Pointless always wins without +1, and many times with. It's why it is also a solid ranking banker on weekends.

The Chase isn't complicated just slightly annoying.

Frankly that sort of show shouldn't be on any channel at any time. How anybody can watch such programmes and enjoy them I don't know - and it's surprising the access hospitals will give TV crews. You'd think "health and safety" etc. etc. etc. would rule out TV cameras and crews anywhere near an operating theatre.

Motorway Cops may not be inspired viewing but it is a sensible thing to schedule against something that pulls in the figures. It's just a shame that the BBC couldn't be more bold with their scheduling though. What Remains would have been the perfect thing to strip across one week.

I would say the same about Pointless. I find Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman very annoying, especially all the chitter chatter that goes on, but for some reason it is very popular and is creating a good battle with the Chase for the teatime ratings crown.

Just making the point it wins the battle most times, wouldn't want the ratings thread making a mistake about the superior prog

There's a question for those of us who contribute on the Ratings Thread! Just what exactly is The Superior Programme?

I didn't mean to imply that Pointless won't be competitive. Apologies for poor wording on my part.

Both are very strong for their respective channels in that slot and combined they are dominating 5pm but for me The Chase is more impressive given what it did for ITV's slot average. You could argue the same with Pointless but it's not the same as CBBC was obviously a big factor there.

Whilst C4 daytime has fallen away completely following the end of CBBC, ITV's The Chase has gone from strength to strength. It's very much the biggest daytime success story in the past couple of years for me, whilst Pointless is one of many highly effective components in a very successful and reliable BBC daytime schedule.

Pointless and The Chase are generally neck and neck - there isn't really a loser in that battle. Pointless though even despite being run into the ground is along with Doctors one of the few highlights of the BBC daytime schedule. If anything moving BBC2 shows to BBC1 has just highlighted how dire the BBC daytime offering is. Indeed if you look in the dictionary for the definition of "derivative" you'll find the BBC1 daytime schedule printed there.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "derivative" as BBC One is quite innovative.
What shows are you thinking of in the schedule?

BBC One Daytime is more popular than the other channels. "BBC Breakfast" brings in double the audience of its nearest rival. The morning schedule is highly competitive and "Doctors" is one of the few new dramas produced for Daytime on any of the networks. BBC One has also invested in other new drama in the past year such as "Father Brown" which would be otherwise filled with quiz shows and lifestyle programming on the other channels.

I think the complaint that the BBC One schedule is unoriginal is unfair on what they have achieved with less Daytime funding.

Just correcting myself here as I had thought the car crash was next Tuesday's episode so was a bit surprised when it happened tonight. Hopefully it can indeed see some sort of increase tonight then. Be interesting to see whether it boosts Holby City afterwards or if people will flick over to Bake Off.

Yes, they'll steal lots of ad revenue from BBC One. And ITV's ratings won't be affected by the stronger competition.

Be interesting to see if "EastEnders" can compete more strongly after tonight's episode has aired. It rated just below 7 million last night and must surely add on another 5k for tonight's crash scene. I thought Digital Spy Soaps interview with Samantha Womack was an insight into how her return is being handled behind the scenes. I think the producers will secretly hope she also brings some of the lost audience back to programme long term. Her return sounded quite well structured.

Channel change: Reruns of The Mentalist are moving back to 5USA after a near three year stint on 5*, ahead of the upcoming new series on Channel 5.

I rarely see Coronation St. Much of what I know about it is from reading TV magazines, and listening to people in my family who love the show, but even I can see this storyline is a massive misjudgement. The permanent separation of two of the soap's most popular characters, when the actress in question could probably have been tempted back a year or two down the line, is unnecessary.

You can point to really good acting, and well written lines, but those two factors just make the decision all the more stupid. Add in the crass "racism" storyline which is irritating so many fans, and, give it a year or so of poor storylining like this, and that EastEnders/Coronation St gap will shrink quite considerably.

I'm sure The Mentalist did well on 5* but its more compatible with 5USA, I think even The Walking Dead would fare better on 5USA. I've noticed the US imports aside from Dallas have been repeated on 5USA.

I agree, I can't help but feel they promoted the wrong week (although I'm sure next week will get some sort of promotion as well), as this week just feels like a cheap ploy to get viewers with a stunt, whereas next week, going off the spoilers, looks like the great quality character led drama Eastenders used to do so well.

I'm not confident that we'll see too much of a rise this week, which is why I'm going to try to avoid this thread tomorrow, but I'm hoping there will be one next week.

They should replace it with a preachy, full of sanctimony, show castigating bad driving, hosted by a twice-convicted drink driver.

I remember! Although, I think I only saw one edition. From what I can remember, one series aired on Mondays at 7pm in the rather hot summer of 1995.

Hopefully it implies bigger changes to 5* on the way as it's not working in its current format.

Especially if 5Later is going to be doing a similar job, where does that leave 5*? If imports don't work as well on 5* as they do on 5USA, and repeats of C5's output will be covered by 5Later, then 5* will no longer serve a purpose apart from the obvious Home and Away first looks which are not needed as maximising the audience for the 6pm showing should be the priority.

Looking at the growing success of Film4 and even the strong performance relatively speaking of a minor operation like Movie Mix on Freeview, the obvious road to go down would be a film channel, especially as the most popular genre of programming on 5* after soaps (H&A first look) is films.

Multichannel share would grow by at least 10% if they did this, as a film channel from Five would do at least as well as 5*, 5 Later would add ~0.3% as the new home of C5 repeats and 5USA could also improve due to absorbing 5*'s highest rated acquired content and/or having its budget increased through the closure of 5*.

If however things stay as they are then 5* will lose further ground due to losing shows like The Mentalist and offering similar repeats to 5Later, so the benefits from having an extra channel in the family will be lost and overall viewing share will not increase.

Oh, and if anyone wants to know what happened to the adverts during Through the Keyhole, I've found them...

Closing 5* would only leave a handful of shows that wouldnt be in the same demo as 5USA homeless like the comedies and TBH the comedies would easily replace the TV Movies that fill slots on USA.

5Movies could work but I think 5 would need to increase the number of deals it has with film studios. Channel 4 has the biggest output deal for films from the likes of Fox, Summit, Studiocanal, Paramount and Film4 whereas 5 only has Sony, Lionsgate, Entertainment plus older movies from Disney, Fox and WB.

Its surprising 5 never went ahead with The Milkshake channel given how successful the block is. I think they're concentrating their efforts for a Milkshake VoD service.

A few days late with this but the latest season of MasterChef Australia could only muster 1.06m for its winner announcement on Sunday, over a million viewers down on the equivalent episode in the previous series. The main finale night programme meanwhile failed to top a million, registering 921k and only fifth most watched on the day.

What a desperately sad decline that is for a show that previously catapulted the third biggest commercial network over there into the big time with, at its peak, a shade under 4 million viewers watching the finale of its second season in 2010 in the 5 city metro of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth alone. Nationally this episode of the programme scored 5.74m and is right up there with the most popular Australian TV broadcasts on record.

Despite the rapid decline, Ten renewed the show for another series next year last month.

I guess viewers have just got fed up with it, not surprising given its on six night a week plus spinoffs. But the ratings are still acceptable but its no longer the juggernaut it once was. Maybe cutting to 4-5 nights would help slow the decline, maybe even make it weekly.

Even if they didn't expand their film rights, they have enough rights already to run a film channel successfully in my view on all available evidence. Movie Mix get by with a 0.4% share on not a lot of content from Sony and they are a very small operation without a window like C5 to shout about what they are offering.

The endless supply of made-for-TV films they have could fill daytime with no more than 2-3 bigger titles needed per evening to fill 6pm-midnight. Movies on the other two channels could be cut right back to just weekends and weekday afternoons on C5, with 5USA focussing entirely on US series.

It just seems like such a simple way to improve family share. Why ignore the obvious!!

A Granada production I seem to recall. I wondered if it was some sort of tie-in to September Song which I think was also a Granada production - it was almost as if he said "I'll do this straight drama if you let me do another comedy/variety series". Or perhaps Granada just thought "September Song is a hit, people seem to like Abbot after all, let's get him to do another series".

Anyway, it was rubbish as far as I recollect.

And September Song was a bit dull. Apart from Russ's dodgy wig...




Quite right, Steve.

The stuff that belongs on Pick TV is the twenty year old repeats of Motorway Cops and Camera Action, for all we castigate BBC1, at least it is (I think!) showing a new series.

I don't mind Traffic/Motorway Cops to be honest. I find it an interesting watch, it's not the voyeuristic trash ITV used for ratings grabbing purposes with Mr Drink-Driving himself.


I think they should give Alastair a gardening show, as he seems to like turning his hand (well, his steering wheel!) towards a bit of topiary....