I do love it when people make statements such as the last paragraph. Highest rated show last night yet you make that claim. I reckon in next month when both SCD and XF are live we won't even be having this conversation.

Are the others 'selected' or definitive?

No mention of West Ham v Fulham. Not good for BT whose main package is Saturday lunchtimes from next season.

I'm beginning to think iplayer is the ratings equivalent of leaves on the line

It's ok folks, 56 million people will watch it on iplayer

I should've mentioned that I do consider X Factor's ratings respectable also. It's getting ratings that 99% of shows would kill for...even the big hitters of Corrie and EastEnders struggle to get that sort of rating nowadays. My point was that a lot of viewers of the show are trying to excuse the 2/3m drop in ratings from previous years (blaming the weather/holidays/Paralympics) rather than admit it's not as popular as it was. Dead and buried? Far from it.

Down 2.5m year on year is nohing to worry about? Move along nothing to see here..
I hope ITV's advertisers are as understanding.

2 weeks ago Peter Fincham and Elaine Bedell said the low launch ratings were due to the weather. Whats the excuse for last night and last week? Last night was even lower than launch week!

Looks like the glory days of overnights of 7/8m are defiantly over now sadly.

But saying that, it should hopefully time-shift it's normal 1.5/2m.

For a show that's into it's 7th series i don't think that's too bad!

Thanks for all those figures. In the breakdown, are the raw figures inc + 1 but the shares exc +1? I'm getting some weird results when I do the primetime averages.

I think the ratings for the first couple of scd will be interesting. Ratings generally just seem low across the board (soaps, x-factor etc)

Is it just that these programmes are down.
Is it that reality programmes are falling from favour
Or is it just that is considered as returnable, hit, mega hit has just fallen again due to multi hannel making more of an effort.

Paul Millar has updated DS.

Sat 18/08: 8.09m (39.4%), +1: 616k (2.9%) = 8.71m inc +1
Sat 26/08: 8.40m (36.1%), +1: 475k (2.2%) = 8.88m inc +1
Sat 01/09: 8.15m (35.0%), +1: 422k (1.9%) = 8.57m inc +1

A series low using ITV's favoured methodology, and a shocking share!

is there any provisional schedules around for when Strictly starts in a couple of weeks? just wondering if there's gonna be any clash with XF, if there is XF could go even lower

Other ratings are the rest of the top 50 for terrestrial, didnt have time to put it into the usual format!

Breakdown excludes +1 I think

These ratings for ITV are very serious because they have shifted the schedule to focus on soaps / event telly.

And it's gotten boring.

Good to see a CBB rating of 1.54m for a Saturday making it the highest Sat of the series. The last week of the series should do well these next few days.

Okay, not on to the other ratings. Very surprised with X Factor, it'a not increasing at all, is it? People given up? Or are they catching up other ways? We will see I guess. Red or Black staying at the same level and not increasing at all either. Decent for Doctor Who, I did expect aeround half a million more, but with competition it still did well. It should timeshift very well.

Except that the iPlayer figures are real figures, not statistical extrapolations.

And those real figures do actually prove that certain shows like DW do timeshift extremely well, so should not be discounted as an excuse.

Let's face it, many more people are utilising the broadcasting and consumer technology at their disposal in order to fit TV viewing into their lives (rather than having the TV rule their lives). And why not? That, in a sense is what it's there for (as Barry Norman might have said).

And DW fans seem to be more sophisticated than most in this respect.

No TXF clash for the Strictly preview show on 15 September, but there is a 20-minute Who/TXF clash, according to Digiguide:

BBC1
17:30 - Total Wipeout
18:30 - Strictly Come Dancing
19:35 - Doctor Who
20:20 - National Lottery: Secret Fortune
21:10 - Casualty

ITV1
18:15 - You've Been Framed!
18:45 - Fool Britannia
19:15 - Red or Black?
20:00 - The X Factor
21:00 - Red or Black?
21:45 - The Jonathan Ross Show

The regular Strictly starts three weeks later.

Yes, those glory days seem to coincide with the non-availability (or low availability) of timeshifting.

Courtesy of Who fansite Gallifrey Base, first series average overnights were 7.3 with a timeshift of 0.64, series 6 overnights were 5.7 with a subsequent shift of 1.73.....yes there has been an absolute drop off of several hundred thousand over the years but that's still impressive for a series as you say that is now 7 years old.

So on the Cowell front:

BGT - dying
TXF - dying
ROB - dead on arrival, definitely no chance now of resuscitation

When's his cookery show start?

DOI of course is in its death throes too. Good for ITV that Celeb still, unfathomably, does the business. But if that slumps too, what then?

thanks

These ratings seem to suggest the TV viewing audience was quite low last night. Even though TXF got what it got, it was still the most popular show on TV last night. Surprised how low Dr Who was.

I agree the TOWIE format is a put off, but it's not new. It's at least two series old. SamuelW you're going a bit over the top!

I can see ITV Crisis Command doing an emergency reschedule to avoid the clash with DW. Even with DW getting only 6-7m, it's enough to dent the TXF average, and they can't afford another week on week fall. Chance of warm sunshine nationwide next Saturday too, according to the forecast.

I suspect it will shift back with effect from next weekend.

doesn't he have some DJ talent show starting soon? I remember reading about it a while ago..

BGT seems fine (although it'll be interesting to see what happens there next year) but aside from that it doesn't look good for him. Red or Black won't be back, that's for sure, but the bigger worry has to be TXF. Down pretty substantially from last year with no signs of any momentum. Next week will probably be even worse because of the Paralympics (Sunday against the closing ceremony could be a disaster) but from bootcamp onwards they'll be looking for improvement. Could it be looking at regularly being beaten by Strictly this year?

The cookery show isn't intended to be a big juggernaut. It's going to be a cheap show (Media Guardian said it is likely to be 'quite a modest show') and is likely to go on Wednesdays at 8pm, so really anything 4m+ will be seen as a success.

DOI is in need of serious work but I can't see it happening as it has actually been getting worse for years. Interesting times ahead for ITV.

X Factors rating are obviously still huge but clearly this is not the XF that was carrying all before it a a few years back. I think those connected with it are guilty of thinking that viewers would tune in to the brand whatever changes were made in its look and feel. Personally I still cannot believe that they somehow let slip the perfect Cole/Cowell/Minogue/Walsh panel so quickly-the chemistry worked, especially with the addition of the ridiculous like Wagner and Jedward as kind of anti-heroes and the almost pantomime efforts to keep them in as long as was required for the ratings.
The changes over the past two years are almost Housepartyesque, and unless there is a strong resurgance in the live shows I reckon they will beak the bank to try and bring back the old panel as much as possible.

Disappointing start for Doctor Who I think. It has had a lot of promotion over the Olympics and Daleks were advertised quite heavily in the trails. For it to drop on the last series premiere despite a later timeslot and colder weather is also odd. It will timeshift well but the sheer amount of advertising does make a low premiere overnight rating rather disappointing. With regards to the episode I thought it was great and hope to see it crack 8.4m in the officials (2m timeshift).

Elsewhere Casualty recorded another low rating although it had a 5min clash (started at 9:05pm) with X-Factor so that may have put some viewers off. The Formula 1 was hit quite badly yesterday afternoon by the other sport on offer, however Match Of The Day pulled in a nice evening rating.


Really not good for ITV1. Hard to say what the Paralympics took away from it this week but slot competition is only going to get worse with Doctor Who (head-start) clashes and likely Strictly Come Dancing clashes coming up. The Sunday episode next week against the Closing Ceremony is going to be in big trouble I think.


Those are pretty decent ratings, managing to stay around the high twos or low threes for over 3 hours last night. Channel 4 will be very happy with that I'd have thought.


The total TV audience never gets close to 30m on a Saturday evening even in Winter. It got to and went over 30m a few times on a Sunday during the X-Factor nuclear years but never on a Saturday.