as George isn't here....

I dispute the Greg Rutherford figure, as the Beeb weren't showing all his jumps live/at that designated time. They weren't really in one block and some of the jumps happen during Mo Farrah's 10k race

sure I'm splitting hairs, but .......

From a quick glance at the channel viewing share graph it appears that C5 has held up much better than ITV1.

C5 - 3.3% - whereas it's gone below 4% quite a few times in the past.

ITV1 (exc HD) - 8% - if you exclude the week before (10.6%), ITV1's previous lowest (excluding strike) appears to be 11.6%.

C4 appears to have performed somewhere in between the two.

Not sure why ITV1 has been hit the worst of the terrestrials given it's been said on here many times that the soaps have held up reasonably well.

Suggests ITV's viewing share for August as a whole is surely going to be down far more than the 12% advertising revenue reduction advised by Crozier. If audiences are lower than advertisers expect are there any implications? ( I appreciate that theoretically the ad market could be up as a whole but the numbers just look way out of alignment).

http://www.barb.co.uk/graph/viewing-share?_s=4

Excellent ratings to end what was probably the best 2 weeks of TV ever. I can't think of anything that could match those ratings over such a long period ever again.

The BBC's coverage was well worth the licence fee alone (to coin a classic Points of View phase)

At the same time, it's now going to make normal large ratings seem low and a bit flat.

ITV made a rather daft decision to fill its entire primetime with detective shows. In the end it could have pulled 3 million some nights.

They gave up too easily or had a lack of shows to put on. Meanwhile Ch4/5 have a long list of shows that perform decently to out on.

ITV1 was a wash out. The unfortunate thing is that other than some Bond films, am not sure what else they had to put on instead. Thats a bigger problem than the Olympics and overall I think its fair to say that Ch4/Ch5 did better cause overall their doing better than ITV outside of ITV's big hitters.

I would be interested in how ITV did overall with 2/3/4 did though. They might have held up better than most, or even gained non-Olympic viewers in the day time.


EDIT: Yup if you look at them all together, ITV1 seems down overall compared to everyone else. They just have less shows, and thus over the Olympics had nothing to really fall back on. ITV1's share has been moving away from BBC1's quite strongly over the last 2 years, whilst everyone else is moving along reasonably fine.

Does anyone know what figures The Sky at Night got last night as I'm interested to know if the Closing Ceremony lead-in helped it?

For anyone wondering, BBC recorded a 54.5% total share for the week ending August 5th. This includes all of their channels, including Olympics and other channels.

What were Channel 4's ratings like over the Olympics? I can't find them on DS? Thanks for the help

I'd say 'wow' again but I won't bother. The Olympics are just a massive massive success. BBC will be feeling pretty secure and happy right now.

I don't know if that cartoon's contract ends for new episodes this year, but it certainly doesn't end for repeat episodes for "a few years" according to Bennett.

5 minute breakdown for the Closing ceremony?

Wow! 23.2m peak 26.3m...just staggering! I didn't expect it to beat the OC at all. Fantastic numbers rounding off a brillant 17-days. Its going to be a long time (if indeed ever ) if we see figures like this again.

The big question now...can it top the OC in the officials and if i can - can it beat OFAH and become the most watched show of all time based on single showings?

Well, the OC's official rating was 110k away from OFAH, so it seems very likely to beat it.

Welcome back! I was wondering where you'd gone.

Might this be a record? I know you could say they had 100 pc domination during the 1979 ITV strike, but these were exceptional circumstances where ITV was closed down for 10 weeks. The closest I can think of the BBC doing this well was in August 1968 when a dispute with technicians severely disrupted, but actually didn't take ITV off the air, and the BBC took 60 pc of the audience. Also for a time around 1986-87, the BBC took 52 per cent of the audience, with Channel 4 biting into ITV's audience as well, and ITV being down to a share of 38 pc.

If this was something that repeated every year it would be a problem for ITV. A UK based Olympics won't happen again for at least another 40 years, the next Olympics will have track cycling finals between 9-11pm but all of the athletics and swimming finals will be after 11pm and most working people will watch on catch-up the next day.

This was about seeing London landmarks and large numbers of British people cheering and celebrating. It was our Games, and that enthusiasm won't be repeated for the Games in Rio (or Tokyo, Madrid, Istanbul).

ITV can put it behind them and look forward to Downton & X Factor, and the fact that few of the big summer sports events next year are live on terrestrial TV (e.g. the Ashes). It's only Wimbledon that they need to worry about and then only if Murray makes it through to the second week.

The BBC did a brilliant job and they should celebrate the moment but it isn't all doom and despair for the commercial channels.

Pretty sure BBC should have promoted The One Show tonight as a Olympics Special.

Can't find much at all - though the BBC showed the opening ceremony live in 2008 and got 2.2m (peak 2.7m). I've a feeling highlights shows were around the same mark too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008...gs.television3

I thought C4 might be looking at around 10m max for their opening ceremony, but after last night it could go higher. There seems to be a real awareness of the games I've never seen before.

C4 have now released the Paralympic press pack: http://www.channel4.com/info/press/p...s-on-channel-4


I'd imagine it will - with it being the closing and on a Sunday I think people would have been more willing to tape it (at least the later parts) and watch it tonight than they were with the opening.


Just highlights how dire TV really is. The BBC have now sneaked in an extended repeat of Eddie Butler's round up at 10.35pm tonight but I think they're missing a trick by not having some kind of post-Olympic debrief for a couple of hours in primetime tonight - would easily clear 10m IMO.


We all saw that coming. Interesting too C4 have dumped Highflyer as producers of the coverage in favour of IMG. I suspect they'll finally ditch John McCririck too - though hope they retain the C4 attitude of covering it as sport first, second and third - none of the ladies day waffle you get from BBC coverage.


P.S. Red or Black - exactly the kind of show which could make use of our many Olympic heroes, so it's going to look even more recorded than it might otherwise considering it was filmed months in advance - and we all know nobody wins till episode 3. Well, episode 6 as they insist on splitting them still.

I know you've said this for a while now in relation to BBC not having any post-Olympic retrospectives, but I honestly think it wouldn't rate that great. Its been shown, its finished and the news repeated it all 100% times.

The only interesting things to really show would be people celebrating winning. Everything else was discussed/analysed over the 2 weeks.

Olympic Special Programming wouldn't rate much better imo; if anything audiences might be lower. Its finished.
Meanwhile The One Show is just doing what it usually does I thought, was it overtly different? Or was it just any other LE couch show looking back at The Olympics?


Tonights ratings should be pretty interesting though. New ITV1 drama (think it'll rate 5 millionish, decent) against EE and Mrs Brown. EE especially is the ratings to watch right now. This is 'the relaunch' so to speak.

They could have easilly spun that out all week.

With Olympics Tonight being so fast paced cutting across numerous pundits/highlights packages/live coverage, there have been relatively few chances to have long form discussions and interviews.

Even with olympians and the mayor on the sofa they still felt the need to link into an almost irrelevant vt about surfing.

I agree, next summer it will be different and the BBC's only big rating sports events are Wimbledon and the Open. However, after the failure of Superstar, ITV might need to look at a new approach.

Repeating old dramas might be the new approach. If they can get 2m up against the greatest show on earth, they should be able to easilly do better than the likes of Superstar did this year.

It will be very hard to guess how the Paralympics will rate. If it started today and was across BBC1 it'd no doubt be rating 6m+ in prime time.

Starting in a few weeks and on Channel 4, it may be much lower.

No. Sorry but thats the mistake ITV1 made, these shows are good repeats every now and then but overall they are best on ITV3. Repeating them on ITV1 hurts their digital channels, meanwhile Superstar wasn't 'good' and 2m isn't good either. Luther went out in June to great ratings. Torchwood went out in the middle of the summer to great ratings.

ITV1 shouldn't be pulling 2 million for a repeat. And these were anti-Olympic viewers, yes BBC One was huge ratings, but the other channels held up decently. ITV1 should have had a better line up. Reducing the variety of shows on ITV1 is the worst thing ITV could do right now. Meanwhile, would they have had 2 million against non-Olympic shows? Across that length of time - no.

Repeats have a place, but not stripped across weeks like Superstar. ITV should think of producing a show that runs 8-10 weeks. New Drama - run it across the Summer and build around it.

ITV3 is for those kinds of shows, not ITV1. ITV3 can build a healthy audience with them, ITV1 can't.


Ch4 overall are marketing it quite well (the Million Pound Drop Specials being against the main Olympics seemed a massive waste of time though) - if they get the tone right I think it might do okay. It won't be down to the events themselves, but can Ch4 hold a flame to the BBC broadcasting of the Olympics? Kind of questionable.

Still hope they'll do well. Had an interesting thought today though - it would have been interesting if ITV had bid for them.

True. It's weird. It seems like a drag watching TV at the moment. I'd usually look forward to watching TXF and the new Premier League season but I'm really not. If anything, I'm looking forward to the Paralympics more.

Sky pulled a post from Sky Sports' Facebook page earlier, the quote was basically "Time to forgot about Wiggins, Hoy and Farrah. And time to remember Hazard, Rooney and Bent." (something to that effect)

A lot of negativity followed, and the post was pulled: https://www.facebook.com/SkySports

In a response to other users: https://www.facebook.com/SkySports/p...06193392812572


The second point is interesting, because arguably those sports would get higher interest on FTA. And the third point may show how the tide is turning.

I do wonder whether the media will try and undermine football's profile in the next few years in this country after the past two weeks. I doubt it, but who knows.

In fairness, it has already been the best TV viewing August ever, and all channels have new programming on this week, seemingly bringing forward the start of the autumn schedules to follow on from the Olympics.

BBC1 hasn't shown a New Tricks repeat for about 3 weeks either...

btw, welcome back Chris1964. Glad the IT is sorted and hope you managed to keep up with the ratings news in the past 2 months. In fairness, it's been pretty quiet, you haven't missed much.