Ridiculous, should have ended after Eva Pope left.

Which is a lot older then past female tv presenters who have seen their career really take off

Which is sad really.

Totally agree. It's been on a downward spiral since Eva left. Eva pope is such a great actress, she really should be more in demand

It would make a change to Eggheads and attract a new, younger audience to BBC Two. I think BBC Two is becoming too dependent in this quiz now.

While I would certainly agree that the BBC run far too many episodes of Waterloo Road, Casualty and Holby City I'm not entirely sure you can bundle EastEnders in with them. Whatever problems it might be having they aren't exactly unprecedented and it does remain one of the best performers for the channel and on British television in general. The idea that they're throwing money away by continuing it is ridiculous. Equally it should be noted that its infinitely cheaper to just churn out more episodes of the like of Waterloo Road, Casualty and Holby City than it is to invest in new drama for those slots.

Someone mentioned yesterday that Casualty has a 48 episode run (I think). That's insanity but if you half that order the money saved probably is going to produce 24 episodes of a new similar length drama for BBC1. Equally 10 additional episodes of Waterloo Road probably doesn't actually add up to that big an investment and certainly not as big as it might sound.

When it comes to woman there's always a fresh younger face ready to take over, which is why I'm surprised Emma is getting all this work now

Thanks Mike. Jamie lost 450k week-on-week. Gadget Man lost 360k week-on-week. What happened?

Does anyone have DOND figures and shares for last week? Would be interested to see how much Tipping Point is taking out of it.

I'm not really a big fan of Emma, find her very bland, but I disagree with this.

She's done tons of telly up until this point. Winkelman and Daly both moved up to the big Leaugues about the same age.

She was the one thing left it had going for it, carried it during her last series, haven't watched a full episode since then.

I understand its cost, but why not take risks? Invest and write something new ffs. What happened to the BBC 10-20 years ago who always had something fresh, not depend on four shows constantly? Money is an issue, but do it on a budget ffs.

[quote=Digital Sid;68719793]She was the one thing left it had going for it, carried it during her last series, haven't watched a full episode since then.[/

Shed productions have thing with killing off their own dramas

Undoubtedly it helps that she looks much younger than she is.


Has Winkelman moved up to the big leagues? Also while Tess Daly co-hosts Strictly that's pretty much all she does. And its not as if she was selected to actually front Strictly Come Dancing. Her role on the show has been scaled up in recent years to cover for the increasing short comings of Bruce Forsyth and that only really happened because when the BBC tried to draft in another older male co-host there was a media backlash.

Emma looks ten years younger than she is, and is one of the best entertainment presenters there is.

It's getting to the point where the only time a new show is aired on BBC1 weekdays is in the 9pm slot

New BBC comedy Father figure debuted on RTE last night, It is horrendous, worse than anything you would see on CBBebies.

Indeed. It's as if they don't want to compete anymore. Where is the money going on, the court cases?

I still believe there's a shortage of tv presenters due to the loss of children's tv which is resulting in reality tv and past high profile presenters being back in demand.

Look at Davina, for years she only hosted big brother and the telethons, now the part few years she's everywhere again

That is a completely unfair assessment of the BBC's drama output. Undeniably certain shows produce too many episodes per year but to hyper focus on that and ignore the sizeable investments the BBC make in drama and across multiple genres is utterly ridiculous. The BBC is still investing in new drama and still trying new things. Additionally I think there's more than a little bit of a rose tinted view of history here to suggest that the BBC, like any other broadcaster, has always depended on a certain number of consistently present shows.

I'd also point out that its incredibly easy to tell the BBC to invest in new drama and take risks 'on a budget' but not as easy to actually do it. Particularly in a market where creators and production companies have a huge choice on where they can take their shows. The television market is rapidly expanding and becoming increasingly competitive.

Also on the subject of Waterloo Road I'm curious about something, how popular is it with younger audiences? I ask this because while its total audience figures might not be pretty if it is popular with younger viewers surely the BBC should continue to produce and air it on BBC1? There appears to be a growing consensus in this thread that its only popular with younger viewers and should therefore be axed or shipped off to another channel and that concerns me.

I think the main mistake they made (other than making it almost year round, moving it implausibly to Scotland and carrying it on after Eva left), was moving the attention away from the teachers running the school to the kids attending it, it went from a half decent teaching drama to a bad teen soap.

A typical BBC1 weekday schedhule is daytime,news,one show,Eastenders,cheap filler/cheap drama,9pm slot, news and then repeats to end the day

I can remember the days when BBC1 had a vast range of programmes after 7pm right up till midnight

Winkelman hosts the biggest film show on the Beeb, so yeah.

Yes, Tess has been scaled up as she's got older. I'm not really sure why you have all the provisos, the facts remain the same.

I'm not saying it isn't a sexist business, and it's notable that all these people we're talking about, (and Davina) don't actually look their age.

Yet I don't think it's an abnormal thing for a female to break through at this age.

When did Clare Balding become big? Perhaps we're looking at a less sexist society, which would be nice.

Despite the odd horrors like Celebrity Juice, that does have a couple of younger (and IMHO) awful presenters that are inexplicably popular, appearing on it. Even they are well into their 30s now.

And I remember BBC1 closing down at 2.15pm until Playschool, having Nationwide on at irregular times depending on what followed, sometimes a repeat of The Rockford Files, sometimes a film, Top of the Pops, or The Wonderful World of Disney. Not forgetting repeats of Star Trek.

Under The Dome continues to do well in America so we'll get a few more episodes here in the UK yet. But will ratings level off here soon? -- @TVbytheNumbers: The season finale of #UnderTheDome garnered a big 2.8 adults 18-49 rating. Full Monday ratings coming soon.

Firstly no it isn't. Secondly lets not pretend that the focus on 9PM slots is somehow a new phenomena.


Firstly it should be pointed out that a not insignificant part of the reason Davina McCall is in 'more demand than ever' is because she's actively been seeking work something she didn't do when she was fronting Big Brother for Channel 4.

Having said that I would agree with the basic premise that the death of children's television has led to a complete lack of development of new presenting talent. This has been painfully obvious for a while though but a few other points should be noted here. Another reason there's been a lack of development of new talent is because increasingly the big entertainment shows of the past decade+ (with one or two exceptions) haven't relied on the personality of the presenters. When you've got the likes of The X Factor and Big Brother (and similar formats) dominating television and they can theoretically be fronted by any bland charisma free face then there's no pressure to develop new talent. This for the record is part of the reason ITV have struggled to find a decent ITV1 format for the Keith Lemon character – no one knows how to develop formats for the personality of the host any more so its always an awkward fit.

Also worthy of mention is that the expansion of the digital channels in theory presents a solution to this problem. The BBC have made noise about using BBC3 as, essentially, a training ground for BBC1 and that makes sense. Giving would be presenters the chance to front lower key shows on a smaller network to gain some chops. The same is increasingly true of ITV2. In fact if anything ITV are more overtly set up for this with spin-off shows like The Xtra Factor and Britain's Got More Talent. Amongst Holly Willoughby's first jobs away from children's television were fronting ITV2 spin-off shows and Stephen Mulhurn is now fronting Catchphrase. Those two have children's television and ITV2 spin-offs in common.