Of course Miranda will have to contend with The Great Comic Relief Bake Off tonight. Mrs Brown's Boys however could benefit from that - two high rating shows ending at 9.30, and only one programme beginning at 9.30.

7th October was the first episode. I've actually got the TV Times from that week which has that on the cover and an absolutely enormous feature, discussing every aspect of the show, and on the Saturday listings it gets an entire page to itself. It was the first time ITV had really tried on Saturday nights and spearheaded a new line-up also including Mind Your Language and The Professionals.

It's not really the Gen Game that did for the Big Night, the Gen Game was on at 6.45 so it was almost over by the time Big Night began at 7.30. It was All Creatures Great and Small that was up against Big Night and thrashing it. A few weeks in they moved Big Night to six - so it was against the Gen Game for its entirety. Just as well because the Beeb also had the first series of Some Mothers Do Ave Em for five years on Saturday nights from November, which would have been an even tougher opponent.

If they'd made Big Night shorter and made it flow a bit better doubtless it would have been more of a success. The Director resigned after two episodes saying it was an awful show and it felt like he was directing the news because the format was all over the place.


Noel was talking about Game For A Laugh when he said the best thing about the kind of show is when it's heavily formatted but the audience doesn't spot the format - so they don't go "this is now the bit when they do this and that", and the mechanics aren't obvious to the viewer. House Party did that as well, it seemed terribly spontaneous but was of course incredibly disciplined in its format. Some other shows get overwhelmed by the format and the presenters aren't skilled enough to disguise the joins.

Slap Bang, the proto-Takeaway, was the opposite in that there wasn't enough of a format, Ant and Dec just did stuff. Even though the competition on Takeaway is by some distance the most boring aspect of the show, it has value in that it gives the show a point, and then they can work around that and introduce other bits.


But it was third and got two and a half million fewer viewers than Call The Midwife, so it didn't "nearly" top the night. Incidentally those who say BBC1 has too many fixtures in the schedule because Antiques Roadshow is on every week are reminded that Antiques Roadshow is not on at the moment.

On a Sunday night, yes, and not surprising with that schedule. And given every other channel is desperately hunting for young audiences, why shouldn't they?

Hilariously Derek goes from saying ABC1's are the most important demo in one post to the opposite in the next. Switching them around to suit his agenda.




Ahh But from Derek's pov the only numbers that matter are the ones that watch the Sky Broadband sting.

not quite, just a slow day

data for w/e 13th January 2013 is now available on BARB website

11 RIPPER STREET (SUN 2101) 6.54
8 MR SELFRIDGE (SUN 2101) 7.38 (ITV)

no idea what ITV HD figure is

nice to see (some of) you arguing about new topics

And given that we have an ageing population I don't think it's a terrible road to go down. Still they have EE, Waterloo road, The apprentice, the voice, Doctor who, dare I say MOTD. And I know it's not it's core audience but a fair amount of young watch strictly.

It seems every channel is chasing for younger viewers so it's nice to have a beacon of proper telly for us old codgers!

Ken

tks!

K

I'm off to lunch, all questions/requests will have to wait an hour

*lets see how bare HMV Oxford St is today*

Here's a really pointless fact from BARB. the second week of January this year BBC One had an average audience share of 20.9%. That is the highest since 2008 where they had a 21.1% share for the second week of January.

I'm snowed in and my boss phone me up personally telling me not to come in! I am bored as you can see.

Ken

A mistake, naturally. I forgot about Midwife returning despite commenting in the same post!

Still forever stunned by Countryfile's ratings though

Does anyone have access to the BBC HD figures beyond the top10 for last week? The BARB official table is dominated by Stargazing and Polar Bears and I wondered if anyone has figures for Borgen...

TIA

K

Jeremy Piven isn't a particularly big name in the UK though (he's not really that big a name in the US either) so I'm not sure his presence on the show is really that big a deal from a British perspective. And presumably he opted to do Mr Selfridge rather than a US project because he liked the script. Certainly it wouldn't have been the money that attracted him. He could have earned substantially more doing a US series even if it only lasts one season. Although to be honest people haven't exactly been beating down his door since Entourage ended.

On the subject of the Downton comparison I'm not sure that's a fair comparison to make.

Firstly I think you can probably argue that if you remove The X Factor lead-in Downton probably would have launched at a similar level to Mr Selfridge. In fact it may very well have been lower given that I suspect there was some 'Downton effect' on Selfridge's figures. Secondly if ITV had been looking to mirror Downton's success I'm not convinced Selfridge would have launched in January with a Dancing on Ice lead-in. Certainly they were hoping it would perform well but they're not putting a show in this slot and expecting it to hit anything like the highs of Downton. Thirdly whilst Mr Selfridge has received a lot of promotion from ITV it pales into insignificance when you consider the level of promotion and media interest that surrounded the debut of Downton Abbey. That was a much bigger deal.


A more level headed approach? They promoted it repeatedly during the Olympics despite the fact that it wasn't starting for months afterwards and in truth I suspect had similar big new Sunday night drama expectations as Mr Selfridge. If one is under performing then so is the other one. The truth is that they're both doing fine. Neither is looking like a major breakout hit but they're both holding their own in a competitive slot and neither BBC1 nor ITV can ask for much more than that. Of course that week-on-week drop for Mr Selfridge is worrying but we'll see what happens next week...


The question for Sky will be whether its making up its year-on-year drops with timeshift viewing. Plus just giving a quick glance to the Sky schedules they seem to get an insane amount of use out of the show across Sky1 and 2 through repeats and Got To Dance: Uncut (whatever the hell that is). I suspect its far too useful to them in that regard to get rid of it.

On a Sky1 note I see Stella consolidated to 1.3 (including +1). Not bad at all.

I dont think its fair to say that the Olympics adverts, were specifically promoting Ripper Street, they were promoting alot of show, dont get me wrong it was nice they could move back in time, going from a the Games to Whitechapel, but that was it.

As for Downton, true it had the X-Factor lead in, but so have many shows, the vast majority of them have not been as big as Downton, a fair few of them lost out to The Xtra Factor, a good lead in, is only worth it for the first two or three episodes, after that the show will flop, no matter what the lead in.

I thought Pivens casting was very impressive and a good get for ITV, a sign Mr Selfridge may after all have been exactly what ITV wanted it to be. Seems I was wrong.

Then again I was wrong about Splash, so what do I know?

Interesting! I think it could be BBC One's best January in many years. It's now got Call the Midwife, snow, and all the hits that have already begun, which don't appear to be dropping off at all.

Well when they promoted it during the Olympics they didn't know that it was gonna launch in 2013 because they swapped it with The Paradise didn't they? Which would have had a Sunday Slot and Ripper Street would have been on when The Paradise was.

You can think its not fair all you want but there were a hell of lot of Ripper Street promos aired during the Olympics.

Meanwhile I agree with you on Piven. I thought he was a good piece of casting and from the little I've seen of Mr Selfridge I still think that. He doesn't appear to have gone down particularly well with others though which is a shame. But as good a piece of casting as he was I don't think you can say that he was a big name signing from a UK perspective. I suspect the bigger signing from a British perspective particularly for the ITV audience might very well have been Katherine Kelly.

When it comes to The X Factor lead-in I don't think that's propped Downton up but I certainly think it was one of a number of factors that helped Downton to launch much stronger than any other drama ITV is going to launch. I don't think its particularly fair to hold up Downton's success as a marker for any show on ITV. Its like saying Ripper Street is doing badly because it isn't matching the performance of Sherlock or Call the Midwife. Undoubtedly ITV would have loved Mr Selfridge to be as big as Downton but realistically that was never going to happen.

Miranda: 8,823
MBB: 9.486

Agreed, so it could be argued that the ratings of ITV programmes don't matter - except of course to the extent that if more people watch the programmes then it's highly likely more people will watch the ads.

But then we could also say that the ratings of BBC programmes don't matter either. The BBC's income (exc Worldwide) is dependent upon the number of homes owning a TV and watching live TV, the LF as set by the Government and the LF evasion rate.

I guess it ultimately comes down to the definition of "matter". Different things are of interest and so "matter" to different people.

I suspect 99.9% of readers of this thread are just interested in how TV programmes rate. The financial implications are of almost no interest - hence when the likes of ITV announce their financial results (ie what does actually really matter to them) there is very, very little interest in them on here.

And of course this is called the "Ratings Thread" after all!

And at the races once more for those couple of hours of weekday daytime where they weren't previously.

God damn! Mrs Brown's Boys is a timeshifting titan!

BIB, I agree, which is why the overnights should really be irrelevant for most on this thread and the big discussions should be about the officials (which have the ad breaks stripped out).

K

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that MBB reminds them of the spoof sitcom When The Whistle Blows, which featured in Extras?

It's hard to say which is better (or worse).

If Gervais turned When The Whistle Blows into a series instead of Extras he would have had a bigger hit. I thought Extras was awful until they gave Stephen Merchant more to do in the second series. Now HE was funny.

These last few weeks prove that a terrestrial channel can still pull in large numbers of people. ITV now need to improve because there audience share is looking really small even with HD and is your mad +1.

Not a bad start to the year. It's just sad about Saturday nights!

Having said that the first episode of this series of in it to win it was the highest rated since February 2010. So it is still a good steady performer.

Ken

Rather gutted by the Selfridge rating to be honest, it's such a strong show, deserves better! In my opinion I prefer it to Downton!