WOW I was really wrong about ITV last night
Hard to believe these cheap shows have got more ratings than some drama but Corrie Years is not great.

If you're referring to Alright On The Night, once upon a time its audience share last night would have been its rating.

I was thinking exactly the same!

I'll be interested to see how the MBB double bill repeat does tonight - I'll reckon it'll be about 4m based on word of mouth and there being very little else on the other mainstream channels. Casualty would probably have been good for 5-6m in the same slot given the lack of competition from elsewhere.

Hammond tells the Express he plays the head of the Secret Service. ''I send out my operatives (actors and comedians) who are looking for people to be pranked, wound up or tricked into believing something ridiculous.''

Sounds absolutely bloody horrendous.

Never would have thought BBC News would become the highest of the day.

The Chase really need to show more primetime editions.

Expected more for It'll Be Alright on the Night.

More from yesterday:

BBC Two
16:30 - FILM: The Four Feathers: 1.71m (9.8%)
18:30 - Nature's Weirdest Events: 1.71m (7.8%)
19:30 - Blackadder The Third: 1.84m (8.0%)
20:00 - Racing Legends: 1.74m (7.6%)
21:00 - World's Most Dangerous Roads: 1.83m (8.0%)
22:00 - QI: 1.42m (6.9%)

Channel 4
17:30 - Hollyoaks: 663k (3.7%)
18:00 - Hollyoaks: 786k (3.9%)
18:30 - Channel 4 News: 424k (2.0%)
19:00 - My Big Fat Gypsy Christmas: 1.24m (5.5%)
20:00 - Jamie and Jimmy's Food Fight Club: 1.32m (5.8%)
21:00 - The 50 Funniest Moments of 2012: 1.53m (7.2%)

Channel 5
20:00 - World's Strongest Man 2012: 1.24m (5.4%)
21:00 - The Mentalist: 1.11m (4.8%)

And the +1's for ITV1:

Emmerdale: 207k (0.9%)
Corrie: 237k (1.0%)
YBF: 201k (0.9%)
Corrie Years: 121k (0.5%)
IBAOTN: 341.5k (1.75%)

I think the soaps will be back to normal after Christmas/New Year, People are still being forced to watch them by the look of things

ITV1 struggling for most of primetime, BBC1 doing somewhat better, One Show on Ice tanking though. BBC2 nice and steady all evening......C4 picking up a decent rating from 9:00 onwards.

Looking at tonight, BBC1 & ITV1 will struggle to top 4m, I can see Secret Fortune winning the night, Mrs Brown ought outrate Love Actually.......

Sounds bad and looks bad. That means it'll probably be a hit.

I suspect Superstars will top 6m...

Beadles about used to be a big hit. I think richard hammonds show could also become a success.

Sorry to drag this up pages after you mentioned it but the thread has been moving fast.

It's so odd that in the US everything is 22 episodes and we get 6 or it's a soap which is loads.

I think HBO get it right with around 10 episodes to a season. Take something like The Hour on BBC 2 that would have worked well with 10 episodes. Silk on BBC 1 could have easily done 10 episodes as well. The Scandi Dramas usually come in at 10 episodes as well but it's always 6.

To be fair both Hunted and Ripper Street are 8 episodes although I imagine Danny Cohen will be reluctant to give 8 episode commissions after Hunted did poorly. Although The Town on ITV managed a similar ratings drop over three episodes so it shows it's about the quality of the drama.

I always thought some of Beadle's pranks had a cruel edge about them, Hammond says his show doesn't. I remember one Beadle in which they accused a woman of stealing money from her employer. She was in tears when ''PC Beadle'' turned up, very funny.

Not if it's on CBeebies lol

Impressive ratings for Pointless, which is essentially a daytime gameshow which justifies it's move from BBC2.

The MBB repeats tonight are a bit lazy.

Awful looking TV on the main 5 tonight

They did that with The Weakest Link and killed it.

Didn't realise ability to eat kanagaroo testicles was important in selecting an Ice skating judge. The Pussycat Dolls though seem to be reinventing themselves as talent show judges and she should fill the role as a "performance" judge well enough. Makes sense to to allow Karen back on the panel rather than have her sitting at the side doing nothing (I'm sure if it wasn't for Chris Dean she'd be long gone!) - though four judges obviously means we could have a deadlock situation, so I guess they'll either go Strictly style and give Robin the casting vote or more likely rely on the public vote and have some ice based pun for their own version of Deadlock.


I do think we're very much in the minority with such short runs - as you say most Scandinavian dramas and indeed other imports seem to come in with at least 10 episodes, while the Aussie standard is around the 10-13 mark too, though they do have specific mini-series as well.

If it flops eight episodes is surely not much more of a burden than six episodes - I've always kind of felt that series should be commissioned for 8 episodes, with a guarantee that the first 4 will run in the original slot before being moved if it's under performing. A longer run surely also would help pick up viewers later in the run - miss the first couple of episodes of a six part series and it's not worth tuning in for the remaining four really, but miss the first couple of an 8-10 part series and with more episodes remaining it's probably worth giving it a chance and catching up if necessary.

It's also about hooking people into the schedule too - Downton at the moment is pretty much the definition of Sunday night drama even though it only airs eight weeks of the year, but it now owns the slot for ITV in the autumn, while elsewhere in the schedule they just throw shows around and see what fits, rather than having returning series in the same slot at the same point each year for more than six weeks at a time - and then trying out similar but new shows in the same slots at other points of the year.

I dont think the schedules after Boxing Day have been good at all, it looks like the money ran out half way through.Havent viewed The Secret of Crickley hall yet but I would have run that this week.

Even if they've got nothing new I don't see why the BBC and ITV don't run repeats of some of their one-off or short run dramas in the week after Christmas. If they pick shows wisely that shouldn't be an issue.

Even a regular episode of Casualty tonight would have looked better than two repeats of the big hit of Christmas that people have already watched in their millions.

It looks like if BBC bosses gave casualty two weeks off when commissioning decisions were made months ago they had something planned for tonight - then decided not to bother.

According to Radio Times tonight's Secret Fortune is actually a left-over from the series which ended in October.

In it to Win It is back next week. As for Mrs Brown - I suspect regardless of the impressive ratings so far that'll still get a good 4m or so tonight, or at the very least top everything that airs on ITV1 today (though I'd like to see the CITV doc do well, but it won't!). Superstars is a bit of a wildcard - could be anything from 4m to 8m really.

Do you mind? CBeebies has standards!