Once again, you show you are so biased and inconsistent on your views. An early evening, older skewing show on BBC1 wins the night, and it is an all round success.

Downton Abbey wins the night on ITV1, and you start insulting posts about the older viewers and some reference to jam making.

Paul O'Grady doing well and denting EastEnders on a Monday night between two episodes of Corrie is because the old viewers are too...well...old to turn over and just stick around to watch the next installment of Corrie.

Could it be that the tectonic plates are shifting on a Monday night, and the night no longer belongs to BBC1 and ITV1 now owns Saturdays?

You best hope the tectonic plates aren't shifting too much as ITV1 have enjoyed a few all-day share victories over BBC1 for the first time in years. Also, the week beginning Monday 8th October saw ITV win 3 out of 7 primetime victories. Not so long ago, they were barely winning any...

WOW super rating for Strictly. Think it might go even higher once the clocks change.

The show is very much the same as it always was quality-wise - paper-thin derivative plotting and repetitive storylines. I suppose in terms of the art direction and production values it has dramatically improved though. Clearly viewers aren't switching off in their droves so its audience continues to be satisfied.

The demise of the X Factor and Strictly's burgeoning popularity have played the most significant role in Merlin's marginal audience gains though, in my opinion.

ITV have won many primetime shares this year, so I'm not sure where your last comment originates from.

As for year-on-year in the all-day shares:

Week Ending October 2nd, 2011
BBC1 - 19.9%
ITV1 - 18.5% inc +1 and HD

Week Ending September 30th, 2012
BBC1 - 19.5%
ITV1 - 17.2% inc +1 and HD

BBC1 have lost -2.0%, ITV1 have lost -7.0%. Is there something I'm missing?

I was thinking that with the colder evenings and dark nights Strictly and X Factor will both benefit.

A brief round-up of ratings in so far:

BBC1
19:30 - Strictly Come Dancing: 9.91m (43.5%)
* peak: 11.3m (46.0%)
* equivalent episode last year: 8.68m (36.8%) (starting at 18:05)
20:25 - Merlin: 5.58m

ITV1
20.20 - The X Factor: 8.68m (36.2%), +1: 331k
* peak: 9.89m (39.8%) exc +1
* peak: 10.2m (41%) inc +1
* equivalent episode last year: 9.81m (39.1%) , +1: 454k (starting at 19:45)

All-day shares
BBC1: 22.6%
ITV1: 18.3% inc +1
C4: 4.9% inc +1
BBC2: 4.6%
C5: 4.3%
ITV3: 3.2%
ITV2: 2.8%


Oops, thanks. That's terrific for HIGNFY then, which you'd think would skew fairly male. Clare Balding was a brilliant host; we saw a whole other side to her! When it's on form, the show can mix serious comment and comedy so well, as it did with the Saville affair on Friday,

Maybe Charnham didn't like the fact ITV had all the top ten places in 1982.

Strictlys share is up a lot. Is that helped by the fact Fool Britannia and Take Me Out arent near as popular as Youve Been Framed and TV Burp and some of those ex TV Burp viewers are now watching SCD?

Monday night has never belonged to BBC One and traditionally is their weakest night. Even before the soap triple bill of recent years, ITV's mixture of comedy, game shows, Coronation St, top class dramas and accessible current affairs hammered BBC One. What would you sooner watch, David Dimbleby interviewing a union leader in a dark studio, or George and Mildred?

I thought Take Me Out would be doing better than it is, but it's never been as big as the press coverage/social media would have you think it is.

I agree.
England are in transition and at the moment tend to look workmanlike rather than inspiring and get competent victories in qualifying but then just fall flat when it really comes to the crunch-as we clearly saw in Euro 2012.From a ratings perspective its the worst situation really. There is no talisman figure bringing in casual viewers like Beckham did so brilliantly and Gascoigne/Keegan/Hoddle/ etc did in the past.(its a huge shame Bale is not English-the press would be all over him in the England set-up).
Also, and its a curious thing, England get far more "news" when they are playing badly and people can moan. People just love to moan

I think there is something there. When SCD had its 2009 failure I think Burp was getting 6 million against it. Burp at its height was quite a force-with its Sunday repeat mopping up valuable share too. Not an easy thing to replace.

BBC1's dramas were shocking during this period. But when ITV had World In Action/This Week on Mondays/Thursdays at 8.30pm BBC1 would have some popular sitcoms on. The 1988 series of 'Allo, 'Allo was repeated on Monday at 8.30pm where it rated better than its Saturday outing. Birds Of A Feather in 1989 and Keeping Up Appearances in 1990 started on Mondays and became big. Also 2 Point 4 Children beacame a huge hit for BBC1 when it moved to Mondays. Now with Corrie there at 8.30pm BBC1 have lost a slot that they could do well in. They have Thursdays at 8.30pm back but there are no good sitcoms to put there.

The Alan Hart era of BBC1 is generally regarded as the station's lowpoint, although the John Birt era comes close. BBC1 on Mondays tended to have a very unappealing line up of an import, Panorama, news and an old film. However, a fightback did occur when Michael Grade took over and Wogan and Are You Being Served were shown on Mondays. Of course, though, there wasn't an 8.30 Coronation St to get in the way then.
Actually with regard to Coronation St, there is a huge anti audience of men, Southern and young viewers that the BBC can appeal to.

As a Scot, it's a bloody ginormous shame that Bale isn't English.------

Back on thread and Strictly far enough ahead of X Factor to still be ahead in the officials. It's looking like Strictly to win on Saturdays and X Factor to win on Sundays. If Strictly goes ahead on Sundays then there's going to be a few irked individuals at ITV and Syco.

Merlin continues to do brilliantly. 5.5m is a good figure for it in any slot, never mind against X Factor. Imagine the admiring comments therewould be in this thread if Hunted or Homefront were getting 5.5m. "Ooh, brilliant performance. A smash hit".

Quite. Its over compared to very successful shows; against X Factor is doing amazing figures, I have some issues with the show (its struggled to be as good as its second/third series were; and is still very panto) but its something to watch on a Saturday night. Still think theres room for an adult drama following it - couldn't care less about a bad Lottery quiz or an over shown Casualty.

Merlin does show Casualty/Secret Fortune are under performing a lot.

Alan Hart was a bad scheduler. When Michael Grade came in he famously scheduled BBC1's programmes by the pool on holiday, when a BBC exec came over. He said BBC1 had good shows but they were in the wrong place were his words. A few tweaks helped bump audiences up. What also helped Grade was that he managed to eventually get Panorama moved from Wednesdays at 8.10pm to Mondays at 9.30pm. The 50 minute show on Wednesday always meant ITV could score highly opposite it.

Brilliant result for Strictly last night - that's terrific for Week 2. They've got the scheduling spot-on (and ITV have retreated late) which naturally helps, as does the disappearance of the solid ITV TV Burp alternative. But nevertheless, the show seems to have sustained the momentum of previous years and is finding it's feel good nature is right in tune with what the audience are looking for just at the moment.

I don't know whether it's a comment on the national mood or the recession or whatever other social explanation you might like to make... but light-hearted, or at least generally good-spirited programming seems to be in vogue at the moment. Cowell spotted the trend effectively by lightening up BGT this year (complete with dancing dog winner), everyone loves the comforting and twee Great Briitsh Bake-Off and the supportive and relentlessly positive The Voice did well, right up until the humour and got zapped out of proceedings in the live shows. Meanwhile, dramas with a heartwarming tone like Call the Midwife, or a soapy warmth like Downton Abbey seem to be top of the pile. And that's before we start to mention the ratings for the Jubilee or Olympics.

Perhaps it was ever the case, but it seems more-so to me this year. Of course, Ripper Street is probably going to come along and do really well now - and blow my half-baked theory right out of the water.

This is why I'm surprised ITV so screwed up the return of X Factor; the ads were truly dreadful; if they'd been on par with BGT's brilliant ad campaign then the show would be doing much better imo. ITV were a bit arrogant in not realising the need for a relaunch - instead they just stuck a bunch of has beens in a dark studio to talk about how '2007's X Factor was dead important' - as oppose to talking about the new series, the judges, contestants - anything.

Since last year X Factor seems to be a show that no one really knows what to do with or why it was successful in the first place. I mean we know what the Gary thing is going to be - in a few weeks he'll fall in love with the controversial contestant after one production then he'll go out the following week.

Their just in auto-pilot, it doesn't deserve to do well as no one involved seems to be really trying.

I think Wozza20 was referring to the few times ITV1 has won the all-day share recently, which is indeed quite rare.

Here are the all-day and primetime shares for the two big channels for the last couple of weeks (ITV1 includes +1):
ITV1 won in all-day share the Sunday before last (powered by a strong primetime line-up of TXF and DA, with no AR opposition) and the Wednesday before last (helped by the Jimmy Savile doc).

In primetime, BBC1 and ITV1 have had roughly equal numbers of victories recently.

Sorry to be anoraky, but it was the 1989 series of 'Allo 'Allo which got a Monday 8.30pm repeat in September and October 1990.

Could the small numbers that stopped watching have been replaced by a similar number curious to see what was going on? The net effect being numbers stayed flat? I'm really reaching for an explanation here but you never know. If the results show gets the same as last week then people really aren't curious about seeing Rylan get the boot at all. And if he does go who else can provide the headlines? Although I think some shows worry more about trending on Twitter and getting in the papers than getting ratings.

You're right that was the one. The six part series was up against Blind Date originally and barely registered. Then repeated on Monday it got 16m at its peak.

It still attracts a decent number Other than Eastenders it had the most 16-34 viewers on BBC1 last week, just ahead of Waterloo Road. The only shows with more were Downton and Take Me Out (not by much) and X Factor (by 147%).


Eventually it will start to fade, everything does. But unlike X Factor just now, which is rehashing the same plots every year, I think having Olympians in is helping and also the fact that Victoria Pendleton apparently quite bad(?) helps when she also has a reputation for being a sobbing drama queen. Then on the other hand you've got this Lisa person who seems to have amazed everyone by actually being good. Since August it has been clear that this series for XF has been a write off. They really need to completely tear up the rule book for next year and change pretty much everything starting with the auditions.

The theory that older viewers are more repetitive might help Strictly. They're certainly an easier audience to reach. But Dancing WIth The Stars in the US plays to an even older audience profile and it has collapsed so quickly that this time next year it's more than likely that Len and Bruno won't have to worry about flying to LA every week. The Voice has probably played a part in all this and it's unlikely ITV would field such a strong series against Strictly here.

One possible danger ahead is that something new comes onto the market. With DWTS and So You Think You Can Dance looking like they'll fall into the jaws of the cancellation bar, I'd imagine a lot of producers are trying to come up with new ways of doing a dance show. The only other format I can think of at the moment is another Dutch idea, Ultimate Dance Battle but I'm not sure there's much overlap (it's more The Voice/X Factor meets So You Think You Can Dance with mentors and whatnot). The celebrity diving series would probably be more of a threat but I doubt ITV will put it opposite Strictly!


It's one of very few shows on BBC1/ITV1 whose success is really hidden by the overnights. It pulled 1m 16-34's last week, more than Strictly Come Dancing at the same time and more than anything else other than X Factor on ITV1 (not sure about Corrie?). It might actually be making sense for ITV. And the young skew of course is what gives it the extra buzz.

It's years since David Dimbleby has been involved in Panorama, you must be in a time warp !