Did you miss the bit where someone mentioned my name effectively inviting me into the discussion to put forward my 2 pence?

Oh, please pipe down. I'm not looking to change anyone's opinion, least of all yours. It's enjoyed a long history and built up a loyal readership through that. But my view that is overrated and puts too much emphasis on worthy BBC/Sky programming for it to be interesting to me or particularly credible is no more 'wrong' than yours, it is just that, an opinion. You need to get your head around the fact that in a busy forum environment such as this you will encounter many opposing opinions and learn to interact with others who hold these views in a more polite and less aggressive manner, else I suspect the ban could be wielded again for the (fifth?) time when DS discover you are a repeat offender. And that's before we even get to the bizarre abusive PMs you've sent me via one of your now 'inactive' accounts.

If it goes well no doubt some will be lobbying for it to become permanent. But how would that fit with the DQF policy of scaling back spend on daytime? Answer: it doesn't. But then repeats of Snog Marry Avoid et al cost nothing. The BBC might try to make a case for it as ITV2 and ITV3 are now miles in front of BBC Three in the multichannel race and they won't like that one jot.

Just looking through the BBC3 schedules and I do think that statement will very much come back to haunt you. Perhaps not in the first few days, but later on when finals and more sports start I think BBC3 will walk all over Channel 5.

We will see in two and a half weeks...

Gut feeling is it won't. But if I'm wrong, I won't be too bothered. The hype around this is so immense that it would be impossible to forecast any other outcome than the BBC capitalising in a big big way. How the audience will be distributed across the network is something of a puzzle, though.

The concern I have for BBC Three is, apart from the obligatory dose of misery served up through the EE rerun, is it really going to be doing anything that the many interactive streams won't? It will find itself vying for audience with the various well-publiced red button offerings. They haven't got an unlimited audience to target, and the more outlets there are the more split the numbers will be. And whilst I appreciate that BBC Three will generally be showing events that are a step above what these other streams are showing, they will still ultimately be events deemed not good enough for the main channel, or events that will later be shown in delayed form or via highlights on the main channel, and for that reason I'd caution against being too optimistic about the channel's chances of achieving its full ratings potential during the fortnight. Obviously being 24 hours for the first time is going to lift it a fair bit, but I'm not 100% convinced it will propel it enough to overtake any of the big 5, with the possible exceptions of Saturdays and daytime.

As I said though, if I'm proved wrong, no sweat. Ratings will clearly be abnormal and heavily biased towards the BBC across the fortnight, it's merely a question of how badly everything else is going to get walloped. Personally I find it hard to get excited about this kind of scenario playing out from a ratings point-of-view and look forward to things returning to normal.

It's not a sixteen-day listings magazine, it's a normal 146-page seven-day listings magazine but with a pull-out Olympics guide so you can plan and find out about the Games all in one go. Like how The Guardian did their hundred page Olympic guide on Saturday even though they're out every day.


Where are the cast lists? Where are the credits? Where are the bylines that tell you when the shows are repeated? Where are the individual programme billings for the Milkshake line-up? Where's the offer to buy Ice Road Truckers on DVD? Where are the pointers to the choice pages to read fuller previews of CSI, Once Upon A Time and the other C5 programmes worthy of highlighting? All that is in the Radio Times.


So how come that it's still the third best selling TV listings magazine, behind only the two budget guides, despite being three times the price? Might it be because it covers the programmes its readers are interested in, regardless of the channel (hence the Scott and Bailey, Lewis, Jonathan Ross and X Factor covers in recent months)? You don't remain one of the best selling magazines in Britain by not listening to your readers, hence the regular market research programmes they do.

Given it was owned by the BBC for ninety years, it's perhaps not surprising why it might be more interested in BBC programmes, given that may well be one of the reasons why people like and buy it. But why shouldn't it be in favour of the BBC, there are enough newspapers forever slagging it off, it's nice to have at least one publication saying something else, while at the same time not being blatantly pro-Beeb to the extent it says, as I pointed out, that Vexed, one of the Beeb's new series next week is "one of the worst things ever seen on television" and doesn't give it any other promotion, no feature, no highlighting, no nothing. I'm guessing almost every other TV magazine would have given it more coverage - and more uncritical coverage at that.


It's hardly a lazy decision because they have to alter two double page spreads to move Channel Five rather than one if they'd left it where it was. In the eighties, various strikes meant that sometimes the Radio Times wasn't produced at all and as it was the sole guide to BBC programmes, BBC1 and BBC2 had no llistings outside that day's papers. And now we're in an era where people keep saying nobody buys listings magazines.


One thing about BBC3 is that actually it's easier for people to avoid Olympics coverage completely because in the past there has been occasions when there's been coverage of two different events on BBC1 and BBC2 at the same time, which won't happen now and means there's always a mainstream choice. One interesting thing next week is that because BBC1 is full and BBC2 isn't regionalised, The Super League Show's first showing is on network BBC2, not just the 4am repeat.


BBC3 has always been behind the other multichannels because it's only in the evenings and they've never been bothered about that before. Indeed one of the conditions for getting permission to launch BBC3 was that it wouldn't aggressively aim to steal audiences from other channels so it would be a complete U-turn to say they want to do it get higher shares. It means nothing BBC3 being behind ITV3, they're aimed at completely different audiences.

And unless they get more space permanently on Freeview they'd be loathe to do it, especially as I'm sure Brekkie could think of other ways they could use that space first.

I read this thread everyday and appreciate all the ratings you post (and everyone else), but I do want to point out in this instance that TV & Satellite Week haven't changed their usual basic column layout, they've just swapped BBC3 and Sky 1 column size, if they didn't have Sky1 the same as the main five usually channel 5 would probably have been the one to give way.

The gap is growing wider, no doubt partly fuelled by improvements during the day.

June 2010
BBC Three: 1.5%
ITV2 (inc. +1): 2.5%
ITV3 (inc. +1): 2.2%

June 2012
BBC Three: 1.6% [+7%]
ITV2 (inc. +1): 2.9% [+16%]
ITV3 (inc. +1): 2.7% [+23%]

Source: BARB.

The BBC is an increasingly ratings obsessed organisation and so the chances of them not being bothered by the above trend are quite remote.

The probable reason for BBC3 showing Olympics is the limited coverage available on Freeview, which doesn't have space for the 24 extra Olympic channels.

Freeview's Olympic coverage is BBC1, BBC3, BBC Red Button channel 301 and an extra Red Button channel 302, which only transmits from 7pm.

Are they? Perhaps you'd like to give some examples of that, if that was the case they wouldn't be recommissioning the likes of The Hollow Crown and Stewart Lee which get critical acclaim but poor ratings, or spending less on sports and light entertainment. And I fail to see why BBC3 and ITV3 should be compared at all. They have nothing in common (apart from the number). Indeed, I'm sure the rise in ITV3's ratings can at least in part be assigned to older viewers getting digital TV for the first time. Nobody is switching from BBC3 to ITV3.

Don't forget The Culture Show and Later...With Jools Holland. Holland's show gets pretty poor viewing figures yet will celebrate its 20th anniversary in October.

Seems to be the main thing they tweet about. I know you are still in denial about "The Voice" but when it was topping the ratings its was being shouted from the rooftops on TVC. When it plummeted it was suddenly all about artistic values. Its the old story of the BBC having it all ways

Taking a quick look at the first week, there are some interesting moments from a ratings perspective:

Saturday 10am: Mark Cavendish in Men's Road Race around streets of London (BBC1)
Saturday 7.30pm: Michael Phelps in Men's 400m IM Final (BBC1)

Sunday 8pm: Rebecca Adlington in Women's 400m Freestyle Final (BBC1), Men's 4x100m Freestyle Relay Final (BBC1)

Monday 3pm: Tom Daley and Pete Waterfield in Men's Synchronised 10m Final (BBC1)
Monday 7pm: Michael Phelps in Men's 200m Freestyle Final (BBC1)

Tuesday 2pm: Zara Phillips in Evening Jumping Finals (BBC1)
Tuesday 7pm: Michael Phelps in Men's 200m Butterfly Final (BBC1)

Wednesday 10am: Rowing Men's 8 Final (BBC1)
Wednesday 2pm: Bradley Wiggins in Men's Individual Time Trial (BBC1)

Thursday 5pm: Victoria Pendleton and co in Women's Team Sprint Final (BBC1)
Thursday 6pm: Chris Hoy and co in Men's Team Sprint Final (BBC2)
Thursday 8pm: Michael Phelps in Men's 200m IM Final (BBC1), Fran Halsall in Women's 100m Freestyle Final (BBC1)

Friday All Day: Jessica Ennis in Women's Heptathlon (BBC1)
Friday 6pm: Chris Hoy and co in Men's Team Pursuit Final (BBC2), Victoria Pendleton in Women's Keirin Final (BBC2)
Friday 7pm: Michael Phelps in Men's 100m Butterfly Final (BBC1), Rebecca Adlington in Women's 800m Freestyle Final (BBC1)

Will be particularly interesting to Thursday/Fridays ratings - I think the audience will follow the Cycling on to BBC2.

There is a case for it, but they need to include sport in my opinion. There is a lot of sport that gets lost on the red button and that the BBC doesn't have time to transmit that could be filling BBC3 daytime. It could also be a good chance to replay documentaries and factual programmes.

Filling it with repeats of Doctor Who, Total Wipeout and Snog, Marry, Avoid is not a viable option.

Exactly. What was it Holly Willybooby called it - "The tv show of the moment" or some other codswallop. When the ratings slide at the BBC press the default phrase button that says "We aren't really interested in ratings". :yawn:

Scanning the final Olympics week, the most interesting ratings prospect is Tom Daley in Men's 10m Final at 8.30pm on Saturday night (11 August).

And obviously Bolt in the 100m Final Sunday (5 August) at 9.50pm and 200m final Thursday (9 August) at 9pm.

She said it was the biggest show on TV ONCE, possibly an ad-lib, and it was. They didn't even issue a press release.

hahha are you really naive or are you just being a wind up? They were feeding loads of stories to the papers for weeks about how great the ratings were.

Some good soap ratings last night considering the warm weather. Strange how the DS soap headline today was about EE's bumper ratings...I'd hardly call 7.6m and 7.3m, bumper ratings. But then again the headlines often make no sense. Corrie did well last night and somehow got the better of EE.

The weather does seem to be raising temperatures here.....

The 5 main channels quite rightly get priority in the listing mags....arguably BBC HD ought get promoted for big sports events. I know some people don't see the difference, but it does look so different.

You've already got a tin hat from the Jubilee weekend you can use, so that's something...

What's the point of them duplicating listings on the same page? Better to just put "Also on BBC HD". And arguably the people who want to watch in HD will seek out the HD channel numbers anyway.

The ratings for the auditions and battle rounds were great, and they went up while they were going on, so clearly people liked it. That is a fact. The ratings certainly did fall for the live shows and nobody denied that. And of course the press office should be telling papers when the shows are getting high ratings, that's what a press office does. Given the rest of the time the papers slag off the Beeb willy-nilly, helped by ITV feeding them rubbish about how Spooks going up against Downton is "aggressive scheduling", so they should get some positive press out there. The X Factor keeps banging on about its ratings.

When Fame Academy was on, they ran it directly opposite Pop Idol, copied it to exactly to the letter, including the phone numbers, and created the most cynical television programme ever made. That's the BBC at its worst. The Voice was certainly not the best light entertainment show the BBC have ever made, but it was a million times better than that.

Fame Academy, a cynical BBC cash in that always leaves a sour taste in the mouth and deserved to be die unwanted at the end of its second series. The Voice, while not a million miles from the talent formats so successful on ITV, at least tried not to blatantly copy TXF and for all ratings dipped, was still a success for them.

Someone's very bitter.

It must have killed you to see EE getting so much praise last night. You only popped into the episode thread last night to have a dig about an episode that aired 8 years ago (the funfair one). :sleep: Was that the best you could manage? And you accuse those who don't like the Ryan Connor recast of being jealous and threatened EE fans do me a favour.

Anyway I don't know what people were expecting for EE but the promo was hardly anything like the promo for their last live episode and for one thing this wasn't fully live. I presume they didn't give it extra promotion because the storyline wasn't big like the reveal of Archie's killer.

Funny how there has been little demand or discussion of the Big Brother ratings today. Well, here they are:

21:00 - Big Brother - 995k (4.2%) +1 149k

Obviously EastEnders hit the first showing but thought it would pick up a little bit more on +1.


I suspect though you're the only person in the country who is bothered by it, and you don't even buy it. Absolutely the right decision for this once in a lifetime event, and the Radio Times is clearly going for the Olympics market this week. I suspect those not interested in the games might skip the RT this week anyway.

P.S. I doubt it'll hit ratings too much as they're used to losing judges but Sharon Osbourne has reportedly quit America's Got Talent, and there is a question mark over whether Howard Stern will return next year too.

http://www.realityblurred.com/realit...ron-out-effect