What negative spin did I use there? (Beyond Ripper Street which was more about highlighting a general point that actually 9 million range dramas really is an unfair standard to be aiming for).

It's just your comments like "Call The Midwife didn't achieve high figures on Christmas so blah blah blah!"

Did you see the consolidated figures? They were huge!

You suggest Call The Midwife was only a hit because of a "stale ITV schedule". Call The Midwife was a hit because it's damn good. ITV's Sunday schedule is what it is and still gets a good audience. You just seem to be looking for negativity in good performances when infact you fail to see the obvious.

I doubt the NTA's would do that to CBB. IIRC it hardly dented it last year.

WOW @ Speidi getting kinky under the influence of Booze!

CBB to get between 2.5 and 3.5 tonight guys. Re-evaluated estimate.

Some parts of this January have done well.

Good
[LIST][*]The Undateables (Big success)[*]Location, Location Location (Not big in 16-34, but is doing amazngly well)[*]The Hotel (All episodes above 2m, compared to 2012)[/LIST]
Also; Rising Hollyoaks; Rising Simpsons; Good rating films

Bad
[LIST][*]The Restoration Man (Below 2m, compared to over 2m last year).[*]One Born Every Minute (still does well, but down quite a bit on last year).[/LIST]
Also; Deal or No Deal is down by over 0.5m; No Shamless; No Million Pound Drop; Falling Daytime schedule.

It's been mixed. Not overall great. Share for the first two weeks has been flat at 5.8% for both weeks.

NTAs: It's a dead heat!

7 BBC: Frozen Planet, QI, Colin Morgan (Merlin), Miranda Hart (Call the Midwife), David Witts (EastEnders), Mrs Brown's Boys, Strictly Come Dancing,
7 ITV: I'm a Celeb, This Morning, Alan Halsall (Coronation Street), Ant & Dec, Paul O'Grady For the Love of Dogs, Downton Abbey, Coronation Street

Special Recognition: Joanna Lumley; Landmark Award: London 2012

Particularly happy for SCD which really deserved to beat the rest this year.
They might as well ban Ant and Dec who should have a category of their own anyway as they are the only ones in it.
Apparently Benedict and Martin werent too happy that Sherlock missed out (I didnt catch that moment), but they might as well get used to it, its like Life on Mars missed out-just not popular enough in the way needed at the NTA's.

Hollyoaks yes, The Simpsons I'm not so sure is actually rising, and the films aren't exactly enticing that many in.....

Frankie and Tricia out of CBB. Who do you guys want to win?

I think Claire deserves to win.

I'm not sure what they can do about the entertainment presenter award beyond renaming it "The Ant & Dec Entertainment Presenter Award" and taking them out of the running! Although if that was going to happen I'd have thought it would have been this year seeing as they picked up their tenth consecutive prize last year.

I'm sure they said tonight it was their 12th consecutive win this year......

What the devil did O'Grady's Dogs win an ITV TV Award for then?

Best show on ITV featuring Paul O'Grady and dogs?

Please tell me it wasn't Best Documentary Series of 2012!


Creek floundered on its last outing at Easter.

I'd hold it back for Boxing Day.

After the shambles of Strictly winning over BGT, anything's possible Robbie...

It wasn't best documentary so your latest anti-ITV rant isn't going to get out of first gear on this occasion., it was something like best popular factual, other shows nominated included Great British bake off and Top Gear I think.

It beat Top Gear, The Apprentice and, more shockingly, Great British Bake Off in the 'Factual Entertainment' category.

And here was me accusing the show of being too predictable beforehand. How on earth did GBBO not win?!

certainly some interesting choices (looking at the DS article)

Factual Entertainment - PoG Dogs, and now Great British Bake Off? really?

Drama - Downton Abbey, fair enough, it was that or Sherlock, Doctor Who wasnt that strong last year, and Merlin isnt really going to win Best Drama.

Drama Performance: Male - Merlin is a surprise win here, Sherlock seems the clear winner, guess the fact its Merlins final season swung it.

Daytime - I would think The Chase of those 4 listed.

So really the only obviously odd one here is Factual Entertainment, which really should have gone to GBBO

Yes, its noticeable how Who has lost the almost frenzied hero worship that existed when David Tennant was in the role. I seem to remember some almost rock star audience responses to Tennants appearances at awards ceremonies, and he promoted the show really well imo.However good Matt Smith is, he does not quite have the same charisma.

Although C4 has had their fair share of bad rated programmes in the first few weeks of this year (as you've mentioned), it's worth noting that according to year-to-date overnight rating shares, Channel 4 has done quite well early on in 2013:

In terms of All Day Shares, individuals has fallen -2.1% from 6.51% in the first 22 days of 2012 to 6.37% for the first 22 days of this year. But key demos such as 16-34s is up +3.3% (8.62% to 8.90%) as well as ABC1 Adults being up +7.3% (6.29% to 6.75%).

Primetime performance has been more impressive for C4: individuals is up +4.2% y-o-y (6.64% to 6.92%), 16-34s is up +4.6% (9.49% to 9.93%) and ABC1 Adults is up an even better +11.0% (6.91% to 7.67%).

C4 is up the most in peak time out of all the terrestrial channels. As ad space on the channel is mostly sold based on 16-34s and ABC1 Adults, they've done even better among those audiences year-on-year. Channel 5 though is the only terrestrial channel up year-on-year among individuals in both all day share (+1.3%) and primetime (+3.0%). Note: BARB consolidated shares will be different and comparisons different once recordings are taken into account.

I don't know that I'm entirely convinced by that line of thinking. Whilst I don't think that its an awe-inspiring show of confidence in Happy Endings by ABC I still don't think the situation is quite as bad as some are suggesting. If ABC were especially unhappy with the show they would have pulled it along with Apartment 23 and stuck an hour of repeats on Tuesday night and burnt both of them off together over the summer. Or they would have just left both in place until March and then never mentioned either again. That they've opted for double episodes of Happy Endings I think suggests that they want to at least try and work out if its worth saving or not. Plus with 57 episodes (by the end of this season) its in that odd push to syndication or not push to syndication zone and comedies tend to fall into the push to syndication option on that. It'll be whether everyone involved can make that financially viable or not.

I don't know that Happy Endings will actually survive but I don't think the situation is quite as dire as others.


Firstly I did not for one moment suggest that Call the Midwife is a hit purely because of a stale ITV schedule although I do believe that's one of many contributing factors to its huge success. I mentioned the Christmas Day ratings because it helps to demonstrate the point that when opposite serious competition Call the Midwife gets dented just like any other show and helps to strengthen the suggestion that had it launched against stronger competition it wouldn't have launched as well as it did.

Beyond that the overall point of my posts on this subject have been to highlight that these 9 million range dramas aren't a regular occurance and that launching them is a bit like catching lightening in a bottle. There's any number of factors that have to play into any given shows favour not to mention just pure blind luck. This idea that it should be the bench mark of achievement for any drama department, let alone ITV drama, to be launching shows on that scale in unfair and unrealistic.

It's a bit like Terry Wogan winning one category every year for a decade or more at some TV awards ceremony in the 1970s/1980s. I can't remember what the awards were called. TV Times Awards, possibly.

Back to the NTAs, and it's no surprise so many of the winners were shows the Radio Times (one of the places where the voting details were printed) raves about. Looking at the winners' list BB Addict posted, probably only Mrs Brown's Boys, EastEnders, This Morning and possibly Dogs aren't Radio Times favourites.

I was only joking. As if the National ITV Awards would have a best documentary category!

Mystifying that Dogs was the pick of those candidates. But then if the winners are voted for by core ITV demographic viewers...

Not all that mystifying. Top Gear and Apprentice probably split the vote, and GBBO and Dogs actually had pretty similar ratings on the whole, with only the final of Bake Off doing significantly better, so it was always going to be fairly close at least.

Originally posted by Score in the old thread:

A few days late but thanks for posting these numbers. Looking like one of ITV2's biggest hits in quite a while - and I don't recall it having much promotion? I just stumbled upon a midweek repeat.

I also read in Broadcast that Fake Reaction, rating under 300k on Thursdays, posted its series high of over 400k for the Saturday night repeat.

First two ITV2 shows I've really liked in recent years, Celebrity Juice is the only thing I've watched regularly up to now.

Disagree. GBBO is much loved and surely more innovative than Love of Dogs. It should have been a cakewalk for the BBC2 show. Ha - see what I did there - cakewalk.

Yeah, I'll get my coat about now.

Happy Endings is produced by Sony and they usually cut their fee for shows to get them into syndication, they did with Til Death despite its awful ratings and FOX pulling it and they did it with Rules of Engagement although that's co-produced with CBS and also Community. Happy Endings needs 22-23 episode so they can sell 79-80 episodes for syndication.