Person of Interest seems to be doing very well now, over 15m viewers and not a bad demo rating. I wonder if it will keep on rising and get close to the hallowed 20m mark? Channel 5 will be hoping it starts to get some ratings traction here as well.

An episode back in 2010 got 463k (6.3%) (overnights) so it works better than BBC Two. It seems they have dropped the kids programmes altogether am I right?

Why not. It's a damn good show. I do hope UK viewers give it a chance when it comes back.

So having read through this thread and taken note of all exceptions which need to be considered it appears nobody watched BBC1 last year.


Thanks for that. C4's schedule would presumably be similar apart from the quiz squeezed in between Countdown - so probably 10-15 minutes of a film at 3pm.

BBC2 is interesting though as I'd have thought this time last year they'd have been showing exactly the same as this year - the darts. That suggests ratings are down due to the increased competition from BBC1 rather than it's own changes. (And on a similar topic, I hope they don't insist on running a block of daytime shows where CBBC would air usually during Wimbledon).


Not exactly the first time - ITV tends to do things in one hit, though the last couple of rebrands didn't quite go the whole hog with ITV4 and previously ITV3 launching with the new look ahead of the rebrand.

It's great ITV are doing it all in one go though - much better IMO than drip-feeding a new look on to screen over several months, and IMO the BBC is about ready for a revamp across it's portfolio too, but that seems unlikely - though BBC News gets new studios and BBC1 reportedly gets new idents later this year.

Obviously though as much as us branding geeks may love it I doubt it'll affect ITV's ratings one bit - though it's great to see the ITV regional news studios finally being replaced after nine years and from virtually all regions presenting tonight's shows in makeshift newsroom studios it appears all will get a new studio from launch rather than them being fazed in over a few months.

Great Night Out is getting good comments on Twitter but in the context of the benchmarks used in this thread it will probably flop.

I doubt it will appeal to older viewers and as we've seen in discussions recently, older viewers tend to make up a large % of drama viewers so once you exclude them you are automatically introducing a low ceiling.

It'll probably skew much lower than usual ITV dramas though which the advertisers will like.

In other news

To the surprise of no one Britney Spears has confirmed that she won't return for the next season of X Factor USA. So that show begins another search for another new panel with LA Reid also confirming he won't be back. Another season another rebrand.

Might do better than you think.

Skewing much younger doesn't (necessarily) mean its actually doing better with younger viewers though. A drama with 8 million viewers 25% of whom are under 30 has more viewers under 30 than a drama with 4 million viewers 40% of whom are under 30.

PoI has really grown and CBS thankfully stuck with it, the early ratings of season 1 were hitting lows of 11m, I think Channel 5 should stick with the show and maybe promote it more to help gain more viewers.

The Big Bang Theory, a bit like NCIS has seen ratings growth in later seasons thanks to repeats on cable and syndication, while TBS paid a lot more for the repeats, it's paying off big time for them. It'll be interesting if Modern Family receives a similar boost when repeats air on USA later this year.

The success of sitcoms especially traditional sitcoms should encourage controllers on both sides of the Atlantic to invest and develop more of them. I think Channel 4 would do well to invest in a traditional sitcom that could become their next big success,

Celebrity Big Brother's Saturday rating will be interesting after tonight's show finished on live feed of the beginning of a fight. Last week it pulled in 1.9m so it should surely build on that.

ITV fans around here are so caught up with the channel skewing young that they miss the bigger picture. Several ITV dramas don't skew that young but because they're so popular they get a decent amount of ad friendly 18-49s watching.

This was a problem for ITV drama several years ago and led to things like Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach.A drama designed by committee to get younger viewers in and ended up appealing to hardly anybody. Now ITV drama is going back to appealing to the audience that it used to do.

Getting the excuses in earlier than usual Andy

I dunno. That was a very high Saturday rating for the show's recent standards (over 2m inc. +1). It would be doing very well to pull in something similar this time, even with the drama beginning to unfold.

Bad decision as well to not run Live From The House in the gap between the two shows this evening. An opportunity squandered for a big rating for 5* standards.

And yet there was a Live From the House last night. Were Speidi meant to leave then but it was held back for 24 hours or something?

How will it rate against the second part of Silent Witness? ITV may have struck oil with the scheduling of it though. Following the second Corrie episode may give it a good chance.

Must admit though I watched Stella on Sky 1.

Live From The House has moved to Thursdays this series as C5 want to make 5* strong for the whole evening on that night when American Idol starts.

But I don't see why this week's edition couldn't have aired on Friday before moving to Thursday next week. It was poor planning, made worse by the fact that neither Marcus or the continuity announcer mentioned that live feed was on last night, so it was missed by almost everyone anyway.

Great Night Out is enjoyable enough. I'm not sure how it'll do against Silent Witness but ITV1 doesn't have another slot to use so...arguably it's complimentary scheduling so it may benefit from the anti-Witness audience; I know less people watch Friday night's compared to Monday's but if BBC One and ITV1 can practically match each other on Monday night they should be able to do it on other nights too.

Irrespective of the quality, I just don't see GNO as a big ratings winner. I'll predict 3.3m (3.6m incl +1)

Silent Witness continues to deliver a solid audience, helped by ITV being a bit short of programmes this winter. Good scheduling by the BBC, propping it up after the negative reaction to the last series.

Maybe Channel 5 feared that promoting Live Feed would dent Celebrity Wedding Planner which, to be fair, it would have done considering how the main show finished. But they've missed out on some cash by not airing it tonight.

Love BBC1's "Love 2013" ident, but I trust they won't have the nerve to use it during their current primetime Saturday night.

Yes I like it too. It's a refreshing change. Considering The One Show has been promoting ITV's weekend line up tonight I don't think BBC1 are going to be on air tomorrow!

Tim Brooke-Taylor (from BBC1's Animal Antics) was a guest on Steve Wright's Radio 2 show this afternoon.

Even when we think of ITV skewing young by its own standards, it's often not young enough. Take Channel 4 this week. On Tuesday they had The Undateables with 2.6m. On Wednesday One Born Every Minute with 2.4m. For ITV those might be "flopzone" ratings. But with a Channel 4 profile they're hugely successful. Both had a 16-34 skew of more than 40% and delivered over 1 million viewers in that category. On ITV a show would be considered "young" if it skewed over 20% to 16-34's.

Recently they've given up on 16-34's with drama and just target ABC1's. Less money per head but easier to reach. So it's more efficient to get lots of lower value ABC1's rather than a relatively small number of high value 16-34's.

The exception is Take Me Out - although even it isn't as young as those Channel 4 shows.


Seems to be a vehicle for Nigel Hall after all his time working for Cowell. Syco have never made any acquisitions in TV but maybe they'll go for more start-ups with successful execs.

I can't imagine it'll be producing anything wildly different to what they do now - "niche" is hardly something you'd associate with Cowell or Nigel Hall who was Controller of Entertainment at Granada before Cowell hired him to start Syco. He had Exec Produced Stars In Their Eyes, Popstars: The Rivals, You've Been Framed and Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. So lots of big shiny floor entertainment.

What I have noticed in reports is that they're looking to sell shows to other channels. Aside from a rush in 2006 (3 shows on US TV) they've always been overly attached to ITV.

Sounds like Celeb Big Brother has had the moment that will get people talking tonight. Could boost the ratings.

to be fair, as bad as Splash! is, the BBC might be hoping that it distracts attention from Animal Antics.