No I didn't.

I disagreed with descriptions of it being 'bloody good' and 'exceptional' and the assertions that it was a 'league above the usual imports on C5' and that it 'should be on BBC1'. I also said:

And for the record I'm not saying Dallas was terrible (although I thought it was pretty bad) just that these descriptions of it being some kind of amazing drama the likes of which hasn't been seen in years are really not true at all. Its a bog standard soap lets not pretend its the second coming in drama form.

On what planet exactly does that constitute definitively describing something as crap?

I'd also point out how ironic (and hilarious) the lengths you're going to to prove me wrong are given the whole 'people have different opinions' shtick you and others wheeled out. Like 'People can have opinions that aren't the same as yours...' and 'It's not for you. But what doesn't work for you might work for other people'. Apparently though you have to counter my opinion that its not very good and prove me wrong. Weird that.

Smart. Their really gearing for this.
Whether it works or not, Ch5 are trying to change their channel and have been moving in a different direction for a while now.

Ch4 could learn to take such risks. [and I don't mean putting a David Tennant fronted show against bloomin' X Factor!]

Maybe D.M.N. could start a television ratings for whats trending and compare them with the actual rating?

Is 'Trending Worldwide' similar to calling American baseball 'The World Series' ?

Alexi. User A thinks it is good. User B thinks its good too. You think its bad. Can we just leave it there instead of pointlessly trying to persuade others to think otherwise? If you want to do that, do it elsewhere.

Cheerful as ever.

Till midnight on C4!! Must be students.

It actually only takes around 2000 mentions in a short space of time to trend worldwide. This is why looking at what's trending on Twitter to mention ratings is meaningless. It gives an idea of what's popular for discussion but can't be used to tell ratings.

Started out at 9pm on BBC2 then got "promoted" to BBC1 in I think first a 9.30pm slot, but quickly moved later and later in the evening.


Just to note More4 are repeating The Pillars of the Earth on Saturdays from the 16th, so I guess the follow up World Without End will follow on C4 in the second half of the autumn, probably up against The X Factor once again.

Shh....about 9 months ago Twitter was played with to see if something obscure and 99.9% of the world wouldn't be interested could trend, it worked.

*slams head on desk*

Yes because not a single other poster in this thread said a single negative word about Dallas apart from me. Also perhaps you can explain to me why people should be able to express how much they (and all of Twitter and Facebook apparently) liked Dallas but others shouldn't be able to say they disliked it?


Yes I was referring to TNT's average which is why I used the phrase 'in the context of that post'. Obviously I wasn't suggesting that describing Dallas as a success within the context of your post was ridiculous but actually TNT's ratings...

But for record Dallas season 1 average in the US

18-49: 1.06
Total viewers: 4.15 million

However just for fun the average for the second half of the season (the last five episodes)

18-49: 0.94
Total viewers: 3.66 million

Dallas was good and should do well for Channel 5, I wonder if they'll fasttrack series 2 as that's due in January? They've got a free slot on Thursday so one of the dramas like NCIS could move to Fridays, The Mentalist to Thursdays and Dallas on Wednesdays.

Care to explain why this is aimed at me when I'm not the one trying to convince anyone of anything? I'm not the one posting Tweets nor am I the one saying 'look at Twitter' and 'look at Facebook' or basically saying look at all these people who said what we said we must be right. I disagreed with people saying Dallas was 'bloody good' and 'exceptional' (and to some extent using Twitter and Facebook to gauge popular opinion) and somehow that's me slating the show and trying to convince everyone its terrible.

Going back to the subject of US TV, I think the reason why networks pick shows that are formulaic is because they have better repeat value, something like 24 or Lost doesn't repeat as well and despite the rise in boxset sales, sydnication is more lucrative and something like a crime drama or a sitcom tend to be self contained so that in syndication, it can be aired out of order although I think some like CSI have an ongoing story arc which doesn't affect the main plot but is rewarding for the viewer.

CBS are taking a risk with Vegas but I know they want to broaden their slate beyond crime and legal dramas, I think they sought a medical drama but none have succeeded, maybe a family drama would be more suitable.

Ratings Prediction Game Averages
Coronation Street: 7.3m
Paralympic Games 2012 Tonight: 2.9m
All Star Mr & Mrs: 3.6m
Who Do You Think You Are?: 4.1m
Mrs Biggs: 4.0m
Dallas: 3.1m

I think Coronation Street looks about spot on; Paralympics and Mrs. Biggs too high while All Star Mr. and Mrs. and Dallas look slightly on the low side.

Certainly repeatability is a primary reason why networks like procedural dramas particularly as repeats are (or should be) profit centres for them. The syndication value isn't such an issue though because at best that money goes to their parent company or a subsidiary of it. The problem in CBS' case is that they seem to have forgotten that all of that is a reason to have a couple of procedurals in your schedule but not to make them your entire schedule. Cable networks TNT and USA have the same problem although as with CBS both have realised they needed to broaden their schedules out more in recent seasons and TNT has certainly had a little more success in that area than USA. Although USA's big push into comedy is still to come next year so we'll see how that goes.

To their credit the other networks have largely managed to avoid becoming as dependent on procedurals although in part because that's because they've struggled to successfully launch them (and other shows). But they have also been pretty focused on finding different types of shows. CBS has never really been all that committed to it. They talk about it a lot but never really seem to pull the trigger. Its worth noting that of the 7 dramas CBS piloted last year only one (Vegas) wasn't a straight procedural. It'll be interesting to see how Vegas does though because that'll either make or break this broadening horizon I suspect.

Of course the other major problem when it comes formulaic shows in the US is that television in general has this horrible habit of looking for the next... [insert successful show here]. So Lost exploding onto the scene resulted in a slew of terrible Lost(ish) clones popping up all over television. Its departure also led to a couple of them cropping up as well. That approach of the networks want the new Lost or the new ER or whatever it might be leads to a horrible paint by numbers set of shows being produced that do nothing for anybody.

TNT has definetly got a good mix of shows like Falling Skies, Leverage, Rizzoli and Isles etc, the shows that do the business are shows like Rizolli and Isles and Major Crimes. They do have new shows coming up like Monday Mornings and two pilots LA Noir and The Last Ship.

USA's formula works for them, Political Animals didn't work but at least they tried, I imagine Modern Family will do well for them and it'll be used as a lead in for their new comedies, I can't see a USA sitcom straying that far from the brand, most of the dramas have an element of humour anyway.

I want Vegas to succeed and it has a fantastic cast but will a 60s semi serialized drama work for them? On the comedy side, they've picked up potential single camera comedies which suggests they want to broaden their comedy slate beyond multicams.

As you say, the only reason why other networks have avoided becoming reliant on procedurals is because they're over-reliant on other genres. If reality television suffers from over-exposure both FOX and NBC are going to be in a sticky spot with both looking at sport as their biggest puller and little else to hold them up. Meanwhile ABC are desperately trying to find something to hang their future hopes on as practically everything seems to be faltering before their eyes.

For all the criticism of CBS, which is fair, it's the most stable of the main American networks and is not overly-reliant on one or two shows. Even if the shows that do pay the bills are basically the same story told in different ways.

I'm still a little mournful about Political Animals being essentially DOA. Admittedly it wasn't as good as I'd hoped it would be but it picked up as it went along and had a brilliant pitch for a second season bundled into the final episode. Beyond that it would have been nice to see USA rewarded for jumping out of their confident zone and commissioning something a little more adventurous than their usual fare.

In terms of what's coming from USA they've ordered two comedies to pilot – a US version of Channel 4's Sirens written and produced by Dennis Leary and Paging Dr. Freed which is about two gynaecologist brothers who inherit their fathers practice. Both single camera (as Modern Family is). Dr. Freed sounds pretty on brand but Sirens has potential to be a bit of departure for them. In development they comedies about a karaoke bar, a high profile lawyer turned public defender (which could have been a drama pitch for them), a dot-com entrepreneur (do they still exist?) and his politically incorrect family and one about two friends starting up their own company after leaving college. None of them read like massive departures. They have however got an interesting looking drama project in development – Mind Fields is about an MIT student who pulls off a striking graduation hack/prank that sees him dumped by his girlfriend and sends him underground where along with another love sick hacker he plots elaborate romantic stunts. Apparently it explores the fusion of science and creativity as these three geniuses reunite amidst the upstairs and downstairs of New York society. The rest is all pretty bog standard.


Vegas is certainly an intriguing prospect. It has a pretty good slot against not particularly strong competition so its certainly been set up nicely there. Although Tuesday 10PM is also a slot CBS has had considerable difficulty with for a while now so maybe not. Although given that its a slot where procedurals haven't really taken slotting in a different type of show there works. Its a big unknown really but the pilot is very stylish and pretty good and they've got an excellent and quite original promo campaign going for it. I have my fingers crossed.

On the subject of single camera comedy CBS have been talking about this a lot for a while as well but not really gone forward with it. Primarily because the handful of single cams they've tried have not gone well and generally speaking audiences don't seem to like running multi-cam and single cam shows together in the schedule. They have ordered a single camera pilot already though so we'll see how things go.


In fairness CBS isn't free of reality and their big resurgence was led by Survivor. The big difference is that their reality hitters aren't big 2 hour blocks which is what primarily screws NBC, Fox and ABC over with their big reality centrepieces. Its a difficult balancing act to get right although certainly NBC are probably way too far over the reality line at this point with The Voice, Celebrity Apprentice, Biggest Loser, Fashion Star and God knows what else all lined up for 2012-2013. But for NBC its really just a case of anything that even comes close to working so you can see how they got here. Plus reality is cheap and therefore low risk. Every network have their own vices though.

The AGT switch now makes a lot more sense. Although the only motivation I can see for this is to damage X Factor. AGT will benefit of course (and do more damage to X Factor at 9pm), but it'll be finished the next night anyway so I can't see that being the main reason.

Whether or not it's a good idea, I'm not so sure. Wednesday will be lower than Tuesday which will be lower than Monday... and where will Monday come in to start with? I'm not sure The Voice is in a great position to be throwing its weight around. I guess they'll take a lump out of X Factor at 8pm although I'm not sure that's going to be a huge amount of use to NBC.

It'll keep the PR folk busy, I guess. FOX will probably find it quite easy to push a win in the head-to-head on Wednesday as the key story even if it premieres lighter than The Voice's Monday episode (which now looks guaranteed).

Which equates to about 1m here?

Maybe the further east the programme travels, the higher the ratings.

So far no mention on either of the breakfast shows.

21:15 tonight C4 to see it's biggest peak during the athletics for the 100 metres?

With regards Dallas, when I watched the premiere a coupe of weeks ago, I managed until the end of the third segent before I had to turn off, normally with most shows I at least watch the first episode, I even sat through the first two episodes of Alcatraz and that was tripe, but with Dallas I just coulldn't engage. This is especially so when compared to Revenge, now I realise I didn't watch the original Dallas, nor is Revenge a huge hit in the UK so perhaps its not a fair comparison. But in Australia it has turned into a turkey with just 206,000 viewers last night. It premiered to 545,000 viewers in a 9pm timelslot and for a premiere episode you would have expected a minimum of 800,000 (which is what the Mentalist tends to get). It has since been shifted to a 10pm slot. In fact that 206,000 rating last night could mean that even TEN beat it last night. Plus in contrast to the first episode of Dallas which had 545,000 viewers, Embarassing Bodies (yes that s### -literally in last nights case -from Channel 4) had 651,000 viewers with a fraction of the promotion.

I'm sure Dallas will premiere well in the UK, but whether people stick with it or not the signs from the USA and Australia would suggest not. However given the brand recognition Channel 4 aand Channel 5 at least for the first season seems to be the right home

We shouldn't be doing cartwheels when ITV drama does well, it's one of the channel's biggest strengths. I'm not commending ITV on winning on Tuesday with the first decent programme they've shown on that night for years. If they'd put better programmes on Tuesdays in the past they could have solved all their problems in weeks.


16-34s have loads of money! And the whole point of advertising to them is because they don't have much brand loyalty so they can be tempted away with something new. When I was a student I fell for every gimmick and marketing campaign going and I'm pretty sure that's the same now a decade and a half later, I know the fees have gone up but that's to worry about later.

And at the upper end of 16-34s you've got people being promoted to management positions but without any of the commitments of older people so with plenty of disposable income. I'm a white able-bodied middle class single man with no kids, everyone wants a piece of me.


Yeah, started off on Friday, moved to Saturday nights in 1990, then moved back to Friday in 1992, then back again to Saturday (swapping with The Generation Game), then I think sent off to die against Heartbeat on Sundays. I think it was also the first independently produced light entertainment show on primetime BBC1.


Yes, but before 10pm the last would indeed have been The X Files. The Saturday night screenings were in 1998, which made sense because that was the year when they stuck Match of the Day at 10.30 every week, and before that they usually showed boring TV movies at nine o'clock on a Saturday night.

The X Files arrived on BBC1 at the beginning of 1996, at 9.30, but by the autumn of 1997 it had already moved back to ten o'clock. After those Saturday 9.30 screenings in the autumn of 1998, at the beginning of 1999 it moved back to after ten on a weeknight, then the following year to around 10.30 with its final BBC1 screenings during the summer of 2000 at 10.30 on Saturdays while Match of the Day was off for the summer. Then at the end of 2000 it moved back to BBC2, first at 9pm but then around 11pm.

The other BBC1 import in the mid-nineties was Chicago Hope, which started in a Saturday 9pm slot in 1995 but within a year was going out after ten and I remember my mum chasing it around various post-11pm slots towards the end.


Great though Curb is, it's always going to be minority viewing, and BBC4 treated it very well with a regular 10.30 slot. A year after BBC4 showed series two at 10.30, E4 showed series three in a succession of awful slots ending at midnight, then when More4 began the original 9.30 slot became 11pm by the time of the last series,

Yeah, I was thinking last night that would be a good idea. Assuming TNT will be airing season 2 all in one block with no breaks?

Homeland is being fast-tracked too by the way which is great news. October for that.

They've got a few big specials coming up soon like Drugs Live and Plane Crash, the latter of which could be very big ratings wise IMO based on how that kind of thing has done in the past.