A great episode of Call The Midwife tonight, should see a series high. I think Shetland should hit 6m easily, especially with the CTM lead in. With the 25th Anniversary Countryfile and 6 nations, the BBC should have done very very well today.

In other news for those wondering who would be presenting Comic Relief this might help

Not forgetting TV Hell, which would probably do even better now as dross like the new Crossroads, a whole slate of reality shows, Don't Scare The Hare, Red or Black and Family Affairs could be royally destroyed on air. I'd love to present the bit where the worst show of the last 20 years is revealed: from a list of three I'd pick Don't Scare the Hare, Celebrity Wrestling and the winner would be, errr, something about celebrities trying to pull each other on Fiji.

Always loved Comic Relief but it seemed to be stuck in a bit of rutt presenter wise lately, though I guess that also just highlights the lack of new presenting talent coming through. I just hope there is more live action this year - last time around it relied far too much on pre-recorded sketches and rather than being a night where anything could happen it felt like a night where everything was pre-planned to within an inch of it's life.

Comic Relief night is...

7:00 Lenny Henry, Dermot O'Leary and Claudia Winkleman
8:00 Michael McIntyre and Rob Brydon
9:30 John Bishop and Davina McCall
10:30 Jonathan Ross and Jack Whitehall (on BBC2)
11:05 Jonathan Ross and Jack Whitehall
11:45 Alan Carr and David Walliams
12:45 Russell Brand
1:30-2:50 Nick Grimshaw (recorded clips show)

Not sure what the drama gains from such secrecy. Never heard of any actor promoting a new drama by telling the viewers how it ends. Never hear of an episode of Lewis or New Tricks or Midsomer Murders where we hear of the ending beforehand.

I dunno, surely showing the first episode works as a novelty. I do recall the last time they showed that in primetime my mum specifically watched it because it was the first one ever. In a dead slot with an awkward one week gap that was as good a filler as anything.


As mentioned, it's not the last show from TVC and they didn't say it was. The news is still there for another week and the studios are fully booked until the end of March, it seems. Comic Relief will be the last live light entertainment show, I think, the news will probably be the last live thing per se and then a load of other pre-recorded shows are still to come.


I can't believe Whovians still think the BBC don't care about Doctor Who. What other dramas on TV get thirteen episodes a year every year. None. It used to be on thirteen weeks a year because every drama used to be like that. There were no episodes of Doc Martin last year. Do ITV now care about that? No, it's because the cast and crew have other commitments and don't want to flog it to death, Do I want 26 mediocre Who episodes for the sake of it? No, I want as many high quality episodes as they think they can produce without them being dashed off in five minutes, Quality, not quantity!


Yeah, far better we have ITV harking back to people winning Olympic gold thirty years ago.


The Let's Dance overrun was planned in advance, though, by the middle of the week all of the TV guides (including the Virgin EPG one, which is always the last to change) had Let's Dance ending at 8.30 (and the BBC3 repeat was always billed as ninety minutes long) and everything else five minutes later (and MOTD always starts a few minutes late as the news is slightly longer than billed). Cut out and keep this post and reuse it when the Christmas Day schedules come out to highlight supposed BBC1 dirty tricks.


I remember the Mirror reporting RISE would be axed a montha fter it started (I know it was axed, but two years later), There is nothing ITV can show at breakfast time that would rate better or be cheaper than Daybreak. I reckon the repeat fees for other shows would be too much for the slot. Daybreak must cost absolutely next to nothing to make and if they're still making money from sponsorship and advertising, which they are, it'll just continue.


Not that I'm watching it but there seems to be some sort of issue with the One Show repeats as for the last few days apparently it hasn't been the previous night's One Show but the compilations from last summer. I dunno if that's because there's some sort of issue with repeating them and because they've rated so badly they're seeing if the clip shows would do any better.


The FA don't decide the kick-off times of the FA Cup matches, the broadcasters do. Presumably 4.30 was the latest they could do it to get it off air before Dancing On Ice which they wanted to start at seven. Same as how in the last round they kicked off at 3.55 to get it over for Dancing On Ice at 6.15.


The commentators specifically said the pictures were from RTE when they were explaining why they weren't able to call up instant replays.

I don't know why some people think that a particularly good episode of a weekly series is going to automatically lead to higher ratings. People don't know beforehand how good or bad an episode is going to be.

A very interesting night ratings-wise tonight, though, with the DOI Final and season finales of Midwife and Top Gear all on at the same time.

No , you must blame my ears if anything. But thanks for making things clear again.

Well Mayday did so its very possible. Very slow though, and never let anyone be in any doubt that its difficult to get a phone signal in Shetland as it felt like half the airtime was people shuffling about trying to get one.

For the most part I agree: a good episode is more likely to boost future episodes instead, but I can see two ways in which an episode generally well received could rate better than one considered by viewers to be mediocre:

1. drop-off during the episode could be less than otherwise, boosting the average; and
2. in this age of Twitter, word can spread more quickly about a particularly good episode, inducing more people to tune in.

What is the thinking behind running Comic Relief through to 22:30 on BBC One, delaying the news and forcing Newsnight back to 23:10? The traditional hop across to BBC Two at 22:00 and back again after the BBC One news worked well enough, I thought.

It's all to do with donations - they reckon that schedule will keep donations coming in higher for longer. It was the plan last time around to but on the night the news was moved back to 10pm due to the Tsunami in Japan. I wouldn't be surprised if something similar happens should the Pope be elected on Friday.

Personally I doubt it would make much difference - I'd imagine anyone who is going to turn off at 10pm and donate would have donated by then anyway, although that said I wouldn't see the harm in dropping the regional news on Comic Relief and Children in Need nights and keeping everything on BBC1, with the Ten o'clock News moving to BBC2.

I see, thank you. Your idea makes sense, as the aim should be to keep the momentum going as long as possible, so people don't think about going to bed, which is habit for many people straight after the news.

Don't know whether I want to know tonight's ratings, on one hand I hope that Being Human at least ends on a series high, even if it's bound to be far from the 1m+ of the second and third series, and I want to see whether it does, but on the other, doing so will meaning having to see and be pissed at how many more watched that shit Strictly rip-off on ITV.

I'm not sure why Dancing on Ice is called a Strictly rip off when the discipline is completely different; this isn't a dig at you, I've seen it posted a few times.

Because that's exactly what it is, if Strictly didn't exist, DOI would have never existed, it was created as ITV's answer to it and inspired directly by Strictly Ice Dancing.

The final part, to be fair, is not true. DOI was in development before that special (hardly anyone, including much of the senior team at ITV, thought the show would work).

But there is obviously a link between the two. However, you could easily argue that Strictly was brought about by the talent show revivals in the early 00's... particularly the shiny floor Pop Idol format, plus the emergence of "celeb-reality".

Most TV shows exist because something kind of like it was a hit just before and commissioners sent out a brief saying "we want a show that's like "x" meets "y" with a new twist". That's just TV.

As C14E said, Dancing on Ice was actually commissioned before Strictly Ice Dancing (hence the latter was never made into a series) so it wasn't off the back that it was drawn up.

Strictly itself is just a bastardised version of Come Dancing; practically everything on television can be traced back to another programme. There is hardly anything original left because, over the years, everything has been done.

The kick-off times have to be approved by the local police and there have been occasions where the police have vetoed plans for evening kick-offs.

Sam Hodges ‏@Sam_Hodges
#CalltheMidwife (8.6m) & #Countryfile (7.2m) were yesterday's highest rating shows. New drama #Shetland won its slot with 6.4m #BBC1
9:36 a.m. - Mar 11, 2013

Call The Midwife's series average is up but so far it in the finals it hasn't matched its highest rating from series 1 of 11.41m and hasn't cleared 11m.

You would be suprised, lots of the people of the CSi thread here mention they have just watched Casualty.

Any ratings from Crufts?
Thanks

No but its had 2 extra eps with every ep over 10m so I would think that more than makes up not going over 11m.

Of course that wrecks my theory that Miranda Hart on her own adds 600k since its back down to its customery 8.6m.