I'll go for an average of 6 million, OK about a quarter of the Olympics OC, but a similar figure to what Emmerdale gets and very high for Channel 4.

53 minutes I believe, so just long enough to get that annoying fourth break. So roughly a 10 minutes programme, four minutes of ads ratio.

Friday's will be the one to watch/record!!

If anything FOX are the issue. AGT was always going to be on that week - possibly with the season finale head to head against the premiere of X Factor. The way NBC are doing it lessens the impact on X Factor, I can see AGT coming out of this far worse. Particularly on the Wednesday. The Thursday might get a boost in the second hour if they can get some X Factor viewers to choose AGT over Glee.


NBC should do well in the fall because of The Voice. Even if it's well down, it'll still be more than doubling last years Monday slot average plus there's the Tuesday show as well. And across the rest of the schedule, everything was so low last year there's only so much room for decline. So the actual numbers vs last year should be good. But the real sign of progress will be if they can find a hit scripted show.

Stupid question here, but does the BARB thing automatically detect when people leave/enter the room, or does it require human intervention?

I probably should know the answer to that myself, but I don't.

Each person has a button on a special BARB remote which they need to press on and off to say whether or not they're in the room.

I think that's how it works anyway.

Some Channel 4 info, thanks to Elgin on GB, all returning and new shows:

Monday 10th September
21:00 - 999 (1/10 - documentary)

Tuesday 11th September
21:00 - One Born Every Minute Special (1/2)
22:00 - Rude Tube

Wednesday 12th September
20:00 - River Cottage
21:00 - Grand Designs
22:00 - Shameless

Thursday 13th September
20:00 - Location Location Location
21:00 - The Audience (1/3)
22:00 - Shameless

Friday 14th September
21:00 - The Million Pound Drop
22:00 - Alan Carr: Chatty Man

Will be interested to see if Shameless bounces back after dropping very low by it's standards last series.


Thanks, that sounds perfectly valid

If the Paralympics were not on tonight, I reckon Ch5 tonight would have got brilliant ratings from 9pm-midnight. But with the competition on Ch4, I would go for this for Ch5:

Big Brother- 1.6m
Dallas- 2.1m
BB Eviction Interview- 1.7m

It could have been 2.3m, 3m and 1.7m had the Paralypics not been on IMO. Dallas could have gone 3m+ and the BB eviction could have got the highest non launch rating of the series.

Dallas starts next week.

LOL. The new DG will find his time taken up with dealing with political and commercial pressures, just as the previous DG has.

And responsibility for appointing channel controllers is the job Entwistle has recently given up.

Ohh I thought it started tonight! Is it the making of Dallas tonight then?

I think NBC have been a little bit more devious here than you're giving them credit for.

Going head-to-head for two-hours with The X Factor on Wednesday would have been a disaster for them. People are going to tune into the opening hour of The X Factor to see if Britney Spears has a complete meltdown. She won't and NBC is betting that disappointed reality viewers will then switch over to America's Got Talent. They also have AGT in the higher PUT slots which will help its overall average.

Yes, it's a behind-the-scenes type thing with John Barrowman to whet the appetite.

CBB will probably drop to Saturday levels tonight. I reckon the Paralympics will achieve an average in the 5m range for C4, but it could be even higher.

I'll go for six as a peak, the same as the soaps get on ITV1 on a poor night and the opening ceremony will be their highest rating since MBFGW in February and possibly since the glory days of BB. I'm not making a huge effort to watch it, but will have it on in the background.

All this talk of Christmas Day schedules is tempting me to have a go, but I'll resist for now.

At first, I expected it to be Ch4's highest rated event of this century which right now, remains the Big Brother 3 final in 2002 which got 10.01m. But everyone seems to be predicting it at around 5-7m.

Anyone know if Channel 4 are airing the Ceremony commercial free tonight?
I hope they are but it could be an opportunity for them to trailer their autumn programs to a very large audience.

Yes, that's right. My aunty knew a woman who had a BARB box. She forgot to press the 'stop watching' button one night and got a phone call from the market-research company the next day to ask if she actually had been tuned to Channel X for 14 consecutive hours or whatever.


For anyone who's interested, the maximum number of minutes of commercials per hour is 12 for all channels, with PSBs such as Channel 5 being limited to 40 minutes of ads between 18:00 and 23:00 (8 minutes per hour average).

So in primetime Channel 5 can, like Dancc says, jam 12 minutes into high-rating hours and use fewer in others. That's the reason for the 'fake breaks', packed with trailers rather than ads, which we sometimes see on Saturday early evenings on ITV1 (even TV Burp had them, I recall) when ITV wanted to use the maximum possible for, say, TXF and IACGMOOH later in primetime. PSBs are also limited to 3m50s for each break, of which 3m30s can be ads (the rest is usually one, 20s, trailer).


I'm looking forward to Dallas, not only because I remember the latter years of the 1978-1991 series fondly, but because of the new male characters as depicted here.


I had a giggle at the wart-based soap, too. That wouldn't be The Bold and the Beautiful, then

Surprised C4 didn't begin their Paralympic coverage at 7.30pm tonight, giving them an extra half hour of dedicated build up and more importantly from a ratings point of view pulling in people after The One Show and Emmerdale, taking advantage of no Corrie.

Except The One Show Roadshow(!) actually finishes at 8pm tonight.

The One Show is on until 8pm tonight so C4 wouldn't have got the 7:30 switchover from that.

Be interesting to see how the hour long One Show rates tomorrow...

Yes, Friday's one-hour outing is usually the lowest-rating of the week, but that could be down to it being a Friday, facing Corrie, and the Marmite quality of Chris Evans.

The Paralympics isnt trending on Twitter yet nor is it top headline on BBC Sport page and very few articles about it on the back pages of today's newspapers. Not even a thread on DS TV forum to discuss the opening ceremony. A week ago I thought tonight would peak with over 10m but I dont think it will anymore unfortunately.

Anyone have the ratings for this?

Channel 4's Top 10 Most Watched Shows
01 - 13.9m - WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE (01/1985)
02 - 12.4m - FILM: FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (11/1995)
03 - 10.8m - GREGORY'S GIRL (01/1985)
04 - 10.0m - BIG BROTHER FINAL (07/2002)
05 - 09.7m - BIG FAT GYPSY WEDDINGS (02/2011)

06 - 09.6m - FRIENDS (05/2004)
07 - 09.2m - FILM: NUNS ON THE RUN (04/1993)
08 - 08.8m - CELEBRITY BIG BROTHER (01/2007)
09 - 08.3m - FILM: DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW (05/1985)
10 - 08.3m - INTERNATIONAL SNOOKER (12/1984)

Source: Channel 4 Press Release last year, via here.

As much as I would like it to, I can't see the Paralympics making this list, although it would be nice to be proven wrong.

Actually, watching it now they should have billed 19:30 to 20:30 as Paralympic Games Countdown...


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