Plenty of digital shows that could air it at 10pm - plus it airs at 8.30pm in Australia (effectively their 9pm watershed) so most channels could get away with it at 9pm.


Already beaten by BB Aus then - but no surprise. I suspect BB Aus will similarly struggle in the ratings due to no live feed meaning no buzz between shows - but that will be counted by the four year break making it's revival far more anticipated than C5's was last year.


Why does everything have to be ruined with bloody celebrities. People love Mrs Brown because it's pretty much the opposite of the celeb led drivel served up so often.

MBB did quite well last night, 4.85 million for a repeat in summer is good.

This is ITV1 we're talking abut!

Talking of ITV1, they must be very relieved that the Olympics are over; Thirteen Steps Down didn't collapse despite the EastEnders opposition and Coronation Street and Emmerdale were both back to normal. EastEnders didn't perform as well as I expected it to in the 9pm slot but did well at 8pm. Big Brother didn't have a chance of recovering from Sunday night and that is a weak figure for the final - it had no momentum or word of mouth as everyone was distracted by the Olympics. Mrs. Brown's Boys recorded an excellent figure for a repeat and University Challenge is a consistent performer for BBC Two.

Last night 8:00pm EastEnders rating is in line with what i predicted anyway....

9:00pm episode i expected just over 7million but the BBC3 repeat pulled out a good rating and share.

The BBC should have shown a clip at the end of 8:30pm ep 'Back at 9'

It seems the trailer has stopped and NO mention of tomorrows 7:30pm episode either. The Episode was pretty dramatic and the ending tense.

I think a trailer for Heathers murder reveal should have also been made.

I expect tonights to be up on last night and BBC3 at 10:30 should also do well.

At 1 point tonight 9 of the trending topics were EastEnders related.

Dr Who doesn't feature in the "Next Week" column in the Radio Times for 18th-24th. And we're talking about the Dr Who fanzine here. I love the Radio Times and Dr Who but the former's obsession with the latter is v annoying.

I reckon it's just the BBC playing their cards very close to their chest. They don't want to give ITV1 the advantage in their cat-and-mouse scheduling game. Perhaps they want to put Dr Who on against the X Factor and don't want to give ITV the opportunity to reschedule.

I still reckon Dr Who will start on the 25th.


Silent Witness is the two part story postponed from the last series for legal reasons. It'll be interesting to see how it performs in the ratings after its poor performance last series. I'm sure the BBC will be intersted as well, seeing as how they've already commissioned the next series.

Doctor Who sells product for the Radio Times, that is going to be the case even more now its in private sector hands.

My guess is that Downton runs on Sundays as usual until 4th November, with IAC airing on three Sundays as usual (11th, 18th, 25th November). Mr Selfridge could then launch on 2nd December, using the last 2/3 weeks of X Factor as a launch pad, a few Corrie lead-ins over Christmas (23rd & 30th December) and then a DOI lead-in (and a CTM lead-in from the BBC) in January. Makes a decent bit of sense as there just aren't enough Sundays to air Mr Selfridge in full in the Autumn (remember it's 10 episodes long).

Daybreak isn't a write-off, it's the same stuff they used to do on GMTV and that used to do perfectly alright. There's a market for a female-skewing light news-based show heavy on celebrities and consumer stuff, it's a format that works well enough for the tabloids. It's all very well saying "Urgh, celebrities" but the ITV1 target audience are interested in them and not everything can be the Today programme.

The problem with Daybreak is that they alienated all the GMTV audience by dropping it and parachuting in some new presenters. The regular viewers didn't know what was wrong with watching GMTV.

Incidentally, I can't remember who it was the other day who brought up that line when Bleakley left the Beeb that they'd offered her the chance to be "the face of the Olympics", but now they've been it proves whoever initially came up with it was talking rubbish because I can't see any role she could have had in the Games to be "the face of the Olympics". Who was "the face" in the end? Lineker? She wouldn't have done his job. Maybe she could have been in Mishal Husain's role, which is hardly prominent. Though presumably Chiles would have been involved if he was still there, he was in 2008.

As for that Ruth Rendall drama I'm assuming ITV didn't think much of it because it's the middle of summer and even though it's a two-parter it's being shown over two weeks when surely it would have been better off on consecutive nights.


Well of course it is, it's the middle of August. They can't afford to do new drama all year round and they're not going to fling it out during the school holidays. But it is true that there's far more variation on BBC1, even accounting for the property and antiques shows, rather than ITV devoting several hours, with Daybreak, This Morning, Loose Women and the various chat shows all chasing the same kind of thing.


I always wonder what difference the guests make on The One Show because they're not billed anywhere and it's not as if there are many floating viewers around, I wouldn't have thought.


I think you've got your weeks confused a bit because this is next week and of course it's all confirmed as it's in the Radio Times. Anyway, given they've shown Corrie on Wednesdays for most of the summer, I don't know why they've stopped doing it again, I assumed they were going to run it on Wednesdays and Thursdays for a bit and then just stop Thursdays, to get viewers into a habit. The Corrie Years is a repeat as well. You'd think there's enough material to do more than three half-hour episodes.

Firstly the Aus BB opening night fared better than the British one, though only just, because the population of Aus is a third that of Britain, it's the winter there and it premiered on their biggest commercial channel. Also after a long break, people will be curious to see how a show which developed an even worse reputation than ours fares.
Secondly, even BB UK's most militant fans will have to admit 1.48 million for a final is awful and the whole series has been barely noticed by the general public. However, I suppose to someone like Channel 5 1 million plus every night for 10 weeks is good.

I was talking about 22nd August which has:

7.00 Emmerdale
7.30 The Corrie Years
8.00 Midsomer Murders

I expected Coronation Street to switch to Wednesday's pretty swiftly after the end of the Olympics; this Wednesday is taken up with England v Italy but I'm surprised ITV1 didn't go with the Wednesday night Coronation Street on the 22nd.

I'm pretty sure TOS and its guest line-up was promoted over the closing credits of Pointless (when the Six O'Clock News audience would have been tuned in).

Yeah, that is next week.

Oh...beggar. I blame tiredness. Sorry abut that.

OK, here's an interesting one for that week - BBC Two are provisionally airing Athletics on 30th August up against the Paralympics on Channel 4...if things stay the same I wonder which will win the ratings battle?

Is there an 'anniversary' (for want of better word) coming up in relation to Brady and Hindley over the next couple of weeks - Channel 4 have a programme on Brady next week and Channel 5 are provisionally airing a show on Myra Hindley on 28th August.

And it seems to be documentary central on ITV1 with the three week days not taken up with football airing them in the 9pm slot.

Meanwhile, there's a fantastic piece of provisional scheduling on BBC One for 1st September which may please dan2008: 11.45am - 1.45am EastEnders Omnibus.

I reckon that was the plan until BBC1 moved Waterloo Road to Thursdays then ITV opted to keep Corrie on Thursdays a bit longer to act as a spoiler.

I'm torn by this. On the one hand this would be a typically petty-minded, juvenile move by ITV (although I have no proof they did this). On the other hand I absolutely loathe Waterloo Road and I'd love it if the soaps trounched it in the ratings and sent its viewing figures plummet.

Is that a record? 11:45 am untill 1.45am
I wonder where all those episodes are going to fit across the week?

Wouldn't be surprised to see Accused near to 6 million in the overnights. Twitter is going crazy about it, to the degree that 'iPlayer' is also trending too.

It certainly deserves it don't think it'll get it though, something in the high 4s is more likely imo.

You didn't find George down there by any chance?


Typically preposterous, why can't McGovern do good drama any more?

4.5m I reckon.

The ratings for Bake Off are going to be interesting; will it have built on last year? Or, like my baking efforts, fallen flat.

"you've been scammed" only finished 2 weeks ago

Accused was superb. It deserves a 6m+ figure, but can see it being around the 5 - 5.5m mark.

I thought it was tomorrow

I have to say despite all the Olympics hype it is nice to see good drama like Accused back on BBC One.

For any Australian show to beat ratings for the same format in the UK it must be bad. 1.6m viewers is a fantastic achievement, and I really can't see how it can be compared to Channel 5's version which by all accounts relies on a terrible host and selfish bitchy contestants, saying the eye looks the same and there is no live feed is not really much of a similarity.

Channel 5 tried to flog a dead horse one year after it was cancelled, the Australian version has had a 4 year rest. Even in its final Australian season it was averaging 900,000 viewers which would still be acceptable for all 3 networks at 7pm 6 nights a week, Big Brothers ratings on Five are in line with what the normal cheap tacky docs or american drama get. And most Australian reality shows start off low and build towards the final, Masterchef, MKR and The Block being prime examples, unless the series is poor I can't see any reasn why it wont beat the 1.5m that channel 5 saw

I want to bite. But I can't really be bothered.

Okay, I'll bite a little. Nothing was "beat." As you said yourself, they are not comparable. Two different versions on two different channels broadcasting in two very different markets. If the UK version is so shit though I have to wonder why Nine copied some elements. Still, I wish them all the best with it. Got to be better than crappy Two and a Half Men repeats every night, the previous Nine schedule.

Yes and Australia's population is a third of ours, so that equates to 4.8 million and Channel 9 is the biggest commercial channel. However, I could never see ITV1 buying BB, even if it was still successful or had been rested for 4 years, as it would demand a huge commitment from them and could get in the way of events like the World Cup. Channel 5 is the logical home for the show now as it's FTA and low ratings by Big Four standards are high ratings to them and sits well among 1-2 million raters on the channel.