Originally Posted by wizzywick:
“Sunday consists of just half a dozen brand new shows:
Sunday Morning Live
The Politics Show
(Football Focus Extra)
Songs of Praise
Countryfile
Antiques Roadshow
The 9pm Programme
That isn't good enough.”
It's far, far better than it used to be. Sunday Morning Live (which isn't on all year round, it alternates with other shows like The Big Questions) and The Sunday Politics (which isn't on all year round now because it's not on at the moment) are all done and dusted by noon. The audience watching telly on a Sunday morning is tiny, so nobody's desperate for novelty. Match of the Day Extra hasn't even started yet and that clearly won't be on all year round.
Then you've got Songs of Praise which shuttles about whatever time is most convenient for the schedules. The other week it was on at three o'clock, and apart from that half hour, that means you've got the whole of noon to six o'clock to play with. Countryfile has been shown as early as 5.30 or six o'clock and Antiques Roadshow is regularly not on, hence why they were able to show Call The Midwife at 8pm earlier this year. And then at 9pm, that family favourite, The 9pm Programme.
Meanwhile, twenty years ago or so, Sunday mornings were entirely devoted to religion and adult education, all year round, until 12.30. Then there was Countryfile, then On The Record, which filled the same role as The Sunday Politics, but was at 1pm. Then there was the 'stEnders omnibus, every week of the year. Songs of Praise was shown every single week at 6.40 - by law! And then after 9pm there was That's Life for six months of the year. Then after 10pm just more religion and adult education. I lived through years of that line-up on Sunday and it was a million times more boring than anything BBC1 churn out on Sunday now.
And in addition, if you want to know what happens if you don't have any proper fixtures in the schedule, you can look at ITV's truly awful weekend daytime shares. The public want familiarity.
Originally Posted by Brekkie:
“Also with comedy especially C4 have very few returning series at the moment (I can only think of Friday Night Dinner and the surely due the axe Peep Show) on the main channel, so adding another full series rather than a series of pilots might be the better risk to take. It's surely cheaper too to commission a 6 part series than 6 individual pilots.
Pilot series are only worth while if they're consistently generating new series - but over the last couple of years they haven't been for C4.”
Well...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedy_Showcase
Three series of Comedy Showcase spun off seven series (plus one for another channel), plus the Funny Fortnight last year also spun off the forthcoming Toast of London and also Bad Sugar which was going to be a series but now isn't happening due to the inability to get the cast together. That to me is a pretty impressive ratio, especially given how few comedy shows C4 show these days anyway. And even those that didn't get picked up did some interesting things anyway and it was worth showing them. Add to that all the stuff that's spun out of Comedy Lab.
And again, they still have to make the pilots even if they're not showing them.
Originally Posted by Hassaan13:
“A Touch of Cloth: 193k (0.9%)”
That is a poor showing though you'll have to blame Sky for that because I know they actually filmed that last year but for some bizarre reason Sky decided to sit on it until exactly a year after the first one, so everyone had forgotten about it. I think the On Demand is of minimal importance.
