I think I meant 'could be the biggest hit of the year'. In my opinion, BGT has more chance of nearing it's 2009 peak year than XF.

Interestingly, Push the Button and Red or Black started with 6m, and the latest series of Saturday Night Takeaway started with 7m. It'd be interesting to see if it does maintain it's audience.

Re: Richard Hammond .. has anyone sold out as much as this guy? Went from a credible presenter to an absolute goon reading out lame scripts and attempting badly written jokes. Thought he was better than this but clearly money talks and he's cashed in his credibility.

Richard Holloway seemed pretty pissed off about X Factor's scheduling this year in a recent interview with Media Guardian. He said that his ideal start time would be 7pm and that it should never be on any later than 9.30pm. He's probably right in an ideal world, but unfortunately for him Strictly is in the way. It doesn't help that in the last couple of years Strictly's position has strengthened whereas XF's has weakened significantly. Strictly has pushed a bit later in recent years too - I remember back in 2006-08 Strictly would normally run no later than 7.30pm so they could fit in Merlin/Robin Hood, a full lottery quiz and Casualty. With Merlin gone we might well see the return of the lottery quiz next year as there doesn't seem to be a new drama lined up for Saturday nights next Autumn (although I suppose they'll have a few episodes of Doctor Who but I can't see there being many) but even so Strictly won't move any earlier so unless XF moves completely they're stuck with it.

Running Take Me Out before it didn't seem to work that well as TMO lost quite a lot of its normal audience. I'm not sure what they'll do next year although what won't help is that as XF gets weaker, it gets harder for the shows around it. If Saturday Night Takeaway goes well this Spring I expect we'll see it again in the Autumn but it'll probably take Red or Black's slot alongside the auditions. TMO didn't do particularly well but I can't think of anything they've got that'd do any better against Strictly. All Star Family Fortunes has flopped against Strictly in the past if I remember correctly as they have quite a large audience overlap. The Cube would be a bust and I can't imagine Surprise Surprise, All Star Mr & Mrs or Celebrity Chase doing much either, and they would skew significantly older than TMO. They might just have to stick with TMO for another year.

They're launching a few new shows over the next couple of months though. Obviously there's Splash which really could land anywhere but as well as that there's Prize Island which I think is airing alongside Takeaway in February/March. That sounds fairly promising actually. It could be quite fun and they're going with different presenters to the usual Saturday night ITV crowd (Alexander Armstrong & Emma Willis). I'd expect decent numbers for that. I'm somewhat less confident about My Man Can (particularly as I have a feeling it could end up against The Voice) but I suppose it might capture a similar crowd to Take Me Out. They're reviving Catchphrase with Stephen Mulhern hosting for the Spring too. The Catchphrase brand should draw a few in but Mulhern's ITV1 primetime track record isn't great. Think that might land on Sundays in March/April.

at ITV. Sackable bunch of ratings.

Dire, but what did you expect with a line up like last night's?

Well, it wasn't really rotten luck. ITV opted for a show known to skew young against a smash-hit series that skews old. (In raw numbers, Strictly attracts a large 16-34 audience but it still remains about 1m or so behind X Factor and I'm A Celebrity). It was a reasonable scheduling decision.

We wait to see how TMO fares in the winter against In It To Win It and Casualty

I think it should go back to 4.5 million as it's up against a fairly heavy drama. TMO is quite a good show.

BGT won't hit 19 million again. If you ask me, this series was as great as your going to get for BGT bar a potential few hundred thousand increase or decrease.

True but it's on ITV, who's last light entertainment hit was Britain's Got Talent which will air it's seventh series in 2013. No one appears willing, arguably for good reason, to give light entertainment a chance on the channel and Splash! has little in way of support around it.

If it was on BBC One and tagged on to Sport Relief I think it would do fine but it seems cast adrift where it is. If I was ITV I would have aired it over the summer and hoped.


If only. I'm starting to think Peter Fincham needs to go; although ITV1 has improved from the dire days of mid 2000s it's still nowhere near the quality of BBC One. They don't take enough risks in terms of drama - I just hope their comedies are decent and take off to give them some depth.

Catchphrase is back on Saturdays in February. The Itv entertainment revivals like Family fortunes and Surprise surprise have rated quite well so I think Catchphrase will rate ok too due to the brand recognition.

Agreed. Unless it were to move to Autumn/Winter I can't imagine BGT rating much better than it did this year. That 19 million was a freak rating brought about by the SuBo phenomenon that they won't ever repeat.

To be honest I felt that this year was the first time BGT finally managed to step out of the shadow of SuBo and it was back on top form again. I can see it doing well again next year, but with similar numbers to this year.

I'm surprised ITV1 haven't got down the revival rate more, to be honest. They have some half decent shows on the shelf which would do a better job than the new programming they keep trying out; especially in the dire schedules that they insist on drawing up for them.

David Bergg needs to go too. His schedules are awful. They used to call him the "master of the dark arts" as a nickname because he sits in a dark room on a computer making schedules but hes now more like the "master of getting low ratings".

You never know with shows like this - their ratings are pretty much unpredictable.

I didn't realise Catchphrase was starting that soon. I think it'll do quite well but Mulhern isn't the best choice of host. With it starting then I guess the schedule will go something like:

18:30 - Catchphrase
19:15 - Saturday Night Takeaway
20:30 - Prize Island
21:30 - The Jonathan Ross Show

I think that's too late for something as lightweight and silly as Prize Island but it's probably too late for Catchphrase or Takeaway too and something has to go there.

The first episode has a lead-in from a West Ham v Man United FA Cup game. Although the FA Cup seems to do less well on ITV than it did on the BBC, I would still imagine Saturday's game would pick up a big peak (maybe 7m). Also there's not a lot of post-match time in the programme and they could also promote Splash several times during the show.

I assumed the reason for the last delay for doctor who was because they wanted it for autumn. But I expected it to be then run on into winter.obviously its for financial reasons its gone to spring summer again

That's true; I think ITV need to work to create more buzz, though. At the moment it just feels like another Saturday night disaster for them; they need to give it more of an event feel.

Everything just happened at the right time for the SuBo explosion. It won't ever happen again purely because BGT is heading into its 7th year and isn't showing any particular signs of exploding like that again. In fact I feel the figures become a little more underwhelming as each year passes. It was one of the shows to bring a mass audience back to TV at a time when ratings were in freefall.

I wouldn't quite say the 'glory days' for the show are quite over, and I do think it still has a good few series' left in it. All they need is good acts and a good panel of judges. They already have one box ticked, they just need to get the decent acts for the year. But if any similar show does grow like that again, I think it is most likely to be The Voice (despite how low it went last year) purely based on the fact that its still a new concept to the UK. The novelty has long worn off with the BGT buzzers.

They've done well reviving old shows like Family Fortunes, Mr and Mrs, Surprise, Surprise etc They're probably room to revive a show like The Price is Right or Blankety Blank for Saturday Nights but you'd need the right presenter.

Bit harsh. I'd say commissioning a 10 episode series of Mr Selfridge, an 8 episode series of Broadchurch, which is just one case across 8 episodes, and ditching Wild At Heart are all risks. Mrs Biggs was a risk. Downton Abbey was a risk. Looking at their comedies I'd say Vicious is a risk. It's a bit unfair to say they don't take risks.

I don't think Peter Fincham should go. He's doing a pretty decent job. The Christmas schedules this year have been rubbish but in the grand scheme of things that doesn't mean much. 2013 is a big year for them and if that goes belly-up then I'd say there is maybe a case for getting rid of Fincham and Bergg (and yes some of the scheduling in the last few months has been questionable but largely Bergg still does a good job) but for now they're doing OK overall. I would look into getting rid of Elaine Bedell though, who just seems to be commissioning flop after flop after flop. If none of this year's new entertainment shows work then she needs to go.

No one denied Who series 6 was split in two because of budget/filming overran issues. Well apart from "feeble attempts at spin" put to Ian Hislop when Private Eye ran the story.

As for series 7, who knows. Different producers in charge of getting the thing made now, hopefully they're competent. Hope springs eternal.

Are they? Okay, X Factor dropping this year might have been unexpected, but it definitely was not 'unpredictable' - the signs were there for it to drop.

ITV has improved from the dog days of the noughties, but there is still this obsession with Z list celebrities that makes their programmes tacky. A great format like Family Fortunes, for example, has to be a zeleb show. I'd much rather see a family of five on the minimum wage win £ 50,000.

Maybe unexpected was the word I should have used. But Britain's Got Talent only seemed to have those ratings in 2009 due to everything surrounding SuBo, and went back to normal the next year despite having the highest launch at the time in that year (2010). X Factor probably got the 19m peak in 2009 off the back of BGT, and probably the characters that were put through the live shows on X Factor in 2010 was probably what helped it keep increasing it's ratings, as well as the publicity surrounding the judging panel. Still, X Factor didn't need any hype focusing on one contestant or worldwide interest.