for Crossbones, NBc has alot lined up for midseason, I hope that isnt telling on the quality of its fall line up.

I think there's a chance they're looking at Crossbones as a possible summer drama for next year that can be brought forward into the regular season if its needed.

In terms of the amount of shows they have on the bench its worth mentioning that NBC have been making noise at their up front about having more original content across the entire year and not holding quite so rigidly to the regular season timetable. Most of the reality content that's on the bench for example will likely air over the Christmas/New Year period where NBC originally saw success with The Sing-Off and then again with a couple of formats last year and most networks just go into shut down.

I suspect they may also make a play at all but removing repeats from the regular season. Smash and Revolution look like they're going to timeslot share Monday 10PM out of The Voice which makes sense. 13-16 episode seasons seems like it would be in the best interests of both shows.

I seem to recall they tried that a few years ago, came out with with 3 full schedules, not sure where it got them.

The Lewis repeat did well considering it was so last minute and I'm not even sure it was on all EPGs never mind in any listings.

Planet Earth Live is still doing ok considering it seems to have been really badly received with the only bit live being the presenters, all the clips being recorded. As Ian Hyland pointed out, they should have recorded this and done The Voice results live.

Vera was on series link on my Sky box. Lewis didn't record instead, so it must have been updated prior to 8pm.

Either that or release The Voice contestants onto the set of Planet Earth live and let the one that can run the fastest be the winner.

The Voice is just suffering from the same thing that The X Factor, Dancing On Ice and Britain's Got Talent have gone through recently - over expectation. Admittedly, The Voice has dipped over a much shorter time period than the other three programmes but it's still rating ok for it's first series and the second series can possibly be given a revamp. Planet Earth rebounded without the Britain's Got Talent opposition but Death In Paradise suffered thanks to ITV's headstart.

Emmerdale struggled in a bizarre slot - I still think they should've aired a 60 minute episode on Friday (taking Coronation Street's 7.30pm slot) and moving Coronation Street to the Sunday slot where it would've held up better. Lewis did ok as a replacement. Why are they airing The Cube against the live performance show of The Voice yet shoving Family Fortunes on Sunday when Family Fortiunes would probably do better as 'live' opposition?

BBC Two had a strong night; Coast is a very good performer for the channel. Twilight struggled in comparison; maybe all who wanted to see it have seen it already and have the DVDs? Peter Andre didn't perform much better for Channel 4. I'm glad Once Upon A Time held up on Channel 5 while World's Scariest Animal Attacks did pretty well too.

The Only Way Is Essex seems slightly low but overall ITV2 had a very good evening. Sky Sports also had success with the final day of the Premiership; as did Match Of the Day. Next year I think they should have Alan Shearer and Joey Barton together as panelists...

Reasonable figure for The Voice - which must be coming as a bit of a relief at BBC HQ. They ought to be able to look forward to a long-awaited steady rise for the main show next week. Though nothing about this show has been steady so far.

Not much to write home about with two repeats filling the 9pm slots on the big channels. DiP didn't do particularly well, but BBC One do need to persevere with breaking in repeats of other shows. Like 'em or not, 9pm repeats are here to stay and it'd be nice if the channel had something besides New Tricks to push out.


It's not even that, I don't think. Sam Hodges confirmed to Dan Wooton on Twitter a few weeks ago that the reported costs were 'all in' - coaches, spinning chairs, studios and all. Which would line up with what the BBC bods have said about it being slightly more expensive than Strictly, but significantly less than TXF (which does hit £1m an episode, if I recall?).

The chatter about the mega-cost of The Voice is mostly wide of the mark, it would seem. As Danny Cohen said somewhere recently - the whole budget came from the entertainment pot. If you added up the total cost of SYTYCD, Tonights the Night and a few of the teatime flops that have seen the axe, I bet you wouldn't be too far off. And if thats the case - it's still a good trade.

Firstly, the £22m figure will be the price the BBC has paid the production company for the show. The only bit that may be outside of that would be the judges and presenters fees, e.g. ITV pay the BGT/XF judges and presenters themselves on top of the production costs.

Secondly, this is not as expensive a show as the press like to point out. If that does work out at £550,000 per hour that's less than almost every major series on British television with the exception of the soaps. But it is expensive for a light entertainment series, that is for sure. You can easily produce one for under £200,000 an hour. However shows like X Factor have reported budgets of £700,000 - £1m per hour. Match of the Day costs over £2m per weekend it's on air (rights + production) - although some of that cost is spread to Match of the Day 2.

I suspect that £22m is very similar to the Cowell deal and therefore includes everything except the deals for judges and presenters as Cent has said.

Apparently Will.i.am is getting £500k, Tom Jones is said to be on £250k with Jessie J and Danny getting £200k and £150k respectively. Holly is apparently on £400k, and whilst I don't know what Reggie is getting it'll probably be less than Holly (say £200k). So that comes to a total of £1.7m, alongside the £11m for this year's rights and production. They're airing around 21 hours of it this year so that works out at approximately £600,000 per hour all in.

As others have said that's more than Strictly but it's hardly as much as the media are making it out to be. That's cheaper than most 9pm dramas for instance, and probably similar to what they spend on The Apprentice. I bet ITV spend a similar amount on Dancing on Ice too.

As for Cowell's shows, ITV pay £40m per year for TXF and BGT (I think Red or Black is done separately). Over the 63 (ish) hours they get out of the two shows per year that works out at approximately £635k per hour for production and rights. Last year Gary apparently got £1.5m, Louis and Dermot £1m each, Kelly £500k and Tulisa £300k. That comes to a total of £3.3m which over the c42 hours the show aired for that works out at c£100k per hour, meaning that last year ITV were paying approximately £735,000 per hour for The X Factor. I suspect that's quite a bit cheaper than it was in 2010 when Cowell and Cole were getting much more than any of last year's lot. Indeed I think BGT is probably more expensive than TXF per hour nowadays as Cowell and Ant & Dec are both on it. BGT is probably close to £1m per hour all in with those involved (and I bet Walliams didn't come cheap either!).

Still no word on the host it seems. Must say that line up doesn't exactly inspire me with confidence, though who knows - Britney might do a Cheryl Cole and turn out to be rather good in the medias eye at least.


The closest thing to a UK upfront:
http://www.channel4.com/info/press/n...and-the-intern

No real surprise that they'll fast track Homegrown in the autumn, though I do think considering the strong competition they're better holding it off until Q1 2013. I don't trust C4 not to schedule it against Downton Abbey.

Four new dramas announced - though none really have returning potential:

Gordon Ramsey and Mary Portas team up to run Hotel Brittania while The Interns gives young job seekers the chance to win a dream Internship by going through a week long job interview from hell. Sounds familiar. The previously announced 4 Goes Mad and another Fish Fight season are confirmed, while Jay Hunt says Hollyoaks is safe as it caters for the teen audience in a way other C4 shows don't.

They really push the PSB angle in their report to hide the fact they've got no real big hitters at the moment. C4 as a whole made a £44m profit, but the station C4 made a £41m loss.


And in other C4 news E4 is replacing HIMYM on Mondays with dating show Love Shaft at 7.30pm, One Tree Hill ends with a double bill next Monday so I suspect Revenge will launch the following week - apparently E4 have begun airing ads.

US ratings: Sunday 13th May 2012

ABC
7.00 America's Funniest Home Videos 6.31m (1.6)
8.00 Once Upon A Time 9.45m (3.2)
9.00 Desperate Housewives 10.98m (3.2)
10.00 Desperate Housewives (2nd hour) 11.23m (3.3)

CBS
7.00 60 Minutes 9.21m (1.2)
8.00 Survivor: One World 10.08m (2.7)
9.00 Survivor: One World (2nd hour) 10.36m (2.9)
10.00 Survivor: One World (3rd hour) 8.07m (2.4)

FOX
7.00 The Simpsons (r) 2.12m (0.9)
7.30 The Cleveland Show 2.79m (1.3)
8.00 The Simpsons 4.00m (1.9)
8.30 Bob's Burgers 3.63m (1.8)
9.00 Family Guy 4.94m (2.3)
9.30 American Dad 4.12m (2.0)

NBC
7.00 Dateline 3.62m (0.8)
8.00 Harry's Law 7.61m (1.0)
9.00 Celebrity Apprentice 5.30m (1.6)
10.00 Celebrity Apprentice (2nd hour) 5.49m (1.9)

Source: http://www.hitfix.com/articles/tv-ra...-to-sunday-win

Fox's animations looking a bit low.

Could they have all been repeats? The site said only the 7pm episode was a repeat but it could've been an evening full of them.

Thanks Fudd

Animation hardly producing domination last night for FOX, although they did have to compete with some big finales on other networks.

The new episode* of The Simpsons is underwhelming with 1.9% of all 18-49s. I reckon C4 over here gets about double that in a 6pm slot!

Can't criticise The Simpsons too much though - they're about to wrap their 23rd season (over 500 episodes!) which is pretty good going.

TV in the US is another world though with the cut-throat competition I suppose, with cable being so strong over there. The big four nets only managed a 30% primetime share of all viewers between them.

EDIT: * FOX says all the animation from 7.30 was new ('All New' in fact!). I like they way they label the repeat: 'Airs at a Special Time' )

http://www.fox.com/schedule/

no wonder jobseekers cant get jobs, if they are going on "interviews from hell"

As for the US ratings, I know Harrys Law does not have a good demo, but that is a really good total viewers, by NBC standards.

Desperate Housewives seems to have gone out on a high which is nice, whilst Survivor looks underwhelming by CBS standards.

Stupid numbers for America's Funniest Home Videos, as ever cant work out why people still watch that.

Fox, Cleveland show does look low, no wonder it doesnt have a season order beyond the next one.

The new X Factor USA panel,

https://twitter.com/#!/britneyspears...906177/photo/1