BBC has withstood the massive increase in satellite channels far better than ITV, maybe there is more of a default BBC audience.
I think ITV rather did drop the baton though, vast swathes of the population just used to leave the button set to three in the pre satellite era and all of that devotion has been lost. If you look at the news, its curious how BBC news maintains large audiences following a big event where ITV's just melt away. In the old days News at Ten was the habit of many millions of ITV viewers.

DS ratings article is up:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s103/...isode-two.html


Not good for the X-Factor, compared to its own standards it is doing poorly. The Pirates film did worse than the Indy film last week, so I really don't think it will have dented X-Factor too much. Casualty did very poorly too.

Let's have a closer look at the figures we have so far for TXF episode 2, compared with the launch.

Last week:
20:00 - The X Factor: 8.09m (39.4%), +1: 616k (2.9%): Total 8.71m inc +1
* peak: 9.2m exc +1 / 9.9m inc +1
* TV audience 20:00-21:15: 20.5m

This week:
19:45 - The X Factor: 8.40m (36.1%), +1: 475k (?.?%): Total 8.88m inc +1
* peak: ?.?m exc +1 / 10.9m (46%) inc +1
* TV audience 19:45-21:00: 23.3m

Not good at all for Cowell. An extra 2.8 million viewers available during his show compared with last week's heatwave, and he captured barely a tenth of them (average up 310,000). This caused an alarming drop in share, by 3.3 points.
Ironically, using ITV's favoured +1 methodology, the increase on last week's average is a puny 150,000 (EDIT: actually, 170,000)


BBC One has much, much more in the way of commitments to different genres than ITV1, and has a much greater variety of programmes in general.

ITV axing News at Ten allowing the BBC to move the Nine O'Clock News is widely regarded as one of the biggest mistakes in british TV history.

When you think of how much emphasis is placed on the 9pm ratings, it's unimaginable to think of the days when ITV had a clear run in this flagship slot and the BBC ran dramas at 9:30pm.

None of this has anything to do with Saturday nights though, remember how weak they became after the Blind Date/Noel's House Party golden era and before the Pop Idol/X Factor/Stricty golden era of today.

Surprised how low that is. So that didn't cause X Factor's problems then.


JR struggling again then. R/B didn't collapse, ITV will be at the very least happy with those shares.

Red Or Black 3.42m 106k on +1
Pirates Of The Caribbean 3.65m

Have they? In its heyday before the arrival of C4, multichannel TV and C5, (which have fragmented commercial TV revenues) ITV had very few repeats and scripted drama and comedy most nights of the week throughout the year.

The BBC was always being criticised for repeats and lack of new content especially in the Summer.

By X-Factor's standards perhaps, but it can never be stated that 8.4million is a poor rating these days surely?

Any drama on any channel would be up for an immediate recommission with a figure like that. It would make it the most watched programme of the year on any terrestrial channel other than BBC1. It was the most watched programme of the day on any channel. It is up week on week when almost all programmes on all channels see a decline on week 2, not an increase. I just don't understand the basis for your statement.

I don't normally like to criticise the DS ratings articles seeing as they report the majority of the ratings, but I am bemused by their stance this week as it is making out that ITV1's ratings are good and BBC's are bad, whereas it is the other way around. Red or Black's second episode was down, DS doesn't mention the share drop for X Factor, and it is like they are wearing tinted glasses.

Interesting that a couple of hundred thousand more preferred a repeat of a repeat of a repeat film to a brand new Cowell show...........

Red or Black needs to be pulled from the schedule.

When you're 1.7m down year-on-year, and 6 share points, it is a poor rating regardless.

The peak is not too bad, but the average has to be a concern.

Because in those days most of the BBC's budget was saved for Autumn/Winter AND they had invested much more in Hollywood movies, American imports, sports rights, etc. The amount they received reflected what they had to offer.

The BBC would still have moved the news to the 10pm slot, as Greg Dyke was determined to free up that 9pm slot for dramas.

These days people can watch the news whenever they want and it wouldn't surprise me if BBC1 just has a news summary followed by regional news at 10pm after DSO is complete, with the full bulletin being shown on the BBC News channel.

That would put even more ratings pressure on ITV, as they would still have to show a full news bulletin on ITV1 at 10pm.

Too much is being made of the weather, both last week as an excuse and this week saying how bad the weather was.

Here the weather was better yesterday than last Saturday, mostly warm and sunny.

As for X factor. it seems the juggernaut ratings have ended, but still good ratings for most other show,

The thing is with R/B I don't believe JR would do significantly much better following X Factor than R/B, in fact based on its ratings - it'd do worse.

Someone elsewhere just made a very good point: ITV1 have launched their Saturday night programming, BBC One haven't yet.

[Mind you this does bring us the criticism of their almost round the clock scheduling of some shows]

So am not sure there can be too much 'but isn't 8.4m a great rating?'. I'll be very interested in where the show peaked however, that 7:45 start could have hurt things (Pirates was too small to be any big affect, which does surprise me).

For those wondering, in 2007: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/aug/28/tvratings2

"ITV1's The X Factor completely overshadowed the final of BBC1's own reality show DanceX on Saturday night, beating it by nearly 5 million viewers. The second edition of Simon Cowell's singing talent show pulled in an average of 8.5 million and a 47% share between 7.40pm and 8.40pm."

The dates are actually 15th September and 6th October, so we won't be getting a night with Strictly, DW and Merlin *ITV breathes a sigh of relief*

While the peak is of course good but it only acts as a mask for another poor average. The ratings fell after the auditions last year, and I suspect they'll do the same this year, with the auditions only in the 8m range, could we see some below 8m and maybe 7m.

Also why are people trying to judge X Factor by the standard of regular programming, X Factor has proved itself in the past to rate far higher so should be judged by it's own standards. Just because it's failing to meet them doesn't mean bar should be lowered.

Between this and that they don't have a weather excuse anymore... I'm interested to see what's their new excuse today.

Even by Paul millars standards its ridiculous
''However, the increased momentum ended at 9.45pm'' er Red Or Black is down week on week in both share and raw figures.

And a 3 point share win is a 'convincing' win now in primetime. Surely DS has to something about him now.

Just a thought, and looking at the high rating for Film4 as an example - following the end of digital switch-over throughout the UK, could it be that less people are defaulting to the main channels as more homes get used to having more FTA choice available to them.

Could this be why so many programmes seem to have fallen year on year?

Compared to it's own standard, I agree with you, and it is something ITV need to keep an eye on - much as the BBC did when they had a poor rating year for SCD, and managed to turn it around the following year.

But just making a statement that it is a poor rating is not something I can agree with for all the reasons I previously posted.

6th October? Really? Seems an incredibly late start. This means it would end on 15th December.......the same day as X-Factor.

Wozza20, I dont think many people would miss Itv dramas because lots of them are the same old thing about detectives and murders. Hardly anyone will bat an eye lid if Itv cant afford to show a programme like Mothers Son. Whose looking forward to that anyway?

It's 29th September according to this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strictl...ing_(series_10)