Lewis saw a hit last night and the comedies witnessed an uplift in viewing; maybe the fact that both episodes were very strong last week helped to gain some overnight viewers? Celebrity Big Brother is continuing to perform well for Channel 5 and Winterwatch recorded a decent figure for BBC Two...I'm just waiting for Summerwatch to complete the set now. University Challenge is performing brilliantly at 8pm and I wish they would give Only Connect a chance at 8.30pm instead of leaving it on BBC Four; I think it could really grow. the soaps all picked up strong figures - Coronation Street especially, which boosted Cornwall in the sandwich. Channel 4 had a somewhat mediocre night.


Actually, if they do base it on The Great British Bake Off and just tinker with it so it's The Great British DIY Off instead it may just work. Somehow I think Mel and Sue would go down better than Christine Bleakley though. It has daytime all over it, though; I can't see it working in primetime but then again maybe people said that about Great British Bake Off as well.

What are you referring to?

Are you joking me? Competitive cooking formats like Masterchef and its various spin off's were hardly flops.


Have you watched it lately? DIY SOS isn't a DIY show. It's closer to Surprise Surprise than anything else.

Because it already flopped for them.They even had Cowell's brother involved!

This Bleakley DIY show has been knocking around for 2 years now and I wouldn't be surprised if it ever aired especially with Bleakley's hand cuffs deal expiring in August.

Bleakley has notched up quite a few unaired pilots at ITV including an Endemol rip off of The Chase and a reformatted version of Celebrity Stars in their eyes 'Guess the star'.
It's a good thing Holly left DOI or she wouldn't have had anything to do other than 'That dog can dance'!

It's nights like these that are annoying for football fans - 9 FA Cup 3rd round replays, and nothing on the box. Bring back Sportsnight.

Anyway, here is a reminder of the 4th round live games...

Saturday 26 January 2013
Crystal Palace or Stoke City v Manchester City (12.45pm) - ITV1
West Ham United or Manchester United v Blackpool or Fulham (5.30pm) - ESPN

Sunday 27 January 2013
Southend United or Brentford v Chelsea (12pm) - ESPN
Leeds United or Birmingham City v Tottenham Hotspur (2pm) - ESPN
Oldham Athletic v Liverpool (4pm) - ITV1

Four of these replays will be sorted within the next few minutes...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/21032487

I understand the standard practice is to treat +1 as same-day timeshift, time-adjusting so that the share for (say) ITV+1 from 10 to 11pm is calculated as the share of all viewing in the 9pm hour (including later, same-day viewing via recordings of programmes in that hour), and added to ITV's share in the 9pm hour. If they're doing it fairly, I think they must do the same for all competing +1 channels as well. I hope that makes sense.


MMFD was about 11% up on the average for dramas in that slot. Not brilliant for a début. And that 8% share of 16-34s (actually 7.7%) compares with a 7.0% slot average (for all genres).


Your figures excluded ITV HD, so I've edited your post. I've also added in +1s for those who like them.

Comparing with Monday 17 December 2012:

BBC1 14.3%
BBC2 6.6%
ITV 16.3% [inc +1: 17.1%]
C4 6.8% [inc +1: 7.9%]
C5 6.8% [inc +1: 7.1%]
Other 49.2% [exc +1s for ITV/C4/C5: 47.0%]


Father Brown (2.08m/24.8%) did very well to out-rate Doctors (1.92m/22.2%) which itself was the highest-rating episode since November 2011. I think snow must have been a factor as quite a lot of daytime seemed to do really well.


The BARB consolidated data count viewing up to 26:00 on the seventh day after the broadcast day (or is it a straight 168 hours after the broadcast end-time - someone please confirm). Either way, if the 7 January Lewis wasn't watched by a BARB-box owner by last night it wouldn't count in next Monday's officials.


This was the premiere of Lewis, which got 10.64m overnight and 11.31m consolidated, on 29 January 2006. If you count +1, Selfridge just beat Downton Abbey, which started with 9.24m consolidated (7.68m overnight), on 26 September 2010 (before ITV+1's existence).

EDIT: noticed the "joint most watched" - checking the figures again.


Further to previous answers, the Golden Globes (178k/1.3% inc +1) underperformed the raw slot average (2.3%). However, just comparing with other light-entertainment programmes (rather than the more popular crime procedurals which would typically fill the slot) it outperformed the average by 22%.


E4 - Revenge, 21:00: 562k (2.1%) inc +1.


Can I start things off with suggested titles? I was thinking Britain's Got Tiling, but that was a bit rubbish, so how about I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Grouting Here!

ITV like titles which have a knowing nod to the direction the ratings will go...it's a shame DIY SOS has been taken really.

Just looking at ITV Media's new site in the ratings section and disappointingly they've removed the Top 10 Multichannel chart they used to do. So now its just Top 10 Terrestrial ratings.

Thats rubbish! The multichannel table was always of use...

All this, but it was just a complete disaster, and they really trailed it for months as well - I had the end of ITV's coverage of Euro 2004 on an old tape and they trailed The Block after it, despite the fact it was about six weeks away. What's the most bizarre thing is that in the same year, they'd already done two other live-in-a-house-while-doing-it-up-and-then-win-it series, Building The Dream (http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Building_the_Dream) and Trouble In Paradise (http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Trouble_in_Paradise), the latter being dumped to a late night slot after two weeks, so heaven only knows why they did another one. And the year before they'd also done Design Wars (http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Design_Wars) which was also very similar, and even shown on Saturday nights. I have no idea what ITV's obsession was with that concept ten years ago.

The other thing about The Block was that even though they had Simon Cowell's brother, and they trailed that bit extensively, he wasn't even in the first episode. And Lisa Rogers was just a nobody of a presenter. I do remember, though, it was on Tuesdays at 9pm (when that wasn't an automatic death slot) and then they dumped it to 11pm, but the episode in the week of a Champions League match was only 45 minutes, clearly having been intended to run 9.45-10.30pm after the football.


Well, it's just the way this has worked out, because the two best replays can't be played tonight because Man U and Arsenal both played on Sunday, and ESPN clearly prefer a decent replay up against another match than a bog-standard replay on its own. But as for highlights, it's no different to the BBC showing League Cup highlights on Wednesday alone, as they did last week, and are doing again next week.

I see next Tuesday's Millionaire on ITV is a repeat of the panto special. Wasn't that on about three weeks ago?

Yes, I saw that. Quite disappointing really as those ratings can be harder to come by. And given the success of ITV's multi-channel offering, you think they'd want to make that point on their sales site!

On the plus side, someone here seems to have got a BARB subscription for Christmas judging by all the wonderful data we get now!

BIB: Thanks. Shame it's not hitting the highs that S1 got. E4 showing should get around 500-600k when timeshifted hopefully

Sunday 9 December, but as it got less than 3m (despite leading into the X Factor final results show) they're hoping not many will notice...

Utopia is trending, although we know from past experience that does not necessarily mean big viewing figures

That's not going to happen because Springwatch starts on the Spring Bank Holiday at the end of the May so mostly runs in June which according to the Met Office definition is part of Summer.

I suspect it might be too clever for it's own good.

Just to clarify my earlier post, in consolidated figures Mr Selfridge is the highest-rated drama premiere on ITV since Downton Abbey in September 2010 (if you exclude +1) or since Ghostboat starring David Jason in April 2006 (if you include +1). I don't remember that at all; I must have mentally blanked Jason's previous work after the trauma of The Royal Bodyguard. Ghostboat achieved 9.75m consolidated, but it was a one-off single drama or TV movie rather than a premiere of a series. If you discount that, and want to include Selfridge's +1 viewers, you have to go back to 29 January 2006 which featured the premieres of not only Lewis (11.31m) but also Wild at Heart (10.83m).

I'm not sure where the 'joint highest since 2006 inc +1' comes from. The début of Whitechapel on the snow day of 2 February 2009 (9.26m) ran Selfridge close but was 100,000 short.

Anyway, Selfridge did good.

They had a summer special on 23rd August last year; they could always extend it.

Masterchef isn't 12 people stood in a field baking though.


Because a format that as expert judges critiquing the work of contestants screams 'real DIY show' to you?


Firstly it flopped almost a decade ago. Secondly a bad version of the show flopped almost a decade ago when the format itself had already been ridiculously diluted by ITV let alone other broadcasters around the same period. There's really no reason why a decent version of The Block couldn't be mildly successful.

Don't forget Scott & Bailey in 2011.
8.307m on ITV1
801,000 on ITV HD
Can't find a +1 figure.

I think the Academy expanded the Best Film category to include successful films like Inception, Up, The Dark Knight etc to name but a few rather than critical darlings to boost ratings, I imagine most audiences will have seen at least one of them, my money's on Lincoln winning Best Picture.

In other US news, The Showtime lineup is beating HBO with Shameless getting 2m up from 1.56m last year while both Californication and House of Lies were both up as well. Girls will likely get a third season but Showtime are really showing up HBO with their lineup despite being in less homes.

For reference sake The Dark Knight wasn't nominated for Best Picture. In fact its failure to land a Best Picture nomination in '08 is credited as being the primary reason why the academy decided to expand to 10 potential Best Picture nominees. Lots of people were disproportionately unhappy that it got snubbed. Ironically that didn't help The Dark Knight Rises pick-up a nomination this year. Not that it deserved one. In fact it didn't pick up a single Oscar nomination this year which is somewhat amusing (to me at least).

Undoubtedly though a large part of the reason they expanded to 10 (potential) Best Picture nominees is to try and open the door to more big blockbusters. It hasn't been massively successful and I'm not sure it offers much incentive for audiences to actually watch. Inception for example might have landed a Best Picture nod but no one actually believed it was going to win. Same with things like Up and Toy Story 3. Even in recent years when they've had the chance to reward big blockbusters they haven't. Avatar with its $760 million domestic box office lost out to The Hurt Locker with its $17 million box office for example. Unless you actually give these big money films the big prize every now and then it won't make a difference if you expand the Best Picture category to nominate them.

On the plus side they do seem to have fixed the Best Original Song category this year. After a few years of just utterly bewildering nominations because of a terrible voting system they've managed to pull it together this year. And just as importantly I suspect managed to get Adele nominated which could be a big thing for them if they can get her to perform on the night. Her big return at the Grammy's proved quite a nice ratings booster after all.


Showtime have slowly (and rather quietly) been building a rather strong slate of shows which is in contrast to HBO who with the possible exception of Game of Thrones have just lurched from one terrible decision to the next. They've been tipped over the edge with the momentum generated by Homeland though which has demonstrated just how powerful a big award winning show can be to premium cable. HBO witnessed the same thing with The Sopranos which helped them build the brand they've slowly been destroying the past few years. And for all the critical praise Girls has gotten for them as of late its not resonating with audiences in part because premium cable has never really been able to convince audiences that they can do comedy. Its going to be interesting to see how the new Showtime dramas do this year and whether they can build on what Homeland has done for them in a way they were never really able to follow-up on Dexter's success.

Ray Donovan looks promising and I imagine Showtime sees it as a Dexter successor, Masters of Sex could go either way. While Showtime has seen massive gains, HBO is still doing well but I think that's more to with their movies, sports rather than solely their originals, neither Showtime nor Starz has the same budget as HBO so they don't go for lavish shows like Game of Thrones or miniseries like The Pacific which is where HBO usually excels.

I wonder how Utopia will do for Channel 4. They obviously spent a lot of money promoting it.

I thought it was pretty good, but it did not come across as a mass interest drama, and finishing at nearly 11.30 isn't going to help it either.

Why are we tying ourselves in knots over the Selfridge vs Downton debuts comparison.

There was no +1 when Downton launched, so it's unfair to compare the +1 inflated Selfridge figure with the first run only Downton figure.

Same as it's unfair if you do it to compare last nights Marple (repeat - sssshhhhhh!) with Paradise....

6.47m for Death In Paradise last night.