Looks like the Premier League are beginning to award TV rights, BBC retaining terrestrial highlights. I suspect they were probably the only bidders.


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

Price is apparently £180m.

http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/n...ighlights.html

in my first post, I didnt go as far as to say that Simon Cowell has hired a young women, with a history of questionable mental health, to get the attention grabbing headlines the show requires.

However your post goes almost as far, so I might as well.

i think it is is sick that this is how Cowell wants to make TV, sick that that media are happy to go along, and it does not say much for the people for whom this is exciting.

How does that compare with the current deal?
EDIT: it was apparently £171m for both of the two previous three-year deals.
In terms of rights costs per hour, very roughly, doesn't it run about 90 mins on a Sat, 70 mins on a Sun, plus a few weekday outings, over about 40 weeks a year? In that case it would be about 110 hours a year so £550k/hour plus talent and other production costs.

It would take a truly miraculous performance from one of the other networks (or for total collapse at CBS next season) to stop CBS taking the demo win next year. Not only will they have the Super Bowl they'll also have the AFC Championship game in prime time.


The Voice will have helped quite a bit as well, especially as the entire run was within the regular season this week. Its worth mentioning that despite its relative collapse for the live stages it finished the season with a 6.12 average in the demo (vs. 6.16 for Idol Wednesday) to finish as the seasons third biggest show.

For those that might be interested the Top 10 demo performers in the US for this season

1 - Sunday Night Football [NBC] - 7.99
2 - American Idol - Wednesday [Fox] - 6.16
3 - The Voice [NBC] - 6.12
4 - Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick [NBC] - 5.74
5 - Modern Family [ABC] - 5.54
=6 - American Idol - Thursday [Fox] - 5.53
=6 - The Big Bang Theory [CBS] - 5.53
8 - The OT [Fox] - 5.24
9 - Two and a Half Men [CBS] - 5.1
10 - The X Factor - Wednesday [Fox] - 4.36

The highest rated new scripted show is 2 Broke Girls which ranks at 11 with 4.35. The highest rated new drama is Once Upon A Time at 18 with 4.1


That's not how averages work. Which is why shows that only air 13 episodes aren't at an obvious advantage to shows that air 20+ episodes.

Time to play catch up.

Can The Voice be saved for series 2? What would you change for the next series?
Great news for BBC Sport. Match Of The Day is vital as it's a popular show and it means the BBC will still show some top flight football. Spending the money on lesser sports would have been a terrible idea.

In fact I'd make a case for Channel 4 to be showing more minority sports.

Thursday 24th May 2012
BBC One
13:45 - Doctors: 1.20m (23.9%)
19:00 - The One Show: 3.25m
19:30 - EastEnders: 6.32m (36.2%)
20:00 - Planet Earth Live: 2.91m (14.6%)
21:00 - National Treasures Special: 2.08m (10.2%)

BBC Two
20:00 - The Chelsea Flower Show: 1.73m (8.7%)
21:00 - The Fish Market: Inside Billingsgate: 2.21m (10.5%)
22:00 - Grandma's House: 742k (4.1%)

ITV1
17:00 - The Chase: 2.00m inc +1
19:00 - Emmerdale: 5.24m (33.2%)
19:30 - Tonight: 2.65m inc +1
20:00 - Emmerdale: 5.73m (30.2%), +1: 191k (1.0%)
20:30 - Coronation Street: 6.83m (32.9%), +1: 289k (1.4%)
21:00 - Long Lost Family: 3.96m (19.5%), +1: 275k

Channel 4
18:30 - Hollyoaks: 714k (5.0%)
20:00 - Phil Spencer: Secret Agent: 1.02m (5.1%),+1: 146k
21:00 - The Hoarder Next Door: 1.95m (9.6%), +1: 942k
* +1 number is either very high or very wrong
22:00 - 24 Hours in A&E: 1.17m (7.2%), +1: 156k

Channel 5
13:45 - Neighbours: 510k (10.1%)
17:30 - Neighbours: 879k (7.9%)
18:00 - Home and Away: 724k (5.5%)
20:00 - The True Story: 656k (3.4%)
21:00 - Cowboy Builders: 670k (3.3%), +1: 25k (0.16%)

Primetime Shares
ITV1 - 21.9% (+1: 0.9%)
BBC One - 17.7%
BBC Two - 7.6%
Channel 4 - 6.6% (+1: 1.0%)
Channel 5 - 3.3% (+1: 0.1%)
BBC Three - 2.8%
E4 - 2.2% (+1: 1.0%)

Ratings include HD and are tape-checked where necessary.

Multichannels
5*
18:30 - Home and Away: 462k (3.2%)

5USA
21:00 - NCIS: 500k (3.0%)

BBC Three
20:00 - Eurovision Song Contest Semi Final: 484k (2.4%)
22:00 - Russell Howard's Good News: 991k (5.5%)
22:30 - EastEnders: 775k (5.3%)
24:30 - Russell Howard's Good News: 369k (10.5%)

E4
19:00 - Hollyoaks: 396k (2.5%)
20:00 - The Big Bang Theory: 852k (4.5%), +1: 358k
21:00 - 2 Broke Girls:502k (2.5%), +1: 258k
22:00 - Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23: 419k (2.0%), +1: 175k

ITV2
20:00 - American Idol: 293k (1.5%)
21:00 - The Exclusives: 150k (0.7%)

Source: Attentional, DS

Season is 38 weeks.

If you take the Sunday edition as one hour and ignore the few weekday editions there are it works out at £600,000 per hour for the rights exactly.

But there are production costs on top.

Not really great news for the sports dept other than they keep MOTD. The pay slightly more, so there will be no budget saving to invest elsewhere. So basically the BBC Sport budget now precludes them bidding for anything else given that they have tied up Wimbledon, 6N, MOTD and F1. So that should tie the FA Cup terrestial rights to ITV

You seem to be thinking though that everything but football is a minority sport.


Exactly. BBC Sport IMO was at it's best at the turn of the century when it lost MOTD. As a result England games returned to live terrestrial TV, the amount of FA Cup games increased to 2 and then 3 per round - plus replays, and generally speaking all sports benefitted in some way, for example with them securing exclusive Six Nations rights (previously Sky had the England games).

£180m over three years is about the same value per year as the Sky live cricket deal, would secure the Olympics live until at least 2020, if not 2024 (IIRC the current deal is around £60m) and would secure a similarly lenghthy contract for the major football tournaments.

Without checking I think £180m is about the figure ITV pay for the Champions League, and annually about the same as they pay for England/FA Cup rights.


All that said though in the current climate had they lost the MOTD rights I suspect rather than the budget being ploughed back into BBC Sport it would have gone elsewhere in the BBC or back into the pockets of David Cameron.

So much for BBC1's default audience of 4m from 8pm - 10pm. The BBC1 core audience must have been going BBQ crazy last night.

Has BBC1 ever dropped below 2m in primetime - or under 10% share? I can imagine Panorama or similar will have been in that territory on occasion.

Decent enough share for EastEnders (36%) but probably less people watching due to the heat. Pretty low all round and we could see shocking ratings over the weekend - I would predict The Voice to drop even further as it's on at 6.30pm, it's still daylight and warm.

They put a BBC2/4 Art Show on BBC1 Sunday nights a few years ago, think it was called Past Masters? Not sure though. I think that got less tham 2m?

Crikey it could go down to 4m average tomorrow. Let's get real, who's watching much TV in this weather? We didn't turn it on until 10 last night!

tThats a rubbish rating for BBC1 at 9pm yesterday, beaten by a documentary about fish markets on BBC2 !

I don't think there was a real reason for stopping. They've continued to spend a fortune on ITV1 daytime, because those studio shows are not cheap, and most of them have no significant repeat value. Daytime dramas can be repeated cheaply, and sold abroad if they're good enough.

Can't do that with This Morning or Titchmarsh.

If I am not down the pub or sat in the garden, I am usually home with a television on, 20 million watching TV last night (but 40 million not watching TV at 9pm!!) I caught up on The Good Wife last night, UFC and then some NBA play offs. I have the luxury that all programmes can be recorded by myself or on the V+ service, so there is no need to see a show 'live' and any recorded shows are also virtually ad free on V+

I can see that viewers are only going to watch shows they really enjoy in this weather, The Apprentice held up well on Wednesday, as did Lewis, otherwise they are going to think about sitting in garden or heading out for a cold beverage...

Something went wrong there. I'm talking just about the share rather than the rating.

I didn't realise Planet Earth Live was still going, I thought it was a live event over a week, rather than popping up allover the place.

iPlayer rights extend to both weekend shows on the new contract, rather than the current Sundays only.

I did some digging to check:

Sunday, May 2nd 2010
BBC1
21:00 - Modern Masters 1.54m (6.4%)

Sunday, May 9th 2010
BBC1
21:00 - Modern Masters averaged 2m (8.1%)

Sunday, May 16th 2010
BBC1
21:00 - Modern Masters 1.74m (7.1%)

Sunday, May 23rd 2010
BBC1
21:00 - Modern Masters: 2.01m (9.2%)

I think it would be very difficult for ITV to lose those rights at the next auction, which will presumably be around this time next year. I think the next rights start with the 2014/15 season.

Must be concerning for The Voice. This is exactly why they should have started The Voice in January, with little opposition on Saturday nights.

Planet Earth Live
- episode 1: 06/05 - 5.43m (22.1%)
- episode 2: 09/05 - 3.68m (16.4%)
- episode 3: 10/05 - 3.59m (14.6%)
- episode 4: 13/05 - 4.87m (19.9%)
- episode 5: 16/05 - 4.43m
- episode 6: 17/05 - 3.65m (16.1%)
- episode 7: 20/05 - 3.92m (16.7%)
- episode 8: 24/05 - 2.91m (14.6%)

Series average of 4.06m (17.2%).

Looks like the anti-BBC Sport complainers will be out in force on Saturday 9th June:

16:30 - Euro 2012 Live
19:10 - BBC News
19:30 - Euro 2012 Live
22:00 - BBC News
22:30 - Formula 1: The Canadian Grand Prix Qualifying Highlights

I am not very optimistic about The Voice's chances tomorrow with this weather.