I would just like to say that there are a few programmes where I would hate to miss an episode - Dr Who, Outnumbered, Miranda for example - but it really does not bother me one iota if I don't watch them at the time, or even on the day, that they are transmitted.

Modern technology means people can now fit television into their life instead of having to run their life around television.

Tomorrow at the MediaGuardian TV Festival:

10:30 Lorraine Heggessey Meets... Janice Hadlow (BBC Two)
BBC2 has had another great year of factual television with strong performances in science, praised documentaries The Tube and Inside Billingsgate, and fresh, intelligent talent featured across the genre. Distinctive formats also triumphed with The Choir: Military Wives becoming a nationwide phenomenon and a BAFTA win for The Great British Bake Off. The channel’s drive to re-invest in drama has seen a number of original and acquired series this year, but they have often struggled to attain the elusive combination of strong ratings and critical acclaim. Has the channel done enough to re-establish its reputation for quality drama as desired by outgoing DG Mark Thompson?
12:00 Richard Bacon Meets... Jeff Ford (Channel 5)
Channel 5 is currently going from strength to strength: turnover is up and new flagship commissions such as Royal Marines: Mission Afghanistan are embodying Jeff’s “honest, passionate and relevant” mantra. Last year's crucial Big Brother gamble was a massive success, both in terms of ratings and public perception for the channel. However, despite Big Brother delivering excellent numbers and a younger audience, attempts to retain this increased demographic has seen mixed success to date. Looking ahead, what are Ford’s big plans for the upcoming year beyond the ratings juggernaut? Will 2012 see bigger entertainment commissioning risks? And what does the newly formed “Channel 5 Productions” mean for the independent sector?
13:45 Rick Edwards Meets... Angela Jain (ITV2, ITV3, ITV4)
Angela Jain returns to the Festival for her second year as ITV's Director of Digital Channels, and will reflect on a year of mixed fortunes. She has guided ITV2 to a year of record highs, with Celebrity Juice becoming the most watched show in the channel's history. And ITV3 has risen to become the UK’s second biggest digital channel, and ITV4’s sports-skewed rejuvenation continues. But whilst successfully steering an inherited juggernaut of hits on ITV2, including a now Wright-less TOWIE, a new breakout success has been more difficult to manoeuvre. New reality series The Exclusives and Mark Wright's Hollywood Nights have both struggled in their slots, and newly acquired foreign dramas have failed to capture the imagination. With a new original drama and Inbetweeners-style sitcom in the pipeline, are Angela's plans to take ITV Digital to the 'next level' finally taking shape?
15:15 Matthew Wright Meets... Zai Bennett (BBC Three)
One year after taking the reigns at BBC Three, Zai Bennett’s influence has started to hit our screens. From brave commissioning such as My Murder, to establishing new talent on Live At The Electric to axing long running favourites like Doctor Who Confidential Zai certainly hasn’t been afraid to take risks. However BBC Three is still lacking its next big hit. The year ahead will see Zai’s channel facing DQF cuts of 15%, the largest of any of the BBC’s line up – meaning more repeats, less original content as well as a refocused supporting role to BBC1. Zai is here in Edinburgh to outline what this means in real terms for the channel, how he plans on delivering quality first with a significantly reduced budget, and what he’s looking for from producers in 2012.
16:30 Kirsty Young Meets... Jay Hunt (Channel 4)
Channel 4’s period of ‘Creative Renewal’ is well and truly in full flow. Both on and off screen, Chief Creative Officer, Jay Hunt is making her mark. After a year of changes, a new commissioning team is in place and a raft of new shows has hit the screen. With the promise of edgier programming there have been some notable successes like The Undateables, Mummifying Alan and Educating Essex. But the broadcaster hasn’t had it all its own way though with the search still on for more big-hitting entertainment and comedy formats to define the channel. Meanwhile in the digital world, More4 and E4 are facing increasing competition and the need to find returnable series, not least ones that can fill the void left by the phenomenon that was The Inbetweeners. We’ll hear what Jay thinks about the past year and how she sees the schedules shaping up.

Always interesting to hear the channel controllers in session. Hopefully there'll be lots of ratings related talking points as well.

Full coverage online: http://www.mgeitf.co.uk/

I suppose there are two types of Doctor Who fans: those, like me, who watch every episode, once, usually on the night of transmission, but don't bother with the repeats or DVDs, magazines, fancy dress conventions, toys etc, and then there are the absolute die-hards, who don't like to watch the show in the company of family, for fear of missing a single word of dialogue, a single camera shot, or some tiny hint of the blessed "series story arc" (although could anyone actually miss any of those seeing as most of them are about as subtle as the jokes about Mrs Slocombe's cat in Are You Being Served??), so they watch alone later that night, or the next day, and possibly watch again on the BBC iPlayer.

The latter might seem a stereotypical view of DW fans, but it's a true one in many cases, and must be quite a big factor in the lowish overnights and the big timeshifts.

Didn't figures show that it was its popularity in pay homes where PVR';s are almost the norm that made Doctor Who the highest timeshifting show (numbers not percentage)?

Back in the days when BBC HD was only available on pay platforms (although FTA) the most requested BBC programmes to be made in HD were Doctor Who and Top Gear.

Wow! This DW debate is heating up. I think the 19.20 slot is perfect for it and much better than last years 6pm slot for its first episode back in April. That episode attracted 6.5m so in theory 7m should be possible.

The Great British Bake Off is turning into a right powerhouse and Holby City seems unaffected by this. The Royal doc did extremely well too. Also good to finally hear Corrie is finally moving back to Wednesday's. I do think this prevents a massive problem for Thursday now and seems like they've no plan if their just gonna run The Corrie Years. If anything, I'd move the Friday 20.30 episode to Thursday to keep the schedule propped up and then they can concentrate on doing something with Fridays as the Corrie lead-in never does much for the 9pm Friday shows.

The main headline could've easily been 'Doctor Who beats The X Factor in head to head' had ITV left The X Factor at 8. The fact they moved it may give the BBC confidence to push Strictly Come Dancing later and see how far they can go with it.

Back to last night and that's a disastrous figure for the football. I assume the contract between ITV and UEFA means they couldn't drop the Champions League qualifier to ITV4 and move tomorrow's match - Hearts v Liverpool - to ITV1? And people thought their lowest ever share would stop with the Olympics...I think it could be next week if they've got to air an all foreign tie between two 'mediocre' sides.

The Great British Bake Off and The Queen's Mother In Law performed brilliantly while BBC One had a steady night. Celebrity Big Brother also seems to be performing reasonably well for Channel 5.

They won't have an all-day share of ~5.4% next week though. Not a chance.

I didn't suggest it was a media storm last year I suggested that they covered the disappointing over nights last year and spun their narrative that ratings were down because of how complicated and difficult to follow the show had become. The notion that they can't or won't pick that thread back up again if the over night performance continues to disappoint seems incredibly unlikely to me. Of course they will. The point is one shaky series can be over looked, two begins to point to a trend and then we start to see an increasing media circus over the numbers. And I'd point out that the reason Moffat had to go on the defensive with his '10+ million total reach' figure is because the story kept coming up that the shows ratings were in a slump.


I don't think it does.

The papers seem to have no real interest in kicking Ant & Dec and for the time being they can give Cowell a kicking with The X Factor. My guess is that Red or Black becomes the brief addition to Doctor Who and X Factor coverage and never really the main story itself. There's just no real interest in reporting the demise of a show nobody watched or cared about to begin with.


You're somewhat missing the point. If you have no desire to watch a quiz show and you don't like Casualty how exciting do you think BBC1's Saturday night schedule is? Its all well and good to say Casualty is a drama alternative but its a drama alternative that the majority of people have already decided to watch or not. Shorten that run and you get to try a wider variety of shows and formats in the slot. There was for example a push in this thread a while back for the BBC to air comedy or more specifically I think Mrs Brown's Boys on Saturday night but realistically how does that fit into the current schedule? The whole thing is just locked down by their instance of clinging to the lottery shows and Casualty rather than trying anything new.


I wasn't strictly speaking financially afford to do it in terms of the budgeting but rather that they don't have to justify their decision to advertisers so have a lot more freedom than ITV do. ITV for example can't schedule a major show against Strictly Come Dancing because it would dent the ad rate. The BBC don't have to cling to running Casualty and Holby City for as long as they do to keep the ratings. And they don't need to air The One Show every weekday basically every week of the year either. They have the creative freedom and ability I suppose to be able to do that.


Eventually when they get around to it. That doesn't strike me as particularly loyal or dedicated viewing. Its not liking these viewers are falling all over themselves to watch it at the earliest possible time (live). But as I said before unless we know exactly why each person is timeshifting its hard to describe what kind of viewer they are.


I didn't say they were less of an audience. I said that if people are watching a show they used to watch live via catch-up or timeshift because they aren't invested enough to watch live then what's to stop them from eventually just phasing the show out altogether? And I'd also point out that in my very first post on this subject I pointed out that the final and total reach numbers are still big but that specifically the over nights haven't been (relatively speaking at least). My whole point has been that given the shaky nature of Who's over nights as of late just assuming it'll crush Red or Black out of hand is a mistake and sets the show up for a disastrous fall. And that perhaps people should be looking into why such a large percentage of viewers watch via catch-up.


Firstly it depends why someone is timeshifting or using catch-up. To suggest those viewers are the most loyal is a mistake. There's an ever growing list of things that I watch when there's nothing else on. Does that make me a loyal viewer of those shows? The truth is we don't know why people are using catch-up services to watch Doctor Who which is why I'm saying people, and particularly people at the BBC, need to ask the question. The answer is important.

Secondly I really wish people would stop trying to spin any criticism of Who's over nights performance as a criticism of its ratings as a whole or a suggestion that its at death's door. At no point have I done that. I've simply said that for a flagship and expensive drama to be over nighting at 5-6 million on a regular basis should be something people look into regardless of what its timeshift is. So yes 5 million would be great for just about any other drama but Doctor Who isn't any other drama. And like it or not the numbers that get widely reported and that the majority of people actually see are the over nights. As much as people might like to pretend otherwise they still matter in determining the tone of the public conversation of the show.


All fair points. Hopefully though you'd agree that its something that needs to be looked into so that people can get a better understanding of exactly what's happening and why. As I said before just taking it as read that such a huge percentage of the audience is watching via other means seems like a dangerous road to travel down. But equally if your posited theory is true then Doctor Who potentially provides a road map for opening up other shows to greater total reaches and offers other broadcasters a road map for expanding their online catch-up etc. There's key stuff here that needs to be explored.

On the subject of EastEnders really I was just using that as a quick example to try an explain why I think this is an issue worth exploring and not simply dismissing. Or assuming everyone will just accept that's how it is.

Oh no, absolutely - it's an interesting area where nothing's really certain and changing behaviours which is why I threw those ideas in. If handled well by broadcasters, the switch to catch-up could be a great way of holding audiences, but equally it could be cocked up.

(Not much more to add here but to agree on the subject being worth discussing!)

Im a big Doctor Who fan, I don't have toys, magazines or go to fancy dress conventions as Pizza has mentioned but I find the argument that the show's overnights being better than many other dramas to be something really impressive, really isn't that impessive at all. It bloody should be getting figures much higher than a regular drama, this is the Beeb's flagship drama series with a Christmas special every year, masses of publicity, promotion, dozens of awards and fans worldwide.

Hopefully this doesn't come across as me having a go at you Morph but I hear it a lot from DW fans. As AlexiR said earlier, ratings are a game of expectations, Doctor Who sould be expected to post figures much better than a regular drama.

Sorry, meant primetime share. Though Emmerdale should see them get by.

I didn't suggest you had done that, and I wasn't spinning anything. *shrug*


But overnights of 5-6 million are pretty good though, aren't they? Not amazingly fantastic, but good. And if you're judging it in Doctor Who's own terms – well, that's what it tends to get (except at Christmas), and as long as they stay in that region, I think that's fine. If it gets 7 or 8 million in overnights, that's great, but those figures will always be the exception, not the rule. You can't really compare back to 2005, because everything's changed since then – and not just for Doctor Who, for EastEnders, X Factor, everything.

That wasn't really my argument though. But this is all getting circular. If something does well, we shouldn't be impressed with it after a while, because we should be expecting it to do well? You see this kind of thing with The X Factor too.


Well, it generally does, so that's good!

I mean, on overnights alone, Doctor Who would still be well up inside the Beeb's top shows each week, usually under EastEnders and New Tricks. So we can't be impressed with that because that's what we expect from it anyway? Well, sort of fair enough, I suppose, but if the only two reactions we can have are 'disappointment' or 'that's adequate'... well, we're a pretty tough crowd...!

I hope none of this sounds aggressive, I'm actually not in disagreement with anyone much. It just seems that the focus on Doctor Who's ratings (overnights or otherwise) seems a little bizarre for a show that's clearly doing pretty well most of the time, and very well indeed on a few odd occasions.

The media attention is a different thing, as AlexiR says, they just want to find the story for that week – "What's the hook?" But does it actually make any difference to the BBC what the papers say? What Kevin O'Sullivan says? What WE say, come to that?

I'd argue not a jot.

Whenever you achieve something, expectations are raised. When you achieve something over a certain period of time, then that becomes the norm. Manchester United not winning the Premier League last year was a disappointment even though coming second is still a good achievement.


If Doctor Who comes back with an 8m overnight and a 10m official, then that's a super figure. We can have reactions ranging from terrible to great but it depends what numbers you view as terrible and great to start with.

Nice analogy, but it doesn't quite work as the whole point of football teams is to try to beat the opposition. TV shows don't have quite the same raison d'etre! But yes, the general point is fair.

I guess because Doctor Who has consistently averaged 8m viewers in final figures year in, year out, even slight variations on this are ruthlessly analysed!


Yes, fair point. Everything's relative.

I think its quite shrewd to fill Corrie's old slot with a Corrie spin off, particularly with the EmFm lead in and Waterloo Road to kill off. Coro obsessives who are used to their Thursday night fix will tune in by habit and when they realise its Corrie Years rather than Coro St, they could well stay tuned anyway.

Incidentally I caught a bit of the Corrie Years they were repeating tonight. The Diedrie Barlow trial and the "national campaign" to free her from prison. What a load of sad rubbish for saddoes who need to get out more.

It's ITV's equivalent of Doctor Who Confidential....

And also that was the old Screen Two slot, presumably for the same reason - to get out of the way of BBC1 and ITV drama, and BBC1 at least very much winding down back then with Everyman or Heart of the Matter. Weirdly retro to see a single drama at 10pm on Sunday night on BBC2.


I'm thinking they might show Panathinaikos v Malaga, on the basis that La Liga is the highest-profile mainland European league in the UK because it's the only one Sky have shown for years, it's never drifted like Serie A did when C4 dropped it. I know Malaga are already 2-0 up but they could just about sell it on the basis of Greek teams always doing better at home.

Was it two years ago they moved an equivalent match to ITV4 and showed a Liverpool Europa League qualifier on ITV1 instead? I'm sure they'll be trying to find any means contractually possible of doing the same.

Big Brother live feed is so boring right now, its not like Friday night which was dramatic and entertaining. I think ratings will be lower this time.

It was all BB's fault. They wanted to make it drag! Guess they want material for tomorrow.

Bemused by the reaction in the BB forum especially. The very same people who would complain if BB let them off with soft reasons complaining because BB was being too demanding.

So in other words, they couldn't win tonight. But it was absolutely right to hold them in the Diary Room this time (another thing that would have been complained about by fans) and absolutely right that they got valid reasons out of them, so I'm happy.

If people just wanted the noms fired off really quickly, that's what the main show is for tomorrow night. It's like people have got so used to the live feed not being there that they've forgotten what it's like in the raw unedited form!

Something to confuse the ratings for the upcoming Paralympics - when C4 coverage switches to More4, the coverage will actually continue on C4 HD.

And in week two Deal or No Deal gets dropped in the afternoons - but Come Dine with Me and The Simpsons remains from 4.20pm, with Hollyoaks and the news from 6.30pm. 4seven will have an additional audio described highlights show at 1.05am, repeated on C4 at 6.05am.

To be fair, Diary Room nominations have never been aired on Live Feed before - special shows, yes, but not a bog standard feed. I think we've just found out why.

The problem was - it didn't really know what the hour long show was meant to be.
Claiming it was live feed, technically wasn't incorrect - but live feed should have been showing the housemates interacting in the house - to make it seem more appealing, they claimed it was live feed with nominations (which it was) - but it gave the impression that it was gonna be an hour of the housemates in the diary room giving their nominations (which it wasn't).
Having the bulk of the show being made up of 3 housemates continually being asked the same question over & over again was nothing short of pure tedium.

It came across as little more than a cheap trick to try & hold on to an eviction audience for an extra hour.

I don't think there are enough diehards to make a difference to the ratings. About 25 thousand buy Doctor Who magazine, there were about 40 thousand members of the then main DW messageboard- Outpost Gallifrey- pre 2005, and there was leaked 2entertain market research a couple of years ago saying there are about 8 thousand people in the UK who buy every (1963-1996) Doctor Who dvd release.

The night series 1 episode 1- Rose- leaked online, I watched it 8 times in a row. So yeah, it's a series with repeat value for me.