What would you suggest ITV do, honestly, for their Christmas schedules, as a commercial broadcaster in 2008?

Maybe they've been told that that group of episodes must air after the watershed?

When do ITV show the Christmas Benidorm episode?

I have a feeling that BBC1's Saturday 20th December schedule is going to be:


No great revelations there, I suppose...

I am increasingly confident that Sunday 21st will be:


And I think Boxing Day will be:

Hmmm, they could air it on Christmas Day at 9, or they could broadcast it in it's usual Friday (Boxing Day) night slot. Think it'd work better in the latter position.

They have a Christmas episode? Great!

This along with Harry Hill would make a great "Christmas Comedy Hour", Maybe Christmas Eve?

I don't think it is a permanent turning around. The Commander did well across 3 nights, X Factor is well up, IAC is well up and the Saturday night schedule as a whole is doing great. But they do still have problems, now it's Sunday nights. The weekend entertainment idea went well for the first half of 2008, but Britannia High and these entertainment specials at 8pm are doing terribly.

It's perhaps made to look better because we have been used to BBC1 dominating ITV in the 9pm slot but recently they have had their own problems there.

They might have to save it for ITV2 next March.

By all means I thaught this was the year ITV was going to turn it around for itself. With the exception of TXF, BGT, DOI, IAC etc I dont think anything has really worked out well for them. Besides the upteen flops they've had theres been some shoddy decisions made throughout the year which have cost them badly. The I'm a Celeb/XF culmination will probably end ITV's year on a high before closing for Christmas but I think they'll need certain things to be addressed.

The main things being the 9pm slot, I cant recall any sustained victories for them there other than your usual suspects and then getting their Sunday's back in to shape.

Or...

18:30-00:00 ITV Play: Bingo Night Live
00:00-06:00 ITV Nightscreen

More like the first quarter of 2008 ! After Dancing on Ice, it's pretty much been a struggle for ITV1 on Sundays, bar a few weeks. Roll back 18 months, and Sundays was the one night that ITV was guaranteed to dominate in the ratings all year round. Now, it's failing. Yes, next Q1 ITV will once again dominate with Dancing on Ice, but then after it will be a struggle just like this year unless they change things.

Also I don't buy the whole "entertainment weekend" thing. After Dancing on Ice ended, all the usual suspects were put on the majority of Sundays - Heartbeat, The Royal, Poirot, Lewis, Midsomer Murders, Foyle. While some are arguably good shows, they're not the light entertainment shows ITV were promising for Sundays. And the few light entertainment shows they have actually commisioned have been quite poor- Britannia High, For One Night Only.

This is unlikely to happen, but I'd like to see the soaps back on Sundays between 7-8pm. At least they will add some stability to ITV's Sunday night schedule.

And moving onto Dancing on Ice, I acknowledge that it got record ratings on the Sunday night this year. But let's not forget that it left a very weak Saturday night schedule that got comprehensively beaten by BBC1. Is it really worth getting rid of the soaps from Sunday nights completely for 13 weeks of magnificent ratings and then mediocrity- hmmm, not in my opinion. Why don't ITV make use of both Saturday and Sunday for DOI (like Strictly). Have the performance show on Saturday from 7.30pm as a focal point of ITV's Saturday nights in Q1. This will help the shows around it. And then on Sundays have a results show at 8-9pm (runtime is same as Strictly).

Once DOI ends, just have Heartbeat in the 8pm slot in a long run and then The Royal, etc. It might mean ITV conceding defeat to their promised "Entertainment Weekend" idea, but at least they'll bring back some solid ratings on Sundays.

Just some of my thoughts about ITV's Sunday night situation.

I think the best bet would be to move the Ice performances back to Saturday, and keep the results on Sunday.

I don't believe there's any reason to move an already underperforming Emmerdale back to Sunday evenings though. Coronation Street alone will suffice.

Yeh, I can understand the hesitancy to move Emmerdale back to Sundays, especially as I seem to remember it being critisised when it was back there before. But I think ultimately it would perform better ratings-wise than how the 19.30-20.00 section of the Tuesday/Thursday editions are currently faring .

And also if Corrie were to return to Sundays at 7.30pm, there would be a free half hour slot at 7pm. I couldn't think of many shows other than Emmerdale, which would do relatively well in that slot.

Are the chances of getting any Friday ratings today slim?

Why do all the sites go into hibernation mode of Saturdays??

Anyone else think ITV should move The Bill to Tuesdays at 8pm and free up Wednesdays 8pm - 10pm for some big entertainment shows?

Something like BGT, X Factor, Dancing on Ice - but not one of them, just a big talent show or entertainment show.

It would have a Coronation Street lead in and not much BBC1 competition, other than when The Apprentice is on.

I just thought of it when Peter Fincham was talking about bringing the family back to ITV1 during the week, rather than multichannel, like they are on a Saturday and Sunday night with X Factor and Dancing on Ice.

I'd be interested to see something like that done - but I'm afraid I'd see it as highly unlikely - especially when Champions League moves to Wednesday on ITV1 as from September 2009.

RE: Above few posts - the way I read Sunday's percentage share wise is that ITV are likely to win in 2009 when the football is on, and BBC are likely to win whenever the F1 is on as they both will take up a chunk of the schedule.

All this fuss over just one day!

I think ITV will be more than happy that they are getting massive ratings every day for 3 weeks now and on Saturdays all autumn, than just the 25th December

--

Maybe ITV1 should show Benidorm on Christmas Day? but then their problem is in 2 parts, they either show it just on Christmas Day and it gets lost opposite BBC1 and ends up with a low audience and a highlight is wasted, or they schedule a repeat of it a few days later as well but then nobody needs to watch the Christmas Day showing and it gets a low audience. It's a lose lose situation

--

People are talking about Christmas Day being used to build a brand? How then does EastEnders shed all it's extra viewers a few days later? It's obvious that many people watch that would never usually watch because out of the 6 family members sat on the sofa, 2 watch it and the other 4 are forced to because going upstairs to watch another channel is not the done thing on Christmas Day

New look BARB website.

I think the ratings have a much better search facility.

http://www.barb.co.uk/report/weeklyT...esttimeout=500

"Countryfile will be moving from its graveyard Sunday morning slot to a much more high-profile slot on Sunday evenings from April next year"

Interesting move. Anyone know how Countryfile does in its current slot?

There's actually a story about this on Media Guardian and they're getting rid of all of the original presenters!!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008...ountryfile-bbc

It gets about 2.5 million on a Sunday.

This is about freeing up slots for F1 coverage.

How do I contact Neil Wilkes to request ITV News at Ten ratings for the past week? I'm very interested to see them and they haven't been reported at all.

It's on from 11:00 to 12:00, I think. Therefore I'm a little confused by that move; the only race it'd get pushed aside for is Bahrain in mid-April (and one or two others).

The F1 races in Europe would be live from 12:30 to 15:15 (at a guess), although they've got to fit the EastEnders omnibus round that - unless they axe it or move it to BBC Two?

I presume they also need to accomodate The Politics Show which would clash with a lot of 12 noon race starts, so I presume it might fall back to 11am as a regular slot.

Agree that the new BARB website is a big improvement with top 10s for far more channels.

But can I ask one (probably really stupid) question?

I have my favourites down the left hand margin of my computer screen. As a result I can't see right across most web pages. On all other websites I have a sideways scroll bar which enables me to scroll to the right to see the whole of the page.

On the BARB website, for the first time in my memory, there is no such sideways scroll bar so I can't scroll across to the right which prevents me seeing the viewing figures.

So in order to see the whole page I am forced to close my favourites margin.

Why does the BARB website not have the sideways scroll bar?