I very much doubt it'll have any effect. The BBC is a resilient old thing - and public appreciation of it is equally so, whatever the newspapers might try and pretend. Fundamentally, people don't judge the BBC by it's scandals, but by what they watch on the TV and hear on the radio every day.


Quite. Sometimes you get the sense that the BBC is harsher in it's critique of itself than it would be of other institutions. Certainly, via this investigation, they've now opened themselves up to be the "people to blame" (there has to be someone - and the culprit is dead) for the whole affair. Other institutions, frankly, ought to feel relieved.

It'll be very interesting to see the balance of Panorama and Newsnight viewers tonight. You might say it'd be strange for anyone to turn to the latter - but I've a feeling it might be up on usual as people want to see how they handle it.

Well I'm looking forward to the return of 'Sale Of The Century'' complete with the Anglia TV logo.

'From Norwich its the quiz of the week.......'


Don't mind me I'm just showing my age & perhaps a degree of premature senility!!!

Assuming New Tricks does go for a repeat next week, then that gives the Top Gear special on BBC2 at the same time a bit of an easier ride. Although New Tricks repeats tagged onto the end of a new series do traditionally do surprisingly well.

Channel Ten appear to admit defeat in the upfronts for 2013

The few key points

- The project moves back to 6.30-7.30. Quite a good idea, it means the 7.00pm slot doesn't have to be filled with modern family repeats, it doesn't clash with Seven and Nine news, and should provide a decent lead in to the 7.30pm slot, provided those people who have switched to ABC news in recent months are now not entrenched in their ways
- They appear to have secured the rights to Rugby Union, so at least some Saturdays each year should rate well. Its nowhere near as schedule filling as the AFL and NRL but I guess its a start.
- There are 5 new dramas, with Puberty Blues and Offspring also returning. This should mean that most of the year there may be 2 different dramas running which is good news, as Seven and Nine don't offer all that much, and rather than going for bland middle of the road drama (winners and losers, house husbands), they are going for a point of difference.
- One of the dramas is an 8 parter called Batavia about a ship sinking on its maiden voyage based on a novel. The interesting thing here is it has co-producers in America and Europe so is likely to be big budget and maybe appearing on UK TV.

Now for the negatives
- American Idol now on its 12th season, will no longer air on Fox8, but channel Ten. I could understand if its was bought for Eleven, but surely this is barrel scraping and a sign of desperation. The obvious answer here might hve been to try and bring back Australian Idol and air it in the first part of the year, away from The Voice and X Factor. I expect this one to tank
- With the project moving to 6.30, Ten now need to fill in the 6.00pm slot. Rather than commission something new, or bring Neighbousr back over from Eleven as it hasn't being doing too badly of late, Ten have decided to move the simpsons back instead (which rates a lot less than neighbours). Another sign of desperately trying too fil a slot and admitting they have no chance

The Walking Dead was down in its second outing of season 3 on AMC but its 5.1 rating among adults 18-49 topped all non sport broadcast competition not just on the night but for the week beating The Voice, The Big Bang Theory and Modern Family. Compared to the premiere it was down 12% in the key demo and scored 9.5m total viewers. About 68% of the audience were aged 18-49.


It's damaging to the brand - just like the phone hacking thing was damaging to News Corp (even Sky got mentioned a lot in relation to it all).

If phone hacking was the MP's revenge on the press for the expenses scandal then this will surely be revenge for the press against the "squeaky clean" TV media. And from a PR perspective, I know I'd far rather be accused of covering up phone hacking than child molesting. The BBC isn't quite the bogey man target that News Corp was (largely because of the Murdoch name) but the subject at hand is far more emotive than phone hacking.

But I highly doubt it will damage the ratings. AFAIK tabloid circulation hasn't plummeted anymore than usual since the phone hacking scandal (nor is The Guardian performing any better).


It's also PR 101. Once you're caught, lay it all out on the table. Find everything terrible that could be used against you and put it all out on one day at the same time. Ideally after about a week or so your PR firm would create a diversion - like a well known name eating a hamster, for example (although given recent allegations, you might want to change the person in question!).

With the impending investigations the details will be exposed now. Best to put it out on your own terms rather than a constant drip drip of information and scandal which drags on over months and years as rivals expose the dirty details. It's ironic that News Corp failed so miserably on this front. Although I guess for a while they were trying to stave off investigations and in doing so dug themselves a deeper hole when Leveson came around.


Not one credible source ever discussed it as a cancellation prospect for the simple reason that it was never at any risk. Bravo I guess to The Examiner for getting some attention but it's considerably less reliable than The Daily Star.


IMO that's not an awful night. 666 Park added three tenths and looks a lot healthier than last week. It's still low and only ties Pan Am's performance last year but Pan Am came off a far higher base and kept falling IIRC.

Revenge is pretty much on a par with Desperate Housewives. Once Upon A Time doing good business at 8pm. Without those two hits last season, they could be in a terrible mess on Sundays just now. All they need to do next is find a new tentpole reality series to replace DWTS, at least a couple of stronger 10pm series, at least one more sitcom and end the Thursday 8pm curse... so not a lot then!

Wednesday was a real disappointment last week. Nashville was the big hope in drama but fell sharply. And I thought Suburgatory would hit a 3 out of Modern Family. They really needed to keep adding hits and they've just not delivered so far this season.


Alison Sharman? OK Daybreak goes against her a bit but with stuff like The Lakes and Paul O'Grady: For The Love of Dogs she has put some hits in the tough "anti-Eastenders" slot. With The Chase and Piers Morgan's Life Stories she has commissioned more entertainment hits than the director of entertainment! Long Lost Family was also from her department. Was mentioned as a successor to Fincham when he leaves ITV.

Angela Jain is running all ITV's digital channels and acquisitions. Not hugely impressed so far to be honest but she had a really good run at E4 (she pushed it ahead of C5 in 16-34's), worked at C5 in the past and was Commissioning Editor for years on Big Brother. Background in factual entertainment (although while running E4 it was scripted stuff that defined the channel).

Simon Dickson is Creative Director at Dragonfly TV where he has produced The Hotel and The Plane Crash. Previously Deputy Head of Documentaries at Channel 4 where he commissioned One Born Every Minute, Coppers and 24 Hours in A&E.

Given what they do, it would seem to make sense that they go for someone that knows popular fact ent and maybe acquisitions. Whether or not any of the three above would move is a question way beyond my guessing.

Should have aadded, it also stated that Merlin was returning to TEN next year, whether that will be the last few episodes of series 5, or this is confirmation that Merlin will have a series 6 I'm not too sure. We are only one week behind the UK, and last year it played out over the summer even after the ratings year had finished, so I can't see why it wouldn't this year, which could point to a new series being made. Lst year it finished on 15th January, so will likely finish on 10/17th this year, which is not officially part of the 2013 ratings year

Panorama - 5.1m!

They should have aired this at 9pm, and finished the New Tricks in proper sequence in December or January. Clearly there was considerable public interest in this.

It was shown at 10.35pm because that was the earliest they get it finsished. They were editing it at 10.15pm apparently.

An amazing result for that time of night! Explosive stuff too!

400,000 for Newsnight.

Daft scheduling the two against each other as clearly many NN viewers were interested in the Panorama on Savile.

Not exactly a rating the BBC will be boasting about, though. All this navel-gazing on the Beeb has made their news programmes very surreal to watch

888k for Arrow on Sky1 last night. They should use the 8pm slot wherever possible, it works well.

Amazing rating for Panorama.

Arrow did well and I agree that weekdays at 8pm seems to work well for US imports, maybe other channels should try it.

attentional (@attentional) tweeted at 10:02 AM on Tue, Oct 23, 2012:
#LittleEngland returned to ITV1 with 3.9m

attentional (@attentional) tweeted at 9:56 AM on Tue, Oct 23, 2012:
#Panorama documentary investigating #JimmySavile abuse draws 5.1m/38.9%

A very impressive share for Panorama....quite an audience watching tv at 10.35pm

From ITV Media:
(numbers include +1)

1 ITV1 19:30 Coronation Street 8.785m
2 ITV1 20:30 Coronation Street 8.096m
3 ITV1 19:00 Emmerdale 7.891m
4 BBC1 20:00 EastEnders 7.624m
5 BBC1 21:00 New Tricks 7.415m
6 BBC1 22:00 BBC News at Ten 5.485m
7 BBC1 18:30 Regional News and Weather 5.464m
8 BBC1 22:35 Jimmy Savile-What the BBC Knew: A Panorama Special 5.179m
9 BBC1 18:00 BBC News at Six 4.755m
10 ITV1 18:30 ITV News & Weather 4.050m



Emmerdale beat Eastenders last night including +1, would be about neck and neck with +1 removed I imagine. That's a poor result for Eastenders though, seeing no boost whatsoever with POG off the schedule. In fact EE is down 250k week-on-week

EDIT: when Emmerdale is tape checked to 19:00-19:27 it will drop in the ratings to below Eastenders as it knocks the last Corrie inflated 5mins off the program.

Demographic Information for BBC1 and ITV1 for Monday 15th to Sunday 21st October: http://i45.tinypic.com/2u5tcoo.jpg

Top programmes for the week among 18-49 year olds from that list (excludes soaps and news) were:

1. The X Factor (Sun): 17.3
2. Strictly Come Dancing (Sat): 11.1
3. Downton Abbey: 9.1
4. Have I Got News For You: 7.4
5. Take Me Out: 6.7
6. Poland v England (Tue): 6.6
7. Watchdog: 6.4
8. Surprise Surprise: 6.1
9. Miranda [r]: 6.0
10. Merlin: 6.0
11. Match of the Day: 5.9
12. New Tricks: 5.8
13. Waterloo Road: 5.8
14. The Paradise: 5.3
15. The Jonathan Ross Show: 4.9
16. Paul O'Grady: For The Love of Dogs: 4.6
17. Hunted: 4.6
18. All Star Mr & Mrs: 4.5
19. Piers Morgan's Life Stories: 4.0
20. Me and Mrs Jones: 3.6

Note: Each number indicates the % of the UK 18-49 population. For e.g. 17.3% of 18-49 year olds living in the UK watched The X Factor (Sun)

Quiz show ratings from Bother's Bar.

http://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=6377&...#comment-50222

(+1 not included)

University Challenge: 3.23m (13.2%)
The Chase: 2.94m (20.3%)*
Pointless: 2.57m (16.6%)*
Eggheads: 1.61m (8.7%)
Deal or No Deal: 1.39m (13.6%)*
Breakaway: 1.11m (9.7%) [highest rating of the series]
Only Connect: 0.99m (4.1%) [actually 994,967]
Countdown: 0.63m (7.9%)
The Weakest Link: 0.27m (3.4%)

Thanks rzt. X-Factor must be pulling in millions more £ than Strictly would, were it on a commercial channel. X-Factor would need to drop to about 5-6 million viewers before falling below Strictly in the demos.

It's a shame then that they might not have heard of that very useful invention from the 70's - the recording device, now generally known as the humble PVR! Or even that new-fangled interweb iPlayer thing

Because that's what I did - I recorded both programmes and watched them later.

Nearly 50% of Merlin's audience is over the age of 65; no wonder it holds up so well against the X Factor.

Thanks rzt!

One thing I didn't expect was that on Saturday Strictly and Take Me Out's 16-34 scores would be neck and neck! That wasn't like that last week was it?

5.1 million for a program at 10.35pm on a weekday night is massive.

The biggest audience for a program in this time slot for many many years.

Now the lady who news night didnt support has had her side of the story seen by millions on the BBC's flagship channel BBC One.

This proves that not everything on Itv1 at that time rates really well. Paul OGrady rated 1million more than that so his show was extra popular.


Why? Strictly has much better ABC1 demos than XFactor, it has a more educated and sophisticated audience who can afford to buy luxurious items and expensive cars.


Merlins audience isnt old. Lots of young people record it and watch it later in the week, thats why it timeshifts a lot!

That is true, and Strictly would certainly be valuable to them, but 16-34s are much harder to reach so ITV make a lot more on XF than they would on Strictly. In a way the current arrangements work really well, as ITV get the big young audience to keep advertisers happy, whilst BBC1 get the big total audience, which is great as demos don't matter too much to them.

Also Take Me Out beating Strictly in 16-34s is really impressive considering the latter has over three times the total audience. TMO is doing much better than the raw numbers suggest and ITV are probably quite happy with it.