Oh! The BARB website has completely changed! Not sure I like it...

http://www.barb.co.uk/viewing/weekly-top-30?_s=4

Shame, as I reckon he's on of the best live presenter's around, he was excellent at the ALW shows and I think definately deserves another saturday show based on how well the GN show does at 10.30 on a Friday

If Ant and Dec were on the BBC they would be doing a Morecambe and wise style show I reckon. I think they could pull something like that off.

Anyway the fact is the state of BBC One's light entertainment is awful and it has been for a very long time. Actually it's better now than it was. There seems to be no intent there to try to do something new. It's just Lottery Game shows and casualty with something new early in the evening.

With a stale schedule like that I can see BBC One's audience going off the cliff like EastEnders. People get
bored. People lay into ITV all time I think it's time BBC One got a smack up it's ageing backside.

Ken

i think ALW could be classed as damaged goods now after Superstar became an expensive flop.

What the hell is that! Have they got the same bloke round that rebranded ITV! I don't like it.

I will say no more.

Ken

Perennial ratings favourite Elf is on this evening - which has had the following overnight ratings from 2007 onwards including +1...

2007 - 5.63m (23.7%)
2008 - 5.90m (24.7%)
2009 - 4.90m (21.4%)
2010 - 4.03m (16.5%)
2011 - 4.09m (16.7%)

Still only goes back to 1998, so, sorry Mike, but it's a no from me.

Give it a few years and I'm sure he'll be back with TV Burp, even if it's just occasional specials.


ITV give Ant & Dec a large pay cheque, a month in Australia doing a show they obviously love, a gig presenting one of the biggest shows on TV and lots of creative freedom presenting their own entertainment show.

Any other channel would find that hard to beat.

I agree re Ant and Dec.

As far as Saturday nights are concerned, I was rather hoping the Lottery contract had gone elsewhere as for too long the BBC have hidden behind a largely tired bland and endless series of gameshows on Saturday nights. Although I guess even if they had lost the contract we would have still have the largely tired bland and endless series of gameshows on Saturday nights! Casualty too (getting 12 million when those BARB charts started in 1998) is equally tired. Not saying stop them completely but for me they are hiding a complete lack of creativity (one reason why Danny Cohen bought in The Voice I reckon).

Well yes, cant argue with that. Its only whether they, at some point, want something different. Hard to see that though.

Well, it's more legible.

Would prefer it more if they expanded the archive. Or if they started to incorporate ITV1 HD figures into the ITV1 figures.

Yes, it still seems extremely odd that ITV1 HD is listed separately, while BBC One HD is bundled in.

There's nothing to TELL you that that's the case, so anyone who browses the site is going to get a very misleading view of how popular ITV1 shows are compared to BBC One programmes.

I'm pretty sure the separation of ITV1 and ITV1 HD is ITV's decision, not BARB's.

Was the 'shock' feigned then as well?

Also they wanted to do a House Party type show but the BBC felt it was too soon after Noel's House Party. This was around the Friends Like These period I believe.

That's as maybe, but there's nothing on BARB's website to tell you that that's the case. You have to be in the know – like us!

Indeed but it doesn't have to be that way on the public facing website. Behind the scenes it can be split out, but added up for the website.

It's incredible that Elf did better the year after its terrestrial premiere, I expect it'll around 4m including +1 tonight, other recent Christmas films have done quite well like Four Christmasses and Fred Claus, I imagine A Christmas Carol will rate decently for BBC One and in a few years Arthur Christmas will get its premiere and that was very well received so I imagine it'll do well when it airs in 2014.

If Merlin does well ratings wise on Christmas Eve, I wonder if it will end up being the most complained about broadcast on the BBC. Why? You ask. Well it is rumoured that the ending is bleak, very bleak infact. Some posters in the cult threads are even suggesting that the outcome may ruin a lot of kids' Christmasses. Surely, if it was to be that bleak, is Christmas Eve an appropriate time to show it?

It does alright in the afternoon, though, doesn't it? I guess the snooker isn't much of a draw in that 7pm slot because snooker fans have probably been watching it on the red button - and given how much they offer, I assume red button viewers might be particularly high for snooker - and you can't really fit much in that hour so it's not very interesting for casual fans. I think the 7pm slot is just there so it doesn't seem like a demotion only having it on in the afternoon, it probably costs next to nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Be intriguing to see how the final does tonight, in any case, that might knock a million or two off X Factor.


Adele Silva would have experience of this because she also did the Blue Peter Olympics in the summer where the diving round was done and dusted in ten minutes. The more I hear of this the more I assume this will just be a couple of weeks of filler at 5.30, a bit like Drop The Celebrity. It's certainly going to have more to do with 55 Degrees North than the likes of Dancing On Ice, I'm pretty certain it'll all be safely pre-recorded with no viewer input whatsoever.


He absolutely would not because he did Live With Chris Moyles on Channel Five ten years ago and it was a complete disaster and I think he hated doing it too. It's all very well saying, oh, that was at seven o'clock, not late at night, but in many ways that is a better slot, when Chris Evans was plugging it (cos he produced it), he said there was a huge audience kicking around at seven who didn't want to watch Emmerdale or the BBC1 lifestyle stuff, which was exactly right. Unfortunately they didn't want to watch that either but the thought was there. Whereas at 10.30 or whatever there's often likely to be entertainment competition and it's a much harder slot to gain viewer loyalty, and for a scheduler to work around.

And Graham Norton is the perfect example of why it's a waste, because he went from one hugely successful weekly show which was a real appointment to view to five hit and miss programmes that nobody cared about if they missed. It's too much effort for too little reward.


With the greatest of respect, rubbish. The only people who complain about Brucie are humourless viewers who just moan that there isn't enough dancing, but if they want that, they should watch the Professional Ballroom Championships - except they're not on telly anymore because nobody watched them because they were boring. Strictly is an entertainment show, its whole appeal is its sense of fun and a huge part of that appeal is Brucie doing daft gags to jolly it along. It did alright when he wasn't there but a whole series of that would be dull. I wouldn't watch it. To take issue with Brucie is to misunderstand the whole appeal of the programme.

Didn't they try again with Christian O'Connell? A five day a week chatshow works in America because the weekly chatshow doesn't exactly exist over there, there's dozens of daily daytime chatshows like Ellen, Anderson etc as well as late night ones like Leno, Letterman and Kimmel on the networks and on cable with Chelsea Handler, Conan but I've never seen an American weekly chatshow.

V Graham Norton was good but I agree it was hit and miss compared to So Graham Norton, The Graham Norton Show is really an evolution of those and it was allow to grow its audience on BBC Two before moving to BBC One.

Yes, O'Connell replaced Moyles when it came back after Christmas and didn't do any better. The obvious other reason why it exists in the US is because they have the money to spend on a million writers and producers, whereas here the writers would be knackered after a few weeks. And it's such a big country the audiences at midnight are big enough to justify it.

And also in America they show the same programmes every night so they get loyal audiences. It'd be like how Newsnight's audience plummets on a Thursday because it's opposite Question Time, if ITV had a chat show at 10.30 it would get no viewers on a Friday because it'd be opposite Graham Norton and whenever BBC1 showed anything else half decent at 10.30 it'd take a hit. Whereas The One Show is up against Emmerdale 99 times out of a hundred so its ratings are consistent. And people are happier to go on The One Show than a late night show because they can be home in time for their tea.

Is Ant & Dec leaving ITV in the near future a discussion? No chance.

BBC LE has been a shambles for a long time. Most recently they had that disaster Don't Scare the Hare, which made ROB look good. Bill Cotton, who did so much to build up BBC LE in the sixties and seventies, wouldn't be impressed. Mind you ITV aren't much better with their string of flops.

Don't Scare The Hare is quite possibly the worst television show I've ever witnessed. I'm still baffled over how it saw the light of day - I came to the conclusion that whoever commissioned it was really drunk or really high on drugs and thought what they were seeing was amazing.

It bombed which wasn't surprising in the slightest!