Those were the days! In September all the new stuff started and you'd look out for the Autumn trailers and get really excited when they came on showing new programmes and films! Remember some of these?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw7ye_dA5o4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COc1VzRqxeM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRB_ck2I780

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5zM8mkltI0

While the ITV Network did very well at 8pm last night, important to note the Paul O Grady doc only aired in England, Southern Scotland and the Channel Islands. ITV1 Wales, STV and UTV all had opt outs in the slot

I remember as a teenager in the 90s/early00s both BBC1 and ITV seemed to be at aimed us with Live and Kicking and SMTV/CDUK whatever happened to that?

Someone mentioned earlier about ITV1 and Saturday mornings. Next year marks ten years since SMTV Live was axed. Ant and Dec do occasionally get asked on Twitter whether it would return one day, I do wonder whether they would consider doing a reunion show along with CD:UK after it for nostalgia purposes. Considering how bad ITV does on a Saturday morning, any reunion show is likely to do better than 0.4m, surely?

Do Ant and Dec own the format, not that the format is any different to many of the Saturday shows before it.

RTE picks up reruns of some C4 comedy, though they only picked Inbetweeners up after it finished

According to Wiki, they do. (The original production company, Blaze Television, it looks like went out of business)

Edit - yes: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011...any-gallowgate

its on the Gallowgate website that they own the rights to SMTV, it does not mention CD UK however.

http://gallowgatetv.com/

Channel 3, also spot the game of Space Invaders.

Im betting the Byker Grove rights arnt for sale at any price.

Interesting. In most of Scotland they had the STV Appeal. I wonder how that did: I can't imagine very well, which would make Paul O'Grady's numbers seem even better.

UTV had Lesser Spotted Ulster. UTV is typically very popular, which could swing the numbers slightly towards ITV1 as reported in the overnights, counteracting some of the possibly negative effect of the STV Appeal.

Not sure what was playing in Wales and the Channel Islands, although we can discount the latter surely in ratings terms.

Great clips. I certainly fondly remember watching Watching as an 11-year-old kid, but I'm sure I would find it cringeworthy these days.

But Nicholas Lyndhurst in The Piglet Files is something that completely passed me by!

Skins was really the flagship E4 show though so I can understand why they'd want to give that a final run. Beaver Falls doesn't really have the same status.


To be honest I think this is ITV's problem. They've been trying to find a format and I don't think formats really work in the breakfast slot. Even when you look at something like the Big Breakfast, which at first glance looks like its all format, the real success or failure of that show (as has been noted by others) rested on the shoulders of the presenters. More than any other show on television breakfast TV lives and dies on who you have fronting it. There's no format to hide behind so the audience absolutely have to like and connect with the presenting team. To make matters worse breakfast television is hard work. Getting the tone of it right is incredibly difficult.

In the grand scheme of things I don't think the BBC (and everyone involved) get anywhere near enough credit for Breakfast because they make what they're doing look a hell of lot easier and more effortless than it actually is. In contrast to that ITV (as with Channel 4 before they got out of the game altogether) is just trying way too hard.

At this stage I think ITV have to stop worrying about rebranding and have to stop worrying about finding a format and they have to put all their focus into finding the right hosts. That more than anything else has been the missing ingredient of Daybreak and GMTV before it. You find the right hosts for breakfast television and everything else can fall into place around it. But with the wrong hosts you can be producing the greatest show in the world and people still won't watch.


In fairness though if nobody is actually watching ITV News its not an entirely accurate response to say that a lot of people watch it for hard news.


That is a horrible schedule on so many levels. Its been said before (and will be said again) but Channel 4 have completely lost the plot.



They could always go for someone unknown. Or relatively unknown. In fact I think that would probably be the best bet. It would keep costs relatively low and would help to manage expectations. If for example they were to throw Chris Moyles into the position he probably wouldn't come cheap and the expectation not only for success but also what the show would be would be set in stone with nothing they could really do to change it. Get a relatively unknown comedian perhaps with a slightly more experienced television presenter beside them and it gives you a lot more options. And its worth remembering that neither Chris Evans nor Johnny Vaughan arguably the shows two most successful presenters were particularly well known before they fronted the show.


I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.


Its certainly something ITV should be looking into if they aren't already.

Apart from news, is there really that much point to the chat show style breakfast shows the BBC ditched in 1986 and which ITV have persisted with since the glory days of TVAM? ITV1, for all they have really tried hard to save Daybreak, know it's a losing format. Why not just have the newshour, which is the PSB element, from 6 until 7 and then have Lorraine, which was always more popular than the main show, from 8.30 until 9.25. In between just show cartoons, soap repeats and news and weather updates as I'm sure the third revamp of Daybreak won't work.

Used to love Watching - surprised it's never turned up on ITV3, but it's always dangerous watching shows you liked as a kid.

That line up looked brilliant too - I don't think ITV would have such flagship shows throughout the week now, never mind just Fridays. And although it's a mixture of soap, comedy and drama it feels like a schedule that links together throughout the night rather than the seemingly hit and miss approach of today.

I'd really like to see them make a serious go of establishing comedy once again in the schedule, but before it's even started it feels like ITV have already given up on using the Corrie 8.30pm slot on Thursdays for it.


That's kind of the problem with TV today though - they won't risk unknowns and would rather shell out for an unsuitable name or give it to some TOWIE reject than actually find the right person for the job, whether we've heard of them or not. C4's Paralympic coverage is one of the very few examples nowadays to put unknown talent on to our screens, and The Magicians replacing Lenny Henry with that Scottish Australian bloke is the only other high profile example I can think of, though Daybreak have plucked their "Newshour" presenters from the relative obscurity of regional TV and Channel 5!

I don't understand really why C4 haven't tried to flesh Freshly Squeezed out into a more substantial breakfast show. It wouldn't cost them much I imagine to double it to an hour and air it either 7-8am or from 7.30am, and though it might not have the wide appeal The Big Breakfast did it would show the C4 is there at breakfast time and is offering a genuine alternative. It's been running for six years now so must be doing something right and as it's basically T4 without any programmes it wouldn't take much more than an extra couple of music videos and an additional pre-recorded interview to take it to 60 minutes.

Was sure I'd seen it in the multichannel schedules many moons ago, perhaps on UK Gold, but Wiki says it was on Granada Plus, which makes sense as it was made by Granada.

Watching was a good laugh - a nice, harmless northern sitcom, with a good cast. The sort of thing Granada always used to do well. It was certainly one of the better ITV sitcoms, and although popular, I don't think it was ever a "hit" as such by standards of the time.

The Piglet Files was rubbish though. A vehicle for Nick Lyndhurst after The Two of Us ran its course. Used to like TTOU, that was quite good - had a teenage crush on his missus, and could never work out why his dad looked about the same age as his grandad.

The breakfast slot is now incredibly difficult for ITV.

You're right they can't now do another revamp of Daybreak nor can they realistically launch another show in the slot either. But by the same token I'm not sure they could just throw the towel in on Daybreak either and replace it with repeats and filler. If nothing else the press would crucify them and that wouldn't give them the audience they're desperately trying to win back with Daybreak either that's potentially decently profitable at breakfast.

At this stage the only real option they have is to just keep plugging away with Daybreak. Just changing little things as they go to try and make a better show and hope that it begins to resonate with the audience. Although I stand by my theory that their core problem remains not having the right hosts. And I cannot for the life of me work out how they'd go about replacing the hosts again if this Lorraine/Aled pairing doesn't work. Nor do I know who they'd replace them with especially not if they want 'name' talent.

I suppose for the immediate future the focus can be on refining the show so that they have a basic structure they're happy with and that works and then cross the presenter bridge further down the road. In theory it should be easier to find the right hosts when you've nailed the structure and it does feel a bit like they're just groping in the dark at the moment (and their choice of hosts sort of reflects that). I genuinely would have loved to have been in the pitch meeting when Aled Jones was suggested. I still can't quite work out how they settled on him.


Its certainly very depressing although you never know perhaps Channel 4's Paralympics coverage might represent a slight change in attitude on this front. Obviously I'm not holding my breath.

Broadcasters are however creating an impossibly difficult situation for themselves further down the line. That they've all but killed off kids television (reel off the list of high profile presenters that started there) and are incredibly reluctant to take a gamble on unknown names to front shows is leaving them with an ever smaller number of people to host anything and everything. Its just ridiculous and at some point something has to give.

I'll also point out that the lack of decent presenters and a lack of development of new presenters is why light entertainment is in the crapper in this country these days. There's no one to develop shows for anymore. The BBC don't have a light entertainment 'star' (or stars) to develop shows for. ITV have Ant & Dec but they're not exactly firing on all cylinders as of late.

I've highlighted the ones I watched. I even saw bits of Watchdog and Challenge Anneka in that 1989 schedule. If I remember correctly, that was the Watchdog era where Lynn Faulds Wood banged on about electric kettle flex every week. Streets Apart didn't rate too well in that Monday 8.30pm slot, even though I expect World in Action was on ITV at the same time. I can remember Streets Apart rating at about 7.5m in that series. I can't remember how well the first one rated. I think First of the Summer Wine was a few million behind what Last of the Summer Wine got in the Sunday 7.15pm slot six weeks later.

Alex Jones was a relative unknown, only known by the small audiences on S4C, now more successfull than the over rated Christine Bleakely

YouTube is wonderful. Just reminded me that The Two of Us was just ITV's way of getting Rodney the Plonker into one of their sitcoms (lets give him a dopey name like Ashley and have him talk posh rather than Peckham):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiI2ftcYoAs

Also, from a related clip, how naff the theme tune was!

I didn't watch it, but I remember it rating around 14m for one series, possibly in early 1990. I think BBC One was showing Whicker's World () against it in the Friday 8pm slot.

Kettle flex. Brilliant. I remember doing a spoof Watchdog sketch in our school Christmas revue with me donning a wig and dodgy Scottish accent - and a dodgy kettle from the props cupboard!

Hard to believe the excitement over that season of Charles Bronson films in 1985. I don't know much about films, but presumably those examples were already pretty old, and perhaps some of them had already been shown on telly. I loved Telly Addicts.

And every week, people were sending in more and more extreme photos of kettle injuries.

So glad Jonathan Creek is coming back!! I love it! Do we think it will air in Easter 2013 or will it air Christmas/New Year 2014? I can't wait for it!! It got 5m for the last Special at Easter but during Christmas/New Year for the Grinning Man it got 9.9m! Oh I love Jonathan Creek! I hope it hit nears 10m again.

as if anyone on this thread didnt watch Telly Addicts.