The X Factor airing in June would kill it completely. They have it completely spot on right now.


May nudge 9m, but I'm thinking somewhere like 8.8m would be more realistic. The length isn't the problem either - Strictly is 125 minutes long next week and that's without adverts! If the show is good and engaging, people will watch it. It didn't harm the show before.

The long clashes with Strictly next week will help neither show especially the clash next Sunday.

So maybe they need to get viewers interested in the acts. That may happen next week, or it may happen in the live shows. They could play dirty tactics and have virtually no adverts (like Through the Keyhole which followed on from X Factor in week 1).

It starts at 8pm next week. This would be better but the clash will hurt the first 25 minutes.

It puzzles me why they have X Factor starting at 7:10pm next Sunday (and still finishing at nine). Their idea of getting the lead on Strictly it seems but I have a small feeling it'll backfire.

I don't think there's any contestants this year that people will get invested in. In 2010 for example Cher was everywhere. But at the same time, contestants won't get mass publicity if the show isn't rating well - it's a vicious circle!


It's perfectly logical to have it starting 10 minutes before Strictly. Well, that was until we saw last night's ratings, after which I'm now inclined to believe Strictly will beat X Factor despite the latter getting the head start.

Strictly absolutely battering this now, even Atlantis is giving it a run for its money. Hopefully it will be put out of its misery and never infect our lives again.

How is it infecting our lives? If you don't like it, don't watch it.

Funny that People on here are saying over 7m is poor peeking at over 8m as well. Bootcamp is aways lower and it will go up next week and the live shows. Its is still one of ITVs highest shows. People like Samuelw want it to fail so ITV can fail

Ratings should be out in a few minutes.

A peak of 10.9m averaging 9.5m!

Great rating.

Samuel got a little too confident it seems.

One Word PHENOMENAL RATINGS!

I really think X Factor should have its shows on a Sunday and Monday Night

No way will ITV have it on a Monday night.

It's fine as it is. The Saturday show just didn't rate very well because of the poor lead-in. It will most likely have a better lead-in this Saturday with The Chase which does very well for teatime and there must be an anti-Strictly audience which have an appetite for that kind of show.

Saturday's figures have been a bit all over the place, but it's very steady on Sunday - last night's rating shows that once again, it was dented. Down on last year's anomalous ratings but up on every bootcamp from series 1-5 I believe.

They have the opportunity to make the ratings shoot up when the live shows come around - they may as well grab it with both hands. - they need to create interest around the contestants which it is sort of lacking at the moment, not to mention a new live show set to make it feel more fresh, and not the usual themes.

We'd best not get ahead of ourselves - but Saturdays need to be stronger.

Huge ratings for the Sunday show I hope this can keep up.

Putting it on Sundays and Mondays isn't all that silly from a ratings perspective, but then the show is in danger of completely degrading itself which could have the opposite effect on ratings. ITV would quickly become very lost on Saturdays against Strictly and Atlantis and then you run into the problem of interrupting Emmerdale and Coronation Street's fixed slots, as well as the 9pm hour which is one of ITV's strongest.

Saturdays are never going to be stronger because the show skews incredibly young - Strictly on the other hand skews older so is able to pull mammoth ratings pretty much wherever it goes. It's just something that the producers are never going to be able to fix unless they suddenly manage to find an older audience out of nowhere. Besides, although the Saturday night figures alone may not look pretty, the repeat figures on Sunday daytime do a pretty good job of making up for it.

I can't see them making much hype out of this lot of contestants I'm afraid, unless they drum up some real controversy around one (or more) of them. I'm not sure if that would be too good of an idea anyway - it's one of the contributing factors as to why the show shed so many viewers in the first place.

On Saturdays, it will be the clash with Strictly, the finishing time (the first live show finishes at 22:15) and the programme that precedes it. If ITV find a TV Burp-sized hit this autumn (consistent 5-6m) to precede X Factor on a Saturday, then they are on to a winner.

We are only at judges houses - anything could happen with the contestants when we get into the live shows even though the signs aren't exactly promising at the moment. It just needs a relative amount of press coverage.

Last nights rating was 9.18m (37.3%) / 9.47m (38.5%)

Bootcamp averages
2004: 6.9m
2005: 8.5m
2006: 7.2m
2007: 7.0m
2008: 8.56m
2009: 9.96m
2010: 11.92m
2011: 10.32m / 10.72m
2012: 9.47m / 9.85m
2013: 8.39m / 8.65m

To be perfectly honest, when the show is bigger than what was on before it the lead in doesn't really matter all that much as people will tune in regardless. The X Factor should really be the one providing the lead in for other shows, but it airs way too late for ITV to really take advantage. Just look at BBC One on Saturday - as Strictly aired first it boosted the entire night and viewers stuck with the channel. Whereas on ITV Stepping Out collapsed without any support and The X Factor ended too late to give Through the Keyhole a real chance.

If I was ITV I would get rid of all the filler and make the show 90 minutes tops.

Really?

A peak of 10M and an average of over 9M is fantastic. A strong rise

I'm not too keen on them stretching out this weekend's shows to 110 minutes each. It's probably too late for them to do a bit of editing.

X Factor was airing as early as 5:45pm a few years ago - back when they had the main show and results on the same night. They tried to work X Factor around the night back then (the results weren't until 10pm). I don't think it'd be good for them to do it nowadays.

I can't remember the last time ITV stuck a quiz show against Strictly.

All the official ratings are out - the auditions have officially averaged 10.02m. The fourth highest rated set of auditions in the show's history.

If you were to include +1 figures, that takes the official series average to 10.54m.

I wonder if XF would be aiming for the series average to beat that of Britain's Got Talent at least? Looking back at the XF 2008 ratings thread, that's what we were mainly looking at as far as final numbers and official series average are concerned.

The BGT final only got 10.6m (49%) / 11.1m (51%), but still timeshifted to 12.23m (12.85m inc +1) - X Factor obviously won't timeshift by that much but it would probably have to be leading up to an average of about 11.5m.

Well on Saturday & Sunday I will be watching the x factor on plus 1. I do think though its in the best interests to move the times and not clash so much with strictly because x factor will not win the ratings battle. Strictly has got alot more popular over the years

I'm not sure if there's any point in persisting with labelling it a ratings battle.

You think those are phenomenal, have a look at the 2009 & 10 ratings from here: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showp...&postcount=769

I'm not sure how this flash voting system is going to help the viewing figures. At least they are making an effort and that it won't be padded out too much, but it's going to have to be implemented well.

What are the chances of them ditching it if the viewing figures fall off a cliff?