The Chase still at a relatively low level. Don't know what's going on there.


Solid for both, as always.


Higher share than normal for Doctors by the looks of it. Celebrity Masterchef did well. I didn't expect Big Star's Little Star to actually end up beating Whitechapel, which itself is a pretty underwhelming figure.


Previous series launches:

2009: 8.13m (29.8%) - 27.3m watching TV in the 9pm hour
2010: 5.62m (22.8%) - 23.8m watching TV in the 9pm hour
2012: 6.21m (24.8%) (+1: 383k/2.1%) - 25m watching TV in the 9pm hour

The share suggests that about 21.6m were watching TV in the 9pm hour last night which may have had an impact.

And it didn't launch with 11m, it had an official figure of 9.26m.

11m?! Talk about over-exaggerating everything!!

Thanks for that info Hassaan. Very interesting. So over 4-years the total number of viewers watching in the 9pm has reduced. Also, remember the 2009 launch was when it snowed really badly so received a "snow boost rating". Also it has launched at different times every year - but its probably now evident - the Corrie lead-in for Whitechapel does the show wonders.

I wonder why the Big Star's Little Star lead-in didn't help it. It was pretty warm last night, as evidenced by the amount of people watching in the 9pm hour and it was probably bound to be dented anyway.

Also, on launch night, Whitechapel had a lead-in of 10.63m (37.9%) from Corrie to content with as well.

Will it improve over the weeks though? We shall see.

ITV are suffering the consequence of their "mostly soap" approach in that mostly they have the soap audience.

Unless they spend money on tons of promotion.

If they don't spend big on promo they don't seem to get the audiences that the programme budget requires.

Is this a good business plan?

Me thinks you have an overly inflated idea of what C5 are aiming for at 10pm. Their target for primetime shows is 1.1m but at 10pm there is less viewers available than there is between 8pm and 10pm so they could get by on slightly less here. At 1.36m Wentworth is currently performing well above this target and the audience share of 7.9% is also very healthy indeed.

All Day Shares for Wednesday:

BBC One: 21.6%
ITV: 17.5% approx
Channel 5: 5.6%
Channel 4: 5.4%
BBC Two: 4.2%

Impressive to see Five ahead of Four despite Grand Designs. The effect that having two CBB shows had on overall channel share.

I hope that share widens..I truly despair to hear the news yet again Channel 4 are going to use a week or Sex and wobbly bits to try and salvage something of 2013...

Longterm hardcore PCBH fan here.
Wentworth is doing the legacy proud some were worried but its going to get a cult following for sure.

I have read comments from people who didn't know Whitechapel was on. I know I have seen promos but could it be the lack of exposure that affected it?

For a brief period last night, Whitechapel was trending on twitter and the majority of tweets I read were pretty good.

I recall Rupert Penry Jones's face being on several magazine covers when this first aired in 2009 and also 2010. But I've seen none for this series.

Too many other good shows airing must be an influence.

Grand Designs did very well last night. Shame it was preceded by a pile of rubbish. CBB did very well for C5, the share at 11pm especially impressive. Celeb Masterchef doing well, will probably hit close to 6m on Friday (or it might be dented a bit by England v Moldova). Whitechapel completely collapsed. Wouldn't be surprised if we saw the promotion for Whitechapel being ramped up over the next week.

On another note, it will be interesting to see how Educating Yorkshire gets on tonight on Channel 4. Up against new drama The Guilty on ITV, Celeb Big Brother on C5 and Celeb Masterchef on BBC1. It has been promoted to death over the last few weeks, so it will be interesting to see if their marketing tactics have paid off. It certainly did for The Mill, but it didn't for Southcliffe or Top Boy. Educating Essex started with 1.40m (6.2%) back on 22nd September 2011.

This was my concern when I heard ITV were overloading the schedule this September. Your average viewer will only watch a certain number of hours of any given channel in any week no matter what is shown, so if you overload the schedule and cram in too much aimed at the same sort of demographic in too short a period of time, the ratings for individual programmes will go down. Apart from the diehard ITVistas, nobody is going to be tuned into Channel 3 practically every night. Most viewers will already be committed to other series on other channels that they have invested too much time in already to stop watching, so at best it will get recorded to PVR for another day, but that other day might not be for several weeks so of no ratings benefit under the current system.

I think it'd be mad to put By Any Means up against BBC2's Peaky Blinders on Thursday.

I think a programme that gets those demos but such shocking numbers on BBC1 in primetime should be hived off to BBC2/BBC3 or axed. That's not good enough for a primetime programme on BBC1.

It looks an interesting watch, should easily top that.

I could see CBB being dented due to similar demographics. Maybe 2.2m inc. +1 for Essex and 1.9m inc. +1 for CBB.

I know you dont mean it that way, but the criticism that itv are showing too many good programmes is a novel one!

Been announced today that it's going to Universal.

I'm convinced this guy who runs tvwise.co.uk has no inside sources whatsoever and just makes it up as he goes along.

99% of the time his info is wrong which means either he's lying or his sources are very very poor.

Servalan is right. Whitechapel has had a charmed life, mainly because it launched when we had some particularly arctic weather in the UK. Everything was boosted then and rather ironically on that night in February it was facing Who Do You Think You Are.

Whitechapel's ratings were inflated and I'd say that its series 2 ratings were more what they truly are...until I saw last night's rating. Doesn't have the viewer loyalty the way New Tricks, Doc Martin, Scott & Bailey and other returning hits do.

I'm aware its still a good number...

but Under the Dome launched with 2 million viewers (exc. +1) 2 weeks ago, and is down to 1.1 million (exc. +1).
It may still be a decent number, but its lost 900k in 2 weeks

Not a good sign since it still has 10 to go.

BiB 1... I loved Educationg Essex and am slightly dissapointed its not gone back to that school for season 2.

BiB 2.. Southcliffe Launched with over 2 million so I say the promotion obviously helped alot with it as well as The Mill.

Top Boy didn't do very well the first time round so I wonder why channel 4 gave it a second run?

Also, when are Channel 4 going to give The Mill a second season?? Surely its going to get one!

I think you'll find it had 1.8m exc. +1 for its series premiere.

I know you're obsessed with this idea it's about to become this massive turkey. But the reality is at 1.26m inc. +1 it's still doing very well.

It would have to drop below 900,000 to be a flop. And it also repeats very well on 5USA so the total audience across the week is going to be close to 2 million in the overnights alone.

Apologies.

So Down 700k in two weeks??

Hmm...the way things are going it will be under the million mark probably next week :O ..

I am shocked at that Whitechapel rating, i thought it would be good for 5million at least . Hopefully time-shift will make up for it.

How do you think Pat & Cabbage will fair tonight? I think 3m will be good enough.

Unlikely on all available evidence. The big drop as with most new dramas occurred in week 2 (-31.5%). In week 3 it fell a further 9.4%. For your prediction to come off, the rate of decline would have to shoot back up to at least 21.4%.

In all likelihood the decline will be no greater than 6% in week 4, so the worst case scenario would be about 1.18m inc. +1, with it then hovering between about 1.1m and 1.25m for the duration of the series, with repeats netting a further ~700k on 5USA.

The title is a bit offputting Is it a series about a woman called Pat who likes eating cabbage? Is it full of fart jokes?

Think that itv need to preceed "Whitechapel" with "Coronation Street" next week. It didn't get a good lead in. They could reschedule "Coronation Street" to 8.30pm.

"Celebrity Big Brother" was live on 5 and on Channel 4 "Grand Designs" returned. It was too busy for floating viewers and perhaps wasn't promoted enough."Doc Martin" seemed to take centre stage on the TV magazine covers and magazine programmes.