Eastenders ratings are bad. Last Christmas, Eastenders beat Downton abbey in the overnight ratings with about 9.5million viewers to downtons 8million. But if the two shows clash this Christmas day, I think Downton abbey will beat eastenders on the day itself. Even Coro. St might get more viewers than Eastenders on Christmas day, when did that last happen?

In America, Jersey Shore is rating terribly this season. The episode on Thursday got only 1.4 rating, this is a show which used to get between 4.0-5.0 rating every week until last season. This is a warning for shows over here like TOWIE, Made in Chelsea and Geordie Shore that viewers can get tired of these scripted reality shows quickly and before you know it, they could be cancelled like Jersey Shore.

Wasn't it announced before the new season that it was cancelled anyway? Perhaps people don't feel like investing time in it if it's done... or perhaps they feel guilty that most of the locations maybe destroyed

Wasn't Jersey Shore announced to be finishing prior to this season due to Snooki's pregnancy. It certainly wasn't canceled for poor ratings, a 1.4 is still massive for MTV

I didnt realise Jersey Shore had been cancelled even before this series was shown. 1.4 is still excellent for MTV but obviously far less impressive than the 4-5 ratings it used to get.

Emmerdale is still enjoying the bounce from the live show, and Eastenders suffers from having very few likeable characters from what I can see-but if we are being honest none of those figures are exactly setting the world alight given we are very much now into the dark nights. An extra 800,000 does not necessarily mean Coronation Street is thriving.

It got 9.9m at Christmas. There is still time but the BBC will not be putting EE against DA again.

Tonight I expect both SDC and Xfactor to be down again due to Firework displays and what not. Sunday SDC could out rate Saturday I reckon.

I predict- 9.3m for SDC and 8.3 for Xfactor.

Ken

Some overnight ratings from yesterday:

BBC One
13:45- Doctors: 1.41m (18.4%)
20:00- EastEnders: 7.17m (30.7%)
21:00- Have I Got News For You: 5.05m (21.5%)
24:00- EastEnders Omnibus: 411k (8.9%)

BBC Two
- BBC Two averaged 1.76m between 19:00-23:00
22:30- Newsnight: 830,000

ITV1
19:00- Emmerdale: 7.13m (34%) , +1: 125k
19:30- Coronation Street: 8m (37.2%) , +1: 131k
20:30- Coronation Street: 7.79m (32.4%) , +1: 234k
21:00- Jonathan & Charlotte: 3.85m (~17%) , +1: 160k

Channel 4
18:30- Hollyoaks: 954k (4.8%)
- C4 averaged 1.24m between 19:00-23:00
21:00- Derren Brown: Apocalypse Part Two : 2.12m

Channel 5
13:45- Neighbours: 524k (6.8%)
17:30- Neighbours: 1.03m (6.1%)
18:00- Home and Away: 772k (4.1%)

5*
18:30- Home and Away: 415k (2.1%)

BBC Three
22:30- EastEnders: 376k (2.2%)
23:25- Family Guy: 717,800

Dave
21:00- Gavin and Stacey: 266,800

E4
19:00- Hollyoaks: 547k (2.6%)

Source: DS, DS (2)

Thats very true as well. They all look as I have come to expect underwhelming. People blame multi channel TV yes it must have some factor but I think the biggest factor is quality. Is Downton can get 9m oversights and 12m officials. It's still possible for the soaps to get that. Some imagination could go quite far.

Corrie is very much no.1. It can still scrape 9m on Mondays but two episodes in one day is overkill. Reduce it to 4-5 episodes. If you reduce the episode counts and focus on quality the ratings for the soaps should increase.

EE at 4 eps I think is okay but it did go down hill after they went to 4 because they never took on enough staff to make the extra episodes. They should go to 3 eps in the summer.

EM should go to 4 30 mins episodes not the current mess they have. And for Christ sake ITV no random Sunday episodes they don't do well at all.

4 episodes of each soap would be fine.

Ken

They got away with that one then !

No different really to how Life Stories has been doing.

It did much better than I thought it would - in all honestly I was expecting about half of what it actually got. These kind of shows are quite unpredictable raters.

HIGNFY continues to do well for BBC1 - it had a bit of a wobble last year but it seems back on form this year.

Ken, I've been saying this for years. There is simply an overkill with the two ITV soaps and do they really need omnibus showings when they're repeated on ITV2 the following day? A lot of people I know say they're on too much.

ratings have been down for nearly everything since the Olympics, EE is suffering as much as most.

the BBC is not helping, they halved the audience on BBC 3, by moving it to 10:30, whilst the Omnibus is now on in wheresville.

That said the show is simply not helping itself, even the new plots are absurd, Phil and Sharon having a fake relationship so Phil can adopt Lexi, as if his relationship status is his biggest problem.

Saying that im not even sure we can blame the Olympics, Corrie is doing fine, and Emmerdale is surging, so its really just EastEnders, even Hollyoaks is starting to see some better performances. (How is it Bryan Kirkwood can fail at EastEnders, yet return to Hollyoaks, and increase ratings? )

This Lucy chick quitting X-Factor, good for her, I might actually listen to her music now.

New promos I have seen on Tv recently:

The Secret Of Crickley Hall [BBC1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrYwUDmcQxI
Attenborough: 60 Years in the Wild [BBC2]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG2MGdjMxv8
Him & Her Series 3 [BBC3]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xynH3P-bJ7g
The Killing Series 3 [BBC4]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGXL6fAtos
Crime Stories [Itv1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO3L2Umrsa0&
I'm a Celebrity - Full Trailer [Itv1]: http://www.itv.com/imacelebrity/2012-video-promo/
Unreported World [Channel4]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzQuTYbqt-8

From a programme quality pov - then the above makes sense.
But from a ratings / advertising pov - what can they replace them with that would get a regular 7-9m viewers?

Jonathan & Charlotte did as expected. I don't think anyone would have expected it to get over 5m.

In terms of XF, the finish at 22:05 will help it a bit more (even though the last 5 minutes will probably average around 3-4m like in previous weeks).

Any date yet for Him and Her?

Also notice More4 are beginning the second series of Shameless USA tomorrow at 11pm. How did that rate for the first series - obviously not well enough to keep a 10pm slot. Talking of which C4 have Secret State (originally announced as A Very British Coup) beginning on Wednesday at 10pm, running for four weeks. That seems to have launched quite quietly and surprised really it's not going out at 9pm as most of the worthier potentially award winning but viewer losing stuff does. Indeed surely that would have made more sense to be scheduled following Homeland than Friday Night Dinner.

double bill as well

The EE omnibus wasn't doing much on Sunday, so the BBC moved it to Friday night, same as the CS omnibus was moved from ITV1 on Saturday mornings as ratings were too low. Soap omnibuses don't really do much as the audience will have seen all the episodes by the weekend and are just cheap filler. However, the longest running soap omnibus is on Radio 4, where the Archers omnibus has been a Sunday morning feature since the seventies.

Ferris and Agutter are actresses who have been in lots of things for a long time, Miranda's stock was high before CTM, Collectively they would all have helped bring more interest on the show.

I've never said that viewers will only watch something because of who's in it but it's fairly obvious that launching a drama in a genre that has not found much of a mainstream following with no familiar names is going to struggle compared to a show in a popular genre with familiar names

There is a slight difference, the Corrie omnibus had been on ITV1 for about 5 minutes, the EE omnibus had been a staple of BBC1 sundays for decades.

I remember in the late 90s the Granada regions used to repeat Corrie/Emmerdale in an afternoon, they'd sometimes be out of sync though i.e Friday's Corrie would be repeated on a Monday with Sunday's repeated on a Tuesday. This was in the days before ITV2.

It did better than expected, many had it down as a sub 2m flop.

Just thinking back to the autumn of 1979, and one of the last of the legendary 15-20 million rating BBC1 Saturdays, when you had DW, Larry Grayson's Generation Game, Secret Army, Mike Yarwood, MOTD and Parkinson, clearly a diverse line up that included a war drama and fitba. However, SCD is the heir to BBC LE from the seventies and MOTD still has a devoted following. Also the Brucie connection lives on.

Interesting end to SCD....
Tess Daly "Join Claudia and myself for the results show tomorrow night"
Bruce Forsyth "And I'll see you in a couple of weeks. OK?"

Bookies odds on next permanent host: Vernon Kay and Graham Norton 5/2 joint favs, Anton Du Beke 5/1