Oh yeah i'm sure ITV are cacking themselves facing Break The Safe, one of Nick Knowles lowest rating primetime series of 3.5million. That'll really put a dent into The X Factor.

How do you know Stepping Out is on before X Factor?

Good start for Under The Dome on 5. Haven't seen it yet, so no idea if it's any good. Hope it is though. BB final pretty much where I expected it to be. A Monday Final does seem very odd.

Corrie continues to post some very strong ratings (and nothing is really happening at the moment either). EE overtakes Emmerdale - but these two are very close at the moment. When will EE resume to challenging Corrie again?! It seems ages ago since they were neck-and-neck.

The new EE exec producer, Dominic Treadwell Collins,only started work yesterday but it will be about two months before he can influence things unless he decides to junk some of the episodes already recorded,which will be expensive. Anyhow next week we get into a teenage pregnancy which always seems to work well in soaps.

Here's something to raise a smile, from our friends at Digiguide:





So they've even shoved the puppets before the teatime news! Well done BBC.


"Ratings-chasing", "ensuring value for the licence-fee payer by ensuring the whole night's schedule is seen by the maximum audience" - you pays your money and you takes your choice.


Any idea why the Wimbledon rating has gone back to 10.32m again in the latest officials, using the longer slot? (starting at 12:50) Hopefully in the six-week amendment cycle next Monday it will be back on top for 2013 with 12.28m.





We were talking overnights I believe. Probably for the best as the BBC have asked BARB to split the programme into 3 parts in the officials. Only the latest of those segments has rated over 4m in the three official weeks so far.

DS also caused confusion by mis-reporting one of the overnight ratings as above 4m. With thanks to @TVRatingsUK for the missing rating, the true overnights were:

27/07, 20:50: 3.85m (19.3%)
03/08, 20:20: 3.75m (?%)
10/08, 20:20: 3.86m (21.1%)
17/08, 20:00: 3.97m (20.2%)

Solid as a rock, and very close to 4m. Not bad for summer.

X Factor's only worry this year should be Strictly... it doesn't fall on halloween or bonfire night this year.

The provisional schedules show Stepping Out before X Factor. If X Factor finishes at 21:15, then they can't really show Stepping Out that late.

*cries into his Guardian*

So you think the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special is just sub-2m filler then?

How low will the Lewis repeat go tonight, facing Bake Off / Holby followed by New Tricks? It could be a rating truly fit for the Flop Zone.

I dunno about that, Lineker also tweeted his best wishes to Jake and the whole team at BT on Saturday. And it'll work out alright for Jake in the end, I'm sure, you can compare it with Richard Keys who gave up a steady job on TVam for BSB (I remember him saying he was laughed at when he joined BSB as much as he was laughed at when he joined TVam) and before the unpleasantness he was absolutely coining it in, doesn't matter how many viewers they had, it was the prestige of the thing. Jake is now senior presenter on a sports broadcaster, at the moment the smallest one but he'll get to do the Cup Final and so on which he wouldn't get to do on the Beeb for ages and ages and ages if ever.

Same as when Des Lynam joined ITV, he was thrashed masively in every major event they did but he was making loads of money and doing what he wanted to do.


Am I right in thinking this is a very rare occasion of a programme first shown on STV getting a screening on the ITV network? Wonders will never cease.


I used to like Pop idol and the like but gave up on The X Factor very early on because it began to seem terribly contrived. I think it's true to say that people are turned off when it seems cynical, and the audience today is prissier than it ever was, always quick to complain to OFCOM about the smallest thing. Nicholas Lyndhurst is the latest person to moan that these shows are getting nastier but there's no way that'll happen, it's clear from the ratings the public don't want it like that.

Can I just say, by the way, that Lyndhurst's complaints, as seen in all today's papers, are absolute rubbish? His comment about how Dad's Army wouldn't be made today because commissioners won't take a risk is complete nonsense. The cast were all hugely popular performers and David Croft was a producer at the Beeb with a stack of hit shows under his belt. It was a much a risk commissioning that in 1968 as it was the Beeb in 2013 commissioning Big School. And saying they won't stick with anything that doesn't get a million, Count Arthur Strong didn't even get that and it's been recommissioned! Watch telly, man!


Although these McIntrye repeats are an absolute disgrace that's going to be a fascinating clash, I think. Keith Lemon still isn't a mainstream figure and I don't think it's going to work in that slot, it's simply too exposed. It's also too long. Reminds me of when they put Thank God You're Here at 9pm and it just collapsed because it wasn't a strong enough format or mainstream enough for primetime. The Marriage Ref is another one, a show I will go to my grave suggesting would have worked in a post-10pm slot (with different host, panellists, punters, running time and execution, admittedly).


When they moved Corrie off Thursdays they said they wanted to use that slot for comedy and that's the first time they've done that, so hooray for them. Hope it works out for ITV. I also hope Big Star Little Star does well for them because I like the idea of more midweek entertainment and that seems a nice cushy slot for it.


And good enough for it to go on the rota of lottery quizzes that'll at least hold up opposite The X Factor, even though I'm finding it quite dull. The first ten minutes are brilliant with all the frantic stupid answers, the rest of it drags like hell.

That was only there, of course, because they could have ended up showing a Champions League match there, only for the only match involving a British team to kick off at 4pm (and making an odd-looking schedule of two hour drama repeats for two consecutive evenings). Likely to have been a very handy daytime figure for ITV4, though.

Ah so he has begun then. That's quicker than I thought. That means he could start changing things quite quickly before the end of this year. It needs some work on it.

I think New Tricks will rate lower than usual tonight. This is because of the Lewis repeat on itv as well as Top Boy on Channel4. I know top boy probably appals to a largely different audience to New tricks but there will be some kind of crossover with it, as well as Lewis which is quite popular even for its reruns among the crime drama folk. So about 6.3million is my prediction for New tricks, 2.4m for Lewis, 1.5m for Top boy. Over 6.5m would be pretty good for New tricks in these unusual circumstances.

Sorry, three posts in a row. But in the old thread...


But this is barely any different to what they're doing at the moment! You've got a lottery quiz in the same slot it's already in, Casualty in the same slot which everyone says is a sitting duck and the most boring bit of the schedule and you've got Pointless Celebrities which they're doing anyway. And then there's a pile of repeats, and the only new format for pre-watershed is another shiny floor game show. I thought the whole argument was that shiny floor game shows are a dying format and they need something different. And even new episodes of Father Brown would be unsuitable for Saturday nights, they are workaday drama. Why repeat that and not something like Merlin?

There seems to be an idea that there isn't enough comedy on Saturdays but aside from Friday it's the day BBC1 show the most comedy on. There's some there at the moment, there'll probably be comedy there most weeks of the year. Repeating Russell Howard isn't doing anything repeating McIntyre isn't, it's bringing new talent (well, they were when they were first shown) to a BBC1 audience. A Frank Skinner chat show? Lee Mack did something similar two years ago and it didn't catch on. Rob Brydon does the same and while I love Frank, and used to like his chat show (although it ran out of steam) every comedian on the planet now has their own chat show.

So, er, with all due respect, I don't know how this is any great step forward from what BBC1 are offering up at the moment.

Forgot that.

Will ITV move X Factor that night, earlier perhaps, or face Doctor Who?

3.46m (16.7%) for the launch of last year's Bake Off, could it beat that tonight?

For Enders fans

First EastEnders trailer for 'September'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01fhf0s

The million pound Crash happens at the end of Tuesday 3rd sept and continues right into Thursday and Fridays episode

(The Aftermath continues right across September)

Ronnie returns Monday 9th sept
Peggy returns Friday 20th Sept

Davids return is shortly after

Definitely, but it won't be anywhere near the heights it reached towards the end of the series (yet.) I'd say around 4m.

I imagine we will get certain people saying how disappointing the ratings are and if it was on BBC One etc etc.

I missed Gary's tweet on Saturday because I was away, interesting though, perhaps he was told to be more courteous in case Jake ever comes back?

Yes I'm sure it'll work out for Jake eventually, I've met the guy and he's a solid chap with the right head on the right shoulders - I'm just not sure when or where. What would he do if BT Sport followed the Setanta UK pattern of folding up it's operations after just one Premier League contract? That may actually turn out well for him, because it'd probably happen just before Rio, at exactly the time when BBC Sport are looking for extra experienced tried-and-tested presenting talent - although with the BBC staff rollcall currently sending out mixed messages about their feelings about him jumping ship it may not be as easy as that. I guess we'll see.

Tonight's episode of CSI:NY appears to have no dialogue. Interesting albeit bizarre experiment for the final season but I can't see that being good for ratings!

Thanks for this H13

Very surprised at Daybreak's poor rating!

And the rating for The People's Medal just proves that programmes that air after a programme with high numbers aren't automatically expected to perform well because of it.

Here's how BBC One fared at the time of the last X Factor launch, on Saturday 18 August last year:

18:25 - FILM: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008): 4.00m (24.6%)
20:20 - The National Lottery: Secret Fortune: 3.23m (15.6%)
21:10 - Casualty: 4.20m (20.1%)

The X Factor had 8.09m (39.4%) between 20:00 and 21:15 and 616k on +1.

If they moved it earlier it'd face Strictly which will probably have a boost of a heavily-trailed special Doctor Who theme. If they moved it to Friday then it'd risk suffering exactly the same fate as the Voice did with it's viewers not following it around the schedule like a blind bat. And if they shifted it to Sunday, that'd not only mean showing the results at 10:30pm like in the good old days but it'd additionally play all kinds of havoc with their schedules for example with the guest performance pre-records. I think all of those three solutions (move to Friday, move to Sunday, face Strictly) are actually riskier to their figures and momentum than actually facing Who, however big Who is (because it will be big, possibly the biggest of the year), so at this early stage I suspect they'll just stick it against Who and hope to avoid the worst.

What was the weather like that day? I can't remember now.

Forecasters keep changing their mind about this weekend. It might be hot and sunny. Alternatively it could be tipping it down with thunder and lightning. There could also be periods of snow followed by scattered tornadoes. Basically they don't know.

That was of course famously six days after the London Closing Ceremony, when X Factor's return had found itself greeted by various names saying "all this happiness but now we're straight back into this depressing rubbish for four months" which triggered strong anti-Cowell movements. I don't see as much of an uprising against Cowell this year so while I still expect X Factor to drop year-on-year again, I don't think the opposition will have figures boosted by it's return again. More likely that viewing will be down across the board.

Channel 5's latest series of 'Big Brother' bowed out with a peak of 2.8 million viewers last night, almost one million more than the reality competition achieved last summer

Media Week reporting a 2.8m peak for BB, can't be right?
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/News/Most...ence-900k-28m/

Indeed didn't Jake and Gary make a joint presentation to the FA before BBC/BT were awarded. And there was lots of photos of him and Gary palling around with Greg Dyke and Tony Hall at the Fa Cup announcement at Wembley.