But they have shown comedy on a Saturday night - Armstrong and Miller, Michael McIntyre, Outnumbered, The Impressions Show, The Old Guys, endless repeats of Live at the Appalling and others have all been on Saturday nights in the last few years, many of them when Strictly was still running, so there is space. They regularly shorten the lottery to ten minutes - they've done it for several weeks at a time - and they'll do it again if they want to put something new on there. And as I said before, there are several lottery quizzes so you can't just say Oh, It's A Lottery Quiz because some of them have flopped and been axed because the formats weren't up to much.

And the BBC1 schedule for September 1st of game show, family drama, shiny floor quiz, drama and football is a bit more interesting than the ITV schedule of comedy, shiny floor quiz, shiny floor talent show, shiny floor quiz and shiny floor chat show. And for what it's worth I don't really think comedy works on a Saturday night, it's too frequently shoved around the schedules to get a loyal audience.


But if they drop The One Show you'll only get the same stuff you get on The One Show anyway - consumer shows, history, nature. The benefit of The One Show is that it's flexible enough to do more or less anything and it's also poltically important for BBC1 because it allows them to meet quotas for independent production and regional production.


The other thing about Doctor Who is that it may be a flagship drama but it's on Saturday nights which no other drama is on (apart from Merlin), so it will obviously have different ratings expectations than a 9pm series. And a lot of it is really quite complicated and unusual for a Saturday night slot.


Yeah, I can only assume that they decided they were happier to take the hit on Tuesday because that's a weak night anyway, as opposed to rescheduling Thursday when there's an hour and a half of soaps. If they were going to do it, presumably they'd have done it today when there was Liverpool rather than next week's Newcastle second leg which could be all over.

As for next Tuesday, of course in 2009 they took the same option of a La Liga side against Panathinaikos, only that was a more glamorous side in the form of Atletico Madrid. I assume if they were going to be able to do that, they would have announced it already.

Doctor Who going out at 7.20pm is good but remember last year when it went out at 7.15pm against All Star Mr & Mrs it got 6.2m. With a potentially weaker Red Or Black and a stronger lead in, overnights should be better. But perhaps 6m is the ratings plateau for a Doctor Who series overnight now.

Who cares about the overnights, it's the proper ratings that matter.

Unless you're Kevin Sullivan and have an axe to grind...

The Only Way Is Essex ended its 6th series with 726,889/4.1% on ITV2. #TOWIE @OnlyWayIsEssex -- attentional (@attentional)

Secret Interview began with 650,000/3.3% on C5. @twofourtweets -- attentional (@attentional)

#MountPleasant returns to Sky Living with 267,100/1.2%. @TigerAspectUK -- attentional (@attentional)

Exactly. As long as licence payers believe they're getting value, it doesn't matter when and how they watch.

Wonder how many Bad Education viewers are staying up until 1 am to watch the only HD airing of the week. Bet most are PVRing it.

Mount Pleasant a decent bit off where it was on Sky1 (about 400k overnights). I'm sure it'll timeshift well but it won't match the total audience of the last series unless it improves as the weeks go on. I don't see the point of moving new comedies to Sky Living - leave them where they were and they'll rate higher.

Also:

Emmerdale - 5.99m
Corrie Years (R) - 3.67m
Midsomer (R) - 3.54m

WDYTYA? - 4.8m

It's one of Sky's weirdest policies. Let's take programmes that are aimed at both sexes and put them on a channel aimed at women (latest Living demos 31% men, 69% women compared to 51/49 for Sky1).

NBC's Sherlock remake Elementary is going to Living too.

Big Brother Eviction: 2.2m

Incl +1? I was hearing on Twitter it was 2.4m. Either way, it's good IMO.

Not sure, its probably without. It's a pretty good rating, C5 will be pleased.

I just feel Sky have chucked aload of money at comedies and big names then realised none fit any of the demos of their channels. Gates, Mt Pleasant etc Sky is better at US importants imo

From the guy who is here at 9am 99% of the time ready to say how awful the overnights are for ITV?

The vast majority of Sky1's UK scripted content has outrated all but a couple of US imports.

Remember that, for the commercial channels, the overnights are more important (because that's a better estimate of how many people watched the ads!).

K

Very true but nothing quite sits right with Skys scheduling

Ever since Doctor Who has become a soap/kids programme, its ratings have dwindled. Russell T Davies' ego butchered the series as he started writing cheap storylines and dreadful dialogue. Then his chump took over and the selection of the new Soctor only reinforced what I dreaded : a carbon copy of David Tennant. Does every Doctor Who have to be goofy? Can't they be brilliantly eccentric like Tom Baker or remotely credible like Chris Eccleston.


There's the reason why Doctor Who will eventually fail. It has become a procession of monsters for little kids.

I doubt ITV1 want too many people as a percentage to PVR their shows. However take for example my mum...she will quite happily watch the ads if she has recorded CS or EM, occasionally she will whizzed through them.

To a commercial channel like ITV1, even knowing that viewers are seeing the break bumpers is much better than a non viewer.

I think the overnight rating really doesn't matter for Doctor Who, it always seems to time-shift 1.5m+

Despite being a little bit down last year, it still averaged around 7.5m. Which was the same as series 2 & 3.

If, for example, the typical Tuesday flopzone fodder was shifting from 2m to 4m you might well have a point.

Only Downton on ITV, possibly TXF, seems to timeshift in decent proportions.

I disagree on every single point, especially the last one.

The main criticism of the last series was that it was far too complicated for children to understand and that it was becoming a show for adults.

Matt Smith's Doctor is nothing like David Tennant's. David Tennant's was basically a human in all but name, while Matt Smith's is very much alien.

And if Russell T Davies hadn't invested so much into Doctor Who the show would have now been off the air for nearly 25 years. And ratings grew and grew during his tenure, so much so that by the end of Series 4 it won the weekly overnights and the Series 4 Christmas special was the second highest-rated episode of all time.

Wildly off topic I know, but I couldn't let those points go unchallenged!

Most of their dramas add on about a million in the officials these days, and quite often more. BGT was adding on 2m for some episodes this year. I don't think The Voice ever beat BGT in the officials (it did one week if you don't include +1 for BGT but even so it was quite a different picture from the overnights).

The story might have been. The dialogue was cringe worthy though. I felt as if it was targeted towards 11-12 year olds.



Perhaps a fan engrossed in the series might think so, but if you take a step back you'll quickly realise they have the same train of thought. It's a good job they are both good actors and can distinguish themselves from each other in that way. But it feels as if the writers have not adapted to this. Both are goofy, think aloud when they shouldn't, have a terrible sense of humour and seem to be either cranked up on 6 cans of Red Bull or overly melodramatic.


As I said, his ego got in the way. People much like you were singing his praises so much that he decided along with the BBC to cash in on a fanbase with cheap dialogue and writing, that has been adopted by the new script writer. Reminds me of what ITV have done to Julian Fellowes and Downtown Abbey...


If they just improved the cringe worthy dialogue, it might actually be worth watching...

Anyone know how Daybreak and Breakfast are doing this week?

Good rating!

Your an idiot. I mean that 100% Your saying RTD killed the ratings? Oh and 'brilliantly eccentric', you've not seen much of the Tom Baker era have you

'A procession of monsters' for little kids. Maybe if they have more trolls they'll get bigger ratings, right?

None of this is important as the ratings haven't dwindled, they grew under RTD, and Moffat is in line with what you consider the 'RTD golden years'.


ITV dramas are timeshifting more and more. It used to be odd that they didn't timeshift as much but I think that was about who watched ITV1 and how they watched it.

But they've caught up, and afterall Downton holds the biggest timeshift record.


Wow!