Okay, on the whole if The X Factor was any programme on the land, then 8m would be fantastic.

But this is The X Factor we are on about, and it should not be recording 5/6 year lows. Inevitably though it was going to happen at some point, it was just a matter of when.


The only major programme that I can remember falling year-on-year is Dancing on Ice. Britain's Got Talent was again broadly in line with last year.

With Dancing on Ice, it fell because of the change of presenters, poor choice of celebrities and the emergence of Call the Midwife denting it badly.

Exactly - so the point is, they had less financial power than they do now after buying expensive premieres and sporting rights. Now they do not do this, so they have so much more money for original high quality programming.

ITV used to be cash rich due to the being the main receiver of ad revenue, allowing them to invest in more drama than any other channel - not a position they are in now - even though they do still invest where possible.

The launch show isn't being recorded until the 12th so won't air to the 15th, the live shows start three weeks later which is the 6th October. I'd trust their official twitter over wiki.

If it's the same number of weeks as last year it would end on the 22nd December not the 15th. Which is another good reason to move the Christmas special away from Christmas day, it may suffer from Strictly fatigue, move it closer to New Years and have an Olympic special when most of the 'look back at the year' programmes are airing.

I think it's a requirement that BBC1 has to show a certain amount of News in primetime under it's service licence form the BBC trust, and i think it would still be a requirement after DSO even though they have 24/7 news channel, if they did drop the BBC news at 10 slot imagine all stories of BBC1 dumbing down, I don't think it would be a wise move for the BBC to do this straight after DSO personally.

Exactomundo!


Two words - Paul Millar.

They might as well ask Fincham or Cummins to write the articles....

I guess we'll wait and see. But, the lottery shows STOP being a quiz and just a 10 minute results show from Saturday October 20th. This could suggest that 6th October is indeed correct but I am just so surprised it would start that late.

X Factor low again. Not surprised. The talent so far has to be the worst across all several series and the judging panel, dare I say it, don't have the X Factor.

Its in big trouble and will be in even more trouble if the BBC have managed to get a star line up for this years Strictly.

There's an extra Saturday this year because of how Christmas falls - so with the Final as late as 22nd December, the show is bound to start a week later.

I wonder if the festive edition will be on Christmas Day this year with the final so late?

I would for one thing. I would hate any single broadcaster to have the monopoly over original British drama. Downton Abbey was the most watched show on Christmas day 2011, and this was an ITV drama which was not about detectives and murders.

Marchlands, Bletchley Circle, Downton Abbey, Mrs Biggs, Selfridges etc... just more examples of the misconception that ITV drama is only detectives and murders.

How did the Reading and Leeds festival on BBC3 last night do in the ratings?

Just look at the share, though - 47%! It must have been a hot evening in 2007, with a total TV audience of only about 18 million. How far back would we have to go to find a share for the second episode of TXF as low as last night's 36.1%?

Actually, in 2006, it started on Saturday October 4th alongside Robin Hood and it was the day BBC One had a new look! Could the same thing be happening this year?

The thing is even when ITV axed News At Ten they still had loads of high rating shows to put in the 9pm hour. The quality of the dramas fell away and BBC1 after years in the drama wilderness started to get some decent shows going.

As for Saturdays BBC1 were pretty much in the toilet when Noel's House Party ended in 1999. It took them SIX years to find an Autumn hit with Strictly. Around this time ITV launched Pop Idol/Popstars The Rivals. Apart from Pop Idol Saturdays in Autumn really did seem dead until The X Factor & Strictly Come Dancing took off.

It's Wikipedia. It's wrong....

I would bet my house that this won't happen in our lifetimes. Proper, full-length, 'built' news bulletins in primetime are the very essence of PSB and the BBC wouldn't be allowed to drop them, and nor would they want to. Their public-service importance aside, they even rate well (especially the Ten), ironically often beating new 9pm dramas, on either main channel!

For a normal show, that rating would be outstanding, but you just need to compare really to previous series, even from 2 years ago. 16m for the final 2 years ago, and an average of over 14m throughout the show. Last year the auditions were the highest rated shows bar the final results, so if this year follows the same route, the live shows would be averaging around 8m and possibly a final of around 10.5m-11m.

But we will see how it pans out. It could go either way, up or down.

Strictly began it's life in May 2004 as an 8 part series as part of Sport Relief. It proved such a huge ratings success that bosses quickly renewed it for a second run from October 2004 with a couple more episodes added! How things change!

Fully agree. BBC1, Ch4, Ch5 and ITV1 have a commitment to showing news bulletins in primetime as the very essence of PSB - and part of their license as a PSB provider.

BBC showed how much importance they see in the news bulletins throughout the Olympics as the bulletins were the ONLY programmes not shuffled off to other BBC channels. Even EastEnders, the most consistent evening anchor to BBC1 was moved to BBC2.

I can not see the BBC dropping news bulletins anytime soon from BBC1 - either by choice or being allowed to.

The circles will be on BBC One for a fair bit yet. I'm tired of TV channels changing their logos every few years and I think BBC One's circle logos have a lot of life left in them.

ITVs policy has clearly been to focus on soaps and a small number of big event shows.

I seem to recall ITV boss Adam Crozier even talking of this.


So the event shows need to be really big, the soaps need to hold steady.

Well a poor rating for X Factor standards but still double what anything else managed and top rated show of the week? I guess people will be spinning it too whatever bias they're into all day long. Must say the recent "Towie-esque" filler in the episodes are starting to grate... They're also about 2 years too late on monopolising the Towie-effect.

Can't say much for BBC1, Clearly still in their Summer schedule, yet still coming out on top

Is that a factual statement or something you would just like to see?

Yes that's it, 2004 not 2005 for Strictly. From tiny acorns eh?

The BBC News at 10 on the night of the opening ceremony was moved to BBC2. But as the BBC charter requires it to broadcast news I suspect it will be a long time before that changes.

Okay, here's the second episode ratings:

2006 - 06.9m (37%)
2007 - 08.5m (47%)
2008 - 09.4m (45.4%)
2009 - 09.8m (47.1%)
2010 - 10.0m (44.9%)
2011 - 10.1m (42.8%)/10.6m
2012 - 08.4m (36.1%)/08.9m (38.3%)

Excluding +1, it is the lowest share since at least 2005, including +1 it is the lowest share since 2006.

Don't forget that in the earlier series' that X Factor was on earlier about 7'ish, moving to a later slot in 2008/09.