You forgot "X Factor would have rated higher were it not for the weather." despite it being a fairly ordinary summer's day across the United Kingdom. We'll have plenty of those to sift through no doubt as we do seemingly every year.

Also, all-new for 2013:

"X Factor is well up on last year, if you include the +3 showing on ITV2!"

And my favourite from last year...

"It'll be higher in the officials so it doesn't matter."

Earth shattering insight!

I think I'll log in before I go to bed, and read through tonight's stuff, then hopefully I can get straight to the ratings when I log in again tomorrow.

But at least you're making some outstanding and worthwhile posts to keep the standard up...



Anyway, Stepping Out due to start within the hour and it's still warm and bright sunshine in London. Not sure about the rest of the country? Not ideal for X Factor either but it's still a good bit better than launch night last year was!

And I see London is forecast to reach 26 again this week, so the arrival of new shows to our schedules might take a hit if this good summer continues into September.

I think X factor will do well.

Am intrigued by Stepping Out though. I will give that a go.

Mate, I have a strong dislike of Phil Libel Schofield as he has the kind of false charm you'd associate with a lady of the night and the shows he presents are complete drivel. Also Noel Edmonds, Jeremy Kyle, Davina, Brian Dowling, Adrian Chiles and Patrick Kielty are presenters I avoid like the plague.
Cowell, not a huge fan, but for ratings anoraks he's been the best thing since Morecambe and Wise for two huge ratings in 2009.

I might imagine another phonecall.
I think it'll cool down again after midweek.

May I propose a RT spinoff...

"The Ratings Thread: X Factor Launch Special- Reactions LIVE!"

And then the inevitable ~30 pages of Xmas Day style excitement for the ITVistas can be contained without detracting too much from the day-to-day numbers.

You're looking at overnights and ignoring the E4 First Look which typically has 600-700k viewers.

For the episode shown on Monday 12th August:

1.12m watched on C4.
684k watched the First Look on the previous Friday.

Total viewers for that episode: 1.8m

The HO ratings aren't quite as bad as they may look at first glance.

the original british drama trailer does not include the paradise or last tango in halifax?

Also the redtops will be hyping this up like it's some kind of high art. However,should ratings drop, expect The Sun to do what it did to BB, turn on it and rubbish it. While it's still a big deal, people are realising that it's an overhyped and overkilled singing contest that goes on too long and most of the winners fade after a few years.

There is something a bit sad about Big School 3.02 against 3.98 for Nigel Slater.
Big School isn't bad. People just don't have the patience with sit-coms(and a lot of other tv but especially sit-coms) which must make it the hardest genre to find success with. We know why Mrs Brown succeeds but that's a one off and cant really be a template for anything else.

I'm surprised this hasn't been mentioned...

Mark Linsey, Controller of Entertainment Commissioning, is being rewarded for an outstanding 2013 with a promotion. He'll now take on the invented position of Deputy Director of Television reporting to Danny Cohen and get a 10% raise fo £222,000.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/mark-l...059704.article

From TheTVController:

Davina McCall doing the voice over on ITV's ident leading into Stepping Out. Wonder if Dermot will do the one leading into X Factor, or if they'll have Dvina doing them all? Nice to see them doing something like this though, makes it seem like a bigger TV event.

I think Keith Lemon is doing one for Through The Keyhole so I'd expect Dermot to do one for X Factor.

Yeah it seems likely. I still don't have high hopes for Stepping Out though, something around 3.5m (inc +1) seems likely. Probably only 3m for Through The Keyhole afterwards. X Factor is the least predictable, but something around last year's launch would be good going.

August monthly averages:

Emmerdale: 6.2m
EastEnders: 6.2m

He is never out of the news though is he? A whole summer of yachts, affairs, babies, its endless. Its simply amazing how much paper space he generates. Why are we interested in this? Only Cheryl Coles buttocks have briefly subdued the Cowell bandwagon-thats how far someone had to go to get him off the front pages

Already into the second ad-break on Stepping Out, and the breaks actually contain adverts, so ITV must be hoping for at least 4 million+ here.

Interesting that they've gone into a break after the contestants performed but before the comments. Blatantly because they need to get this break in before 7pm in order to comply with OFCOM's rules, bit it still feels odd.

If this was a different time of year or in a later slot I'd say 4m+ was achievable. But not at 6.30pm in August I don't think.

Maybe you should read better newspapers!

The BBC does entertainment?

Absolutely no buzz for Stepping Out on twitter or social media. Only 35 tweets per minute for it, a fraction of the 500 tweets+/min shows like Splash and Your face sounds familiar began with. Quite boring so far too with long montages, bad camerawork and a weird cheap-looking set. It wont rate well, bbc dont need to be concerned about this becoming a ratings threat in the long term.

Well I do try to, but I have not yet found a way of avoiding the Metro. The Mars Rover thing will probably find one soon
I cant imagine Cheryls rear didn't find its way into most papers though.

Ah, thought so. Four Rooms' new format has to be primarily down to its major underperformance lately.

I think I'll have to agree with you in regards to the original scheduling perhaps working out better for both shows because Operation Homefront is much like Five's Cowboy Builders/Traders which have recently aired in that slot to okay enough audiences. I'd say Five were worried because of Cowboy Traders somewhat dipping in that slot they originally scheduled it for.

Is Alan Carr always that low? I can't understand why he doesn't rate a lot higher. IMHO he's one of the funniest people on TV and his chat show is perfect Friday night fun.