Dancc,

FYI SSN is now reporting that Sir Alex is REFUSING TO SPEAK TO THE PRESS AFTER THE GAME.

I think you need to withdraw your previous comments please

As long as it airs before 11pm it doesn't matter. I think that rule gets relaxed at the weekends, hence the short lived News at 11 when they brought back News at 10 in the first place, but I'm not sure of that.

Whatever. You can't possibly think he's an asset to the ITV coverage. He's beyond awful. See also this excellent blog post regarding some of his clangers in a match a couple of weeks ago:

http://hereisthecity.com/2013/02/20/...-his-itv-post/

I was reporting it too!

When you stop posting factually incorrect statements maybe we can discuss?

I don't think there is any formal requirement; however I believe Ofcom/ITC got tetchy when the move to 23:00 resulted in drastically lower ratings, and leant on ITV to change it back. Steve Williams will know.

As Dancc said, they delayed NAT by 15 minutes for a repeated Christmas special of Benidorm on Friday 4 January this year. On Friday 7 December 2012 they also put the news back to 22:30 for the sake of a 90-minute documentary marking 100 years of the Royal Variety Performance, as Steve has mentioned. They also delayed it for 30 minutes for two Fridays during I'm a Celebrity. ITV only shoot themselves in the foot by mucking about with the scheduling as often as they do.

Factually incorrect? I was merely expressing my disappointment at the lack of post-match comment from one of the teams involved, a pretty basic component to any football coverage.

Don't blame him - these post match interviews are pointless as the law of freedom of speech doesn't seem to apply to football and if managers answer questions put to them truthfully they find themselves fined. It's probably in Fergie's best interests too to leave the closing words to Mourinho - "the best team lost".

that was the newspaper back pages sorted

Not that pointless.

Was it someone who wrote using a lot of capital letters?

You seem in bad humour tonight, George. I can't think why..

Last time an all foreign champions league final was on Itv, it got only 3million and boosted BBC ratings. So good news for Dr who and The voice audition show that night.

Also fantastic news about BBC2 showing the dead rubber rugby match. Pointless should get over 5million and prevent Ant and Dec from getting an easy ride.

Best of luck to member-of-this-parish Ian Hyland who has joined a proper paper (The Mirror) for his first TV column today.

Hugely enjoyed Broadchurch, that's my next 7 Monday nights sorted. A friend of mine from West Dorset insists though they could have found at least ONE member of the cast with the right accent! The ending (clips of lots of the characters in their own bubble) suggested that the writer has been watching The Killing's endings a lot.

Disappointed if it's true that The Lady Vanishes (the Keeley Hawes drama that was due on at Christmas) is now to be shown on March 17th. That's St Patrick's Night, the pub calls.

Thanks Neil for the breakdown- just out of curiosity- do you have sunday's breakdown for call the midwife and mr selfridge and also the previous week's breakdown for both dramas plus ripper street. Thank you so much.

I was looking at the Europa League scores on BBC Text the other week, and they didn't even have any aggregate scores!

Reminds me of a scene in As Time Goes By:

Lionel: What was the England score?
Jean: It was either 2-2 or 4-2.

I posted Sunday's CTM and Mr S breakdowns here.

Breakdowns for Sunday 24 February:

CTM (timeslot: 19:59-20:58, tape-checked to 20:00-21:00)
Ripper Street (timeslot: 21:00-21:59, tape-checked to 21:00-22:00)Mr S (timeslot: 21:00-21:59, tape-checked to 21:00-22:00, exc/inc +1)

If there's another poor performance next season and England drop a real clanger, not to mention smaller teams in the FA Cup, might ITV be tempted to dump football? I really think this sport is best left to the BBC and Sky and ITV to concentrate on other sports and entertainment.
I know the ITV hardcore will hate this statement, but would you sooner spend £ 50 million a year on nabbing a prime contract like The Six Nations, which is ABC1 central, and having plenty of spare cash to bolster ther programming, or promote a sport that is entering a period of decline.

Beat The Pack is BBC's in-house entry to the afternoon/evening gameshow wars.

ITVS/12 Yard: The Chase, Eggheads, Perfection, COuntdown
Endemol: Pointless, Deal or No Deal, Common Denominator

RDF/Zodiak: Tipping Point
BBC: Beat The Pack
Objective/All3Media: Face The Clock
Gogglebox (Sony): Breakaway

12 Yard really are the market leaders in this stuff just now. They do In It To Win It and Who Dares Wins for primetime as well. The same Endemol team behind those shows makes Million Pound Drop (and the ill fated Bank Job).

Another Sony company, Victory Television (Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?) are to launch a new teatime format on Channel 4 with Davina McCall hosting called Five Minutes To A Fortune.

Channel 5 haven't got into it yet but I wonder if they might consider the right format for their evening schedule which desperately needs something decent to fill some hours at low cost.

Don't be stupid - ITV aren't going to be dropping football willingly anytime soon. Yes, ratings will be below par for the next couple of rounds due to no British involvement, although relatively speaking 2.5-3m isn't as bad now as it was a few years ago. ITV obviously see it as increasingly important actually considering they've promoted the Europa Cup games to ITV consistently this year, and I'm sure what ITV earns tonight will be an acceptable pay off for the money lost in later rounds.

ITV aren't going to stop covering football or sport in general just because a few snobs can't see beyond the BBC and Sky.

As I've pointed out, Samuel, should this happen again next season, then Itv will really wonder if paying well over the odds for quarter of a tournament is worth it? No one, except a football anorak, would really want to watch two teams unless they came from Spain in the final. Also when a season ticket holder of 30 years told me last week, he's sold his ticket and others say they've drifted away, it makes you wonder now if football is going into a slump.

Surely My Little Princess can't survive in that slot for long. Completely the wrong slot for it - 8pm would have been better - and from the preview of next week it seems they'll use exactly the same challenges as Week 1, with mainly the same contestants, so little point in watching.

E4 have a lot to thank Big Bang Theory and it's comedy imports for at the moment as to be honest without them it's rather lacking at the moment - Revenge is their only US drama on air at the moment while original shows seem thin on the ground and aren't exactly the break out hits of their predecessors.

Thank you for the info. As for Channel 5, they could bring back 100%, the ultimate low-budget gameshow.I always enjoyed that, even the late-night sex-themed editions

So both maydays are in top 5 on iplayer, not all bad then

Not one that I recall... and I think I'd remember a sex themed gameshow!

If they could find one or two shows that could deliver ~1m at 7pm then they'd be sorted. The beauty of it is that even a moderately expensive set becomes really, really cheap when you divide the cost of it across 100 hours a year! The risk of course is finding that hit in the first place, especially for a timeslot and genre where people just don't think of Channel 5.

Calm down, dear....


Calm down, dear...


Calm down, dear...



Sorry George. You can at least get us all back in the morning by ramming that 12m+ peak down our throats!

For all those saying an all Spanish final will attract the viewers, Barcelona are under a very real threat of going out themselves. My money's on Real Madrid v Bayern Munich unless the Barca manager makes a quick recovery.

And I doubt the football will manage much more than 6.5m, let alone record 12m peaks etc. We'll see though.