Will Cowell poach John Craven for 2013?

Most watched programme?

At 9pm, certainly. On ITV, sure.

But I think a Brucie ratings handout would put paid to that one...


I think it usually does anyway, plus you get folk tuning in for MOTD, which was later than usual.

Good strong figure, although I think it has had 5m before now when TXF was getting large Saturday night audiences.


He might be tempted to include items on badger culling, foot rot in pigs, or perhaps a week ahead weather forecast...

Worth adding to the other "gap analysis", that ITV's Saturday night flagship was only 2.39m ahead of a late night 10.50pm BBC1 news report on the BBC's own self-made fiasco.

Say what you like about the Newsnight shambles, it is ratings gold for BBC1 - nearly 6m for Panorama at 10.35pm and 6m for a Saturday night newsflash...

Maybe ITV should sack Schofield, in a copycat gesture....

Friday night soaps:

Emmerdale - 7.26m (34.6%) [+1 162k]
Coronation St - 8.24m (37.6%) [+1 196k]
Eastenders - 6.82m (30.2%) [+2.5 520k]
Coronation St - 7.83m (33.7%) [+1 296k]

Very low for Eastenders on Friday. Emmerdale did better than Thursday and Wednesday episodes.


As for last night, seems like a decent launch figure for I'm a Celeb. Yes, it is down on recent years but when you think that it was launching in the 8.5m-9.5m range for several years in the mid/late 2000s it is a very resilient show. Surprised X-Factor didn't see a bit of a boost though, thought people tuning in early for Celeb would have boosted it.

They use the same formula each year instead of allowing it to evolve. The judging panel isn't quite as good and we've seen better versions of the acts in previous years.

The best comparison to use is Big Brother which had similar issues, but it's far from a broken brand and if they put the right work in for next year, they could easily see it rating 10-20% above this year. It has posted some fair peaks, so there is interest there, it just doesn't have the hook for viewers to watch the whole show.

or maybe the media should stop boring all to death with 'media interest' stories. I highly doubt the average SCD/TXF/Downton/Eastenders/whatever fan really give a flying toss about the comings and goings of Newsnight or Director General (regardless of the self interest attack stories from the newspaper barons)
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in other news....

to all the tedious anti-ITV bashers you'll be delighted to know even Emmerdale beat it in the ratings this week

also the programme is too long and probably shouldn't be starting at 8.20pm. Commit to a 7pm start and run for no more than 90 minutes (even if that only means half of the acts can perform on the early rounds)

But didn't X Factor start around 8.05pm on Saturday and finished before 10pm? Even when it finished before 10pm it still got similar ratings to previous shows that finished at 10.35pm. It used to start earlier but ITV want the show to start later to get that potentially big audience. It used to get big audiences there before but not now.

Hmm, is that 10.7m XF peak including +1 or not?

It was beaten by IAC aswell which isn't a good sign.

The good thing is, they have gotten the scheduling sorted out (it starts at 8:00 sharp on Saturday, and should finish before 10) but it's 6 weeks too late.

X Factor finished before 10pm on Saturday.

The Dung Factor has a ring to it

Very misleading Dave. EE's figure is for the full slot, Corrie's aren't.
The second episode of Corrie got an equaly poor 7.3m for its full slot. Perhaps you should have pointed this out.

I'm talking about the upcoming Saturday.

If EastEnders gets a big rating on Christmas Day I will be shocked. It's just not clicking at the moment.

from my feelings (as somebody who doesn't watch either TXF or SCD), I think 8-8.20pm is too late a start for those programme.

If that means they both clash, well tough. It'll force BBC and ITV to come up with other programmes. ITV's strategy of only relying on one programme for Saturday evening is stupid from both a business and viewer point of view.

Take Me Out is a half decent programme that is feed to ratings slaughter on the (now failed) assumption that 10-12 million will stick around and watch ITV from 8pm onwards.

For the next few weekends ITV will have I'm a Celeb to boost its Saturday output. Which means with a bit of thought it should be possible to come with a non-TXF (or reality) show that can bring in ratings.

It's barely a decade ago ITV had 3-4 decent Saturday night programmes that competed with BBC's output. Chucking money and airtime at just TXF is a bit of an "eggs in one basket" approach to scheduling

X Factor regressing week-on-week despite a more compatible (and higher rating) lead-out show definitely surprised me. But it was never going to increase by much, that is true. A near 30% drop year-on-year really hits home though, and even the most fanatical ITV lover couldn't successfully defend that kind of a drop.

IAC got the job done well despite getting no favours at all from TXF. It wasn't a particularly impressive premiere rating for its standards, but still fairly massive. It's now ITV's chief rater in this quarter so they need to look after it now.

But on Saturday it was on from 8-10pm pretty much likewise this upcoming Saturday. I would assume the ratings will be similar.

Quite shocked at EastEnders poor showing.It seems while soaps still pull in a lot of viewers as a genre relatively speaking in a multichannel age -they are way past their glory days

It's curious that EastEnders seems to be worse affected than the likes of Emmerdale, though.

better late than never

data for week ending 4th November 2012 now live on BARB

"a change is gonna come"

It is.I think that theres a strong likelihood that in future there will be much more competition -close competition between Emmerdale and EastEnders for the position of Britains second best rated soap.Im not confident EastEnders can fully recover from the last 2 years and the idea Emmerdale only beats it occasionally may be becoming an out of date notion.

The problem is that two years ago when X Factor were ruling the roost they wouldn't mind a clash and when the did clash with Strictly in 2009 they won comprehensively. Before that Strictly used to win in a clash. Now neither side wants a clash and lose ratings so if X Factor is on earlier Strictly will be on afterwards. Put money on that one!

ITV and BBC1 used to have two or three shows together on Saturdays that would get at least 7m+ but now they have one big show and some small shows. A case can be made that the reason there are smaller shows is because they clash with X Factor/Strictly.

I disagree about your thinking on Take Me Out as ITV keep building it as a bigger show than it is. It is no Takeaway or TV Burp and always crumbles in the face of decent competition. It's more a case that ITV expected 10-12m to tune in at 8pm for X Factor regardless of lead in and that hasn't happened this time.

8.00-8.20pm is a good time but the problem to me seems that X Factor is needlessly long to fit in more ad breaks. It ends up having the opposite effect as less people are tuning in due to the show being too long.

Hello Mike

Will we see online measurements coming into BARB ratings soon or is it still a work in progress?

From ozoo on Gallifrey Base.

Top 20 (+2) programmes, week ending 4th November 2012

1. Downton Abbey [Sun 2100] - ITV1 - 11.76m
2. Strictly Come Dancing [Sat 1830] - BBC1 - 10.95m
X. Strictly Come Dancing: The Results [Sun 1920] - BBC1 - 9.94m
3. Coronation Street [Mon 1930] - ITV1 - 9.86m
4. The X Factor Results [Sun 2000] - ITV1 - 9.49m
5. Eastenders [Mon 2000] - BBC1 - 8.76m

X. The X Factor [Sat 2020] - ITV1 - 8.75m
6. Emmerdale [Mon 1900] - ITV1 - 8.24m
7. New Tricks [Mon 2100] - BBC1 - 7.96m
8. Countryfile [Sun 1820] - BBC1 - 7.30m
9. Merlin [Sat 2015] - BBC1 - 6.88m
10. Ten O'Clock News [Mon 2200] - BBC1 - 6.19m

11. Antiques Roadshow [Sun 2000] - BBC1 - 5.99m
12. Have I Got News For You [Fri 2100] - BBC1 - 5.68m
13. 50 Years of Bond Cars: A Top Gear Special [Mon 2100] - BBC2 + BBC HD - 5.54m
14. The Paradise [Tue 2100] - BBC1 - 5.30m
15. Casualty [Sat 2100] - BBC1 - 5.03m

16. DCI Banks [Wed 2100] - ITV1 - 4.96m*
17. Pointless Celebrities [Sat 1740] - BBC1 - 4.86m
18. The Graham Norton Show [Fri 2235] - BBC1 - 4.61m
19. The Pride of Britain Awards [Tue 2000] - ITV1 - 4.59m*
20. All Star Mr and Mrs [Wed 2000] - ITV1 - 4.54m*

BBC1 - 12
ITV1 - 7
BBC2 + BBC HD - 1


C4 - Grand Designs [Wed 2100] - 3.00m
C5 - The Mentalist [Fri 2100] - 2.00m
SS1 - Live Ford Super Sunday - Match [Sun 1530] - 1.79m
Sky1 - Arrow [Mon 2000] - 1.73m
SS2 - Live Ford Football Special [Sat 1200] - 1.54m

Living - Elementary [Tue 2100] - 1.12m
BBC3 - Russell Howard's Good News [Thu 2100] - 1.07m
BBC4 - Only Connect [Mon 2030] - 1.01m
FX - The Walking Dead [Fri 2200] - 0.89m
E4 - Hollyoaks [Tue 1900] - 0.76m

5.49m for the TG Bond Special - cracking timeshift, cracking rating, even out of usual slot. The BSI should have had far more confidence in this and let it damage the wounding and flailing TXF still further.