Wonder that channel 5 are planning for big brother

In the planning Permission for the house they have requested there to be 46 eviction shows a year.

From memory CTM got 10m and was pretty much level with DA - not sure how that can be called bombed.

A long rest ?

Wednesday is still good for a 2 hour Midsomer Murder. Inspector Morse pretty much made feature-length dramas popular when it started. But for some reason 9pm drama on the main channel doesn't rate as well as Monday, Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday. That never used to be the case.

What is going on!?!

Year round big brother

Very poor for Whitechapel. SamuelW makes some good points about why it might be rating badly, but it still surprises me that it's doing so badly. Rupert Penry Jones has a good pull for bringing the viewers in. I haven't seen any of the series yet, but I am recording it.

Still poor for EastEnders too. Nice to see Coronation Street hit a share above 40% again and Emmerdale is on fire at the moment as well.

A real shame to see Wentworth falling again. I wouldn't say that figure is a disaster yet, it's OK but it really needs to stay level at 900,000 again next week. It can't afford to drop anymore. I will be intrigued to see how it timeshifts though, as I recall reading on here the other day that Channel 5 shows seem to timeshift a big amount.

Penry Jones' star power has been waning the last two or three years. His previous drama The Last Weekend, which was shown last year, got ratings as low as 2million viewers. Silk on BBC1 doesnt rate too well either. He's not a Clunes or Tompkinson in terms of drawing in the mainstream drama-loving viewers anymore.

While I watched Wentworth for episode 1, somehow the charm of the original Cell Block H series surpasses the remake. I loved the original I really did. But the remake somehow distorts my happy nostalgic memories. I didn't watch it thereafter.

I think he was at his most popular when he was in Spooks. Well that's when I first heard about him and Spooks was at its peak when he was the central character in it. The Last Weekend - one of my favourite dramas of recent years, though I'm not surprised it rated badly at all. It was a great series, quite clever but it wasn't very viewer friendly in the way it was shown and had a slow pace.


I wonder if some people feel the same as you then, hence why the viewing figures have dropped. I've never seen Cell Block H, but I was a massive fan of Bad Girls on ITV so wanted to give this a shot and I'm glad I did.

Just because there is more people does not mean they will watch X Factor, Why are you people so obsessed with it getting higher ratings, X Factor doesn't appeal to me even if it gets 20m viewers. Just counts as so many brainwashed people.

Whitechapel appears to be six episodes of three two-parters so maybe quite a few people are holding them back to watch together with more options available on Wednesday night? The official figures will be interesting. It really doesn't make a lot of sense.

Trailer for By Any Means just shown. Awful trailer with totally inappropriate music. Who the hell keeps coming up with these rather lacklustre music choices?

Keeps the Daily Star journalists in a job and Dancc happy, I think everyone else would run a mile from it. OK it's probably found its level on Channel 5, but it is overkilled as it is.

46 evictions or 46 live shows? They can be two very different things.

I doubt Channel 5 would do near year round Big Brother, I think Ben Frow mentioned while its a success, he doesn't want to overexpose it. My guess is that if they wanted to extend it by adding new contestants midway through the run thus having the need to have extra eviction nights then it wouldn't be too much as a problem.

They've applied for 46 live shows, 14 of which may be on days other than a Friday. As things stand, they currently do around 10 midweek shows and 15 Friday shows per year with 2 CBBs and a regular BB.

Very very poor start for X Factor US - beaten by America's Got Talent, Big Brother and Masterchef. So You Think You Can Dance just got renewed on even worse ratings but I don't think that will really apply to XF. It's not done yet... but it would take the most spectacular turnaround.

An absolute nightmare for FOX as well. 3 hours of X Factor kept them afloat last fall and if those 3 hours are going to be way down it's going to kill their overall ratings and leave them with a huge hole to fill next year (with new shows which probably won't do any better!).

Two cycles of The Voice plus America's Got Talent all seem to be holding up well year on year for NBC. But FOX's talent shows are just in a horrendous downward spiral. X Factor didn't look too great last year then Idol came back and by the end of its run ended up down at the same level. Now X Factor is back and even lower again... odds are the pattern will continue into January with American Idol.

I think they are in danger of overkill now. I think having two CBBs a year is a mistake and surely one is enough. However, at least they've taken out the more pointless bits like through the night coverage and only have one fanzine show instead of two.
It seems that 1-2 million people still are prepared to watch both versions of BB. Obviously its glory days are gone with the bulk of the audience moving on and only The Daily Star seems to promote it, owning Channel 5, but there is still a fanbase for BB. Like most middle aged men, I would rather watch grass grow, but hey ho.

Its not a good sign that X Factor lost both General Motors and Pepsi as sponsorship, they filled in the gaps with Honda and Procter and Gamble but clearly even advertisers aren't happy with how its performing.

If FOX axes it, I think Cowell will return to the UK show, I think Gary is planning to leave since his plate will be full next year as he is involved with Finding Neverland and also he'll likely want to get back in the studio and record a new Take That album.

Samuel. You might be interested in reading this? @ianwylie: Terrific first episode of @BBCAtlantis - the cast Q&A after tonight's London premiere http://t.co/ghT03Oqxkt

They want to do 46 live shows a year?

That's a substantial increase on what they are doing at the moment. If I've counted correctly they'll have done 26 this year by Friday and that's pretty typical albeit a slight increase on the previous due to the launch of both BB and CBB being split across two consecutive evenings.

For all that I support BB and CBB on Five, and don't think the current amount is too excessive (great rating last night incidentally), any further increase in coverage/series would be harder to justify.

She clearly can sing, you don't stay in the charts and continue to release records for 25 years, let alone do hugely popular live shows, if you can't. Even if she was manufactured in the eighties, she clearly now has total control over her image, her choice of songs (she co-writes a lot of them) and her brand. Danny O'Donoghue was in a boy band, and constantly referred to it, so what's the difference?

And if you're talking about relevance, her last studio album in 2010 got to number one, her most recent album in 2012 got to number two and her THIRD greatest hits album in 2012 got to number eleven. That is not an artist down the dumper. Compare that to Nicole Sherzinger's discography, or indeed Dannii Minogue's. Kylie was on the front of the Daily Mail yesterday, so she's clearly still famous.

And as for "everything that The Voice is supposed to be against", The Voice is not against anything. It is light entertainment. It's got giant spinning chairs in it, for a start, that's a massive gimmick. You've got Will I Am there stuffing his performances with stupid sound effects and explosions. If you're trying to be credible you don't do it on primetime BBC1. You can say, oh, Danny said this in an interview but that's not a sworn affadavit from the production team. Will I Am in a giant spinning chair is not a show that wants to be earnest.


As has been mentioned, they're already repeating Mrs Brown from the same time, and frankly I'm amazed they haven't repeated it yet. They repeat QI virtually the week after the series finishes. And people want to see shows again, that's why Dave and Gold show the same things over and over.


Neither are, really, but the difference last year is that Call The Midwife was pre-watershed and I don't think that kind of thing works there pre-watershed because you're doing a million and one other things and nobody's concentrating on the telly. If you want to know why it's not suited to Christmas Day you could have been with my family last Christmas when nobody watched it, despite my mum and sister being big fans, because it simply wasn't convenient for them to sit down for it and the male half of the household didn't want it on. Different for Corrie and 'stEnders which you can half watch or Who which has wide appeal for all ages and both sexes.

Post-watershed the kids are in bed and the washing up's been done and you can actually sit and watch something. And it will be the same this year because they won't be on the same time so Midwife will be on too early again. The idea that the Beeb are desperate to beat Downton sounds like a theory from some much-maligned poster on here. Even if it does they can announce they won the other 22 hours.


A lot of that is good old-fashioned sexism you get for every female comedian. I don't know why people slag off Millican for going on chat and panel shows. That's what comedians do. She doesn't even do that many.

Maybe they just want more flexibility. Remember the summer series will have a new theme every year from now on to keep it fresh. They won't be doing Secrets and Lies again, but they will have a new spin on it ready for June. Perhaps whatever they have in mind for next year will require a lot more live shows than usual.

More expensive though if they do end up doing more live shows. The way some go on about BB on here as if it's this great big failure for Five (when it clearly isn't; indeed it's been renewed twice and ratings have risen) you'd think they wouldn't want to be spending any more on it than they are already.

It'll be interesting who they'll get to replace Danny on The Voice, Wasn't Will Young considered, he's too busy anyway with the tour of Cabaret.

Madonna.