The thing is that Man City may now be one of the best 2 teams but they aren't anywhere near the Man Utd / Liverpool level as far as ratings are concerned.

Obviously we can't look at last week as the Sky Sports ratings were messed up with Pick TV but it's interesting to compare Sky's ratings for Saturday Night Football to Super Sunday and get a feel for how SNF is likely to do.

Saturday Night Football - Aston Villa v Liverpool - peak 1.52m

Super Sunday - Cardiff v Man City - peak 1.53m

I think this shows that Super Sunday still has a good premium over SNF. If the games had been the other way around I think SNF would have got about 200k less and SS about 200k more - ie SNF 1.32m, SS - 1.73m.

Only problem with using the above as a benchmark is that it's hard to judge how much effect the Ashes would have had - ie the bigger effect the Ashes had then the greater premium SS would still have going forward.

One other minor point is that Sky Sports viewers are used for many years to the Sun 4pm slot usually being the biggest game of the weekend so they have that in their routine whereas it is new for Sky to be showing PL games regularly at Sat 5.30pm. So it may be that there will be a period whilst people get used to the idea of a big 5.30pm game which may then lead to the timeslot differential narrowing. After all, ITV has always used Sat 5.15pm for big FA Cup games so inherently it should be a good slot.

It's up on last year two out of three days so far, the third, which was down, was on a sunny bank holiday Monday at 9pm, and was one of several things down on expecations last night.

Don't cast aspersions about me, it's inappropriate and wrong.

It was a conclusion that suited you because you implied the cast was not strong enough to produce a decent rating series after a single below par rating, that could possibly excused by the Bank Holiday since the show suffered the same thing last year.

Even if it does play out the lowest rated series, which I have my doubts about, it'll bounce back in January so it's no big deal. Whatever happens from here it's been a great year for the show and as C5's controller put it on Friday, whilst it won't last forever and eventually it'll begin to tail off, it's got a good few years in it yet.

Well half as well as Monday. Still I fail to see what was so awful about the programme, the topic hasn't been covered before safari as I know, and it should be of general interest to the public I'd have thought.

Considering stuff about motorway cops has been done to death and still gets 4m it is slightly depressing.

On BBC1 today I've seen teasers for EE, Waterloo Road, New Tricks and Strictly which are all quite frankly awful, completely misrepresenting the shows (or in WR's case past even pretending the show is still good) and music that doesn't suit the material. Who is producing all these dud adverts?!

Agree with others, that Waterloo Road trailer really is appalling. I expect the numbers will be just as bad this series as they were for the last batch of episodes a couple of months ago. I expect a cancellation announcement before long.

And you're basing this on just one rating.

Saturday's episode (i.e. just two days ago) brought in between 500,000 and 700,000 more than the "civvy version" was doing on that night. Quite a substantial increase in most people's book.

It's got sod all to do with the lineup of celebrities, If that was an issue viewers would NOT have given it three days. Geordie Shore's Charlotte for example is z-list but TV gold, and perfect fodder for a show like CBB regardless of how famous she is or what she's famous for doing. Anybody who says otherwise doesn't understand how these programmes work and why CBB on Five has been so successful for so long.

It would be a big shock if so.

ITV has shown this title 12 times in the past year, excluding +1 channels. And it's already been on twice this month.

On paper it's very exposed and will struggle. But they might benefit from the fact that Film4 do not have a film starting at 9pm.

Anyone have any idea how the VMA awards usually rate? Miley Cyrus' s performance has caused a bit of a stir, I assume this could rate quite well in the 18-30 demographic?

Not known Film4 do that before (in it's FTA days at least). Even with premieres not suitable for 9pm they play them around 11pm rather than rejigging the schedule so they can air at 10pm.

Not well. It did about 100,000 last year in the consolidated figures. An okay figure for MTV (albeit nothing compared to the 900k+ that watch its most popular programme Geordie Shore) but not that special for high profile event programming like this.

The last time the awards show even topped 200,000 was in 2003 which was the year of the Britney/Madonna kiss.

That's quite surprising, though I guess these days it's easier to just watch the talking point clips online rather than sitting through the whole thing, that's what I've done the last few years anyway.

Quite surprised by that. Certainly, the BBC's figures have held up much better than I was expecting and the deal has proved to be good value for them from a strictly ratings-value-for-money perspective. Considering the number of Sky Sports / Sky HD customers, I still think Sky's F1 coverage is under performing somewhat.

The thing is I think anyone who wants to see it has already seen THAT 'performance' on YouTube. It might be a bit up this year given all the commotion around it, but I doubt by much. It really was the most horrible thing though.

That is shocking. I mean ok, it's August, but there are limits. I'd laugh if it did ok

*cough* pot *cough* kettle.

Anyway moving on, I hope you're right. It sounds like tonight's show could be a bit more lively with the revelation that the cult have been choosing the nominees and with the fallout that will inevitably entail.

Yeah, even I was shocked when I ran the search on Digiguide.

ITV2 is famous for repeating the same films over and over but normally it doesn't exceed 8 showings within a 12 month window. 12 is probably the worst I've seen from any channel.

The only positive in its favour is not much in the way of film competition. But very surprising if it's able to land a blow all the same, I'm fully expecting it to be under 2m and near bottom at 9pm.

That's very true. I've resisted with the intention of watching tonight; just the kind of telly needed to ease the pain of the long weekend being over.

Dancc, you know you said The Bourne Identity had been shown 12 times in total by the ITV family of channels? Does anyone have a list of when its been screened? Just out of interest, lol.

2010: February 8, February 13, April 9, April 14, July 11, July 13, August 21
2011: January 10, January 16, March 6, March 8, August 20, October 5, October 11, December 24, December 28
2012: March 30, April 5, August 3, September 27, October 1, December 25, December 31
2013: February 3, February 8, April 5, April 8, May 16, May 22, August 5, August 10, August 26

Is being an ITV2 scheduler the easiest job in the world? Very possibly!

Dancc - did you get my PM?

Since the beginning of 2008:
ITV (1)
23/2/2008
21/2/2009
21/8/2010
20/8/2011
03/8/2012

ITV2
12/5/2008
10/12/2008
11/12/2008
25/1/2009
26/1/2009
10/5/2009
12/5/2009
21/8/2009
25/8/2009
13/2/2010
9/4/2010
14/4/2010
11/7/2010
13/7/2010
16/1/2011
6/3/2011
8/3/2011
5/10/2011
11/10/2011
24/12/2011
28/12/2011
5/4/2012
27/9/2012
1/10/2012
25/12/2012
31/12/2012
3/2/2013
8/2/2013
5/4/2013
8/4/2013
16/5/2013
22/5/2013
5/8/2013

What on earth possessed ITV to choose The Bourne Identity over the others films they have? Surely they had something else which they could have aired???

You have to love this thread. Potential war in Syria leads to discussion about how to schedule news bulletins and which will get the best ratings!

Maybe with this film they are allowed unlimited repeats under the contract?