Yep, that would work brilliantly, but ITV schedulers are seemingly too stupid to realise it.

Friday 24th October 2008

8:00
CBS Ghost Whisperer 9.95m
NBC Deal or No Deal 6.04m
FOX Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader 5.71m
ABC Wife Swap 4.22m
CW Everybody Hates Chris 1.83m

8:30
CW The Game 1.74m

9:00
NBC Crusoe 5.92m
CBS The Ex List 5.65m
FOX Don’t Forget the Lyrics 5.56m
ABC Supernanny 5.08m
CW America’s Next Top Model (R) 1.22m

10:00
CBS Numb3rs 9.07m
ABC 20/20 7.51m
NBC Life 5.49m

Deal or No Deal, 5th Grader, Wife Swap, Lyrics and Supernanny are doing far worse than last year in the US.

The curse of Fridays.

I really am shocked by Antiques Roadshow's popularity I never knew it did so well.

An embarrasing rating for Britannia High... I really enjoyed it but I bet ITV will be disappointed. The over promotion could have done a lot of damage, but I personally thought the slot for the show would be fine. Sunday nights = perfect family night viewing, no one would really be going out.. so I thought it would have been a successful slot.

Anyway, I hope ITV keep giving it a chance and don't shelve it or move it to a ridiculous slot. Its audience could grow if we choose to be optimistic.

I think they're just too tight to pay for a live show on a Sunday evening. I think it could easily be worth it. Add 2 million to X Factor Results and possibly the same to Britannia High.

Britannia High:
Down 30% on slot average of 4.7m (24%)
22.2% of the audience were 16-34 (average 18.9%*)
30.4% of the audience were ABC1.

* What were ITV1 showing at 6pm before that would be getting 900,000 16-34 viewers?! That's as many as Hollyoaks!

I thought BH would flop, but not quite so badly so soon

Shocking statistcs really. Although, it's still double the amount of 16-34s that ITV's other new dramas have got this year.

Dancing on Ice will have got about 2m 16-34s, distorting the average.

You've Been Framed.

What I think is clear from this weekends figures is that we've a had a shift in weekend viewership massively. Whilst ITV seems to have pinched Saturday night from the BBC's control, the BBC has in turn gained alot of control over the previous ITV 1 Sunday audience. Theres no way this time a year ago you'd be able to pinpoint 4 slot victories for BBC 1 in primetime Sunday. 10.4m for AR is huge (but concerning!) and I wonder if we see a demographic breakdown, more 16-34s were watching AR than BH, by number () it seems fairly plausible given the figures and is quite an embarrasement for ITV if so. There was quite a bit of promotion recently which said that in a couple of weeks AR will have their highest ever priced item (a wheel barrow or something ).

I think the BBC is showing some humility in not moving TG to 9pm on a Sunday (BBC 1) whilst shifting Stephen Fry to BBC 2 (where the type of show belongs). Its possible they could of got a clean sweep if we go by the belief 6m on BBC 2 translates to 8m on BBC 1.

SCD should break 10m in the officals which is good and is 2m above TXF's results show performance which if we work out an average over the weekend puts SCD comfortably ahead of TXF. Little Dorrit will probably maintain 6m in a way Lark Rise to Candleford did benefiting being new as Hertbeat continues to show it's age. A Touch of Frost put in a very admirable performance but I seem to remember it being a bigger banker than that figure suggests.

C14E, contrary to popular belief Hollyoaks isnt a great puller of the 16-34s. It's hard to belive but EE, Emmerdale and Corrie all get substantially more than it. It's only impressive when you look at it from a percentage of it's own viewers (say maybe 50%) compared to 20% for the formers.

Top 10 Shows

1) CSI CBS 19,275m

2) NCIS CBS 18,038m

3) DANCING WITH THE STARS ABC 17,765m

4)DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES ABC 15,485m

5)MENTALIST, THE CBS 14,935m

6)DANCING W/STARS RESULTS ABC 14,816m

7)GREY’S ANATOMY-THU 9PM ABC 14,803m

8)TWO AND A HALF MEN CBS 14,719m

9) 60 MINUTES CBS 14,533m

10)HOUSE FOX 13,269m

ABC=4
CBS=5
FOX=1
NBC=0

22.2% of 3.3m is less than 18.9% of 4.7m - it only reached around 732,600 16-34s!

The Top Gear presenters do not want it to move to BBC1 and I can't see it getting 8m either. 5m from Stephen Fry is quite respectable anyway and I don't think a 9pm slot for TG is right.

Is there a breakdown of the BH slot? Its future in that slot may depend on whether it started low and gained viewers thoughout or not...

K

Audience was steady across the hour.

Also depends what the repeats do?

Would it be such a crazy idea for ITV to shove a repeat of the first two episodes of Britannia High somewhere in the mid-week schedule next week and pray that word of mouth and a sensible time slot will add a couple million more?! Mind you, the only gap I can see at the moment is Thursday at 9pm. Will they still be flogging Real Crime next Thursday?

I agree totally with the above apart from moving TG to BBC1. I never thought ITV1 would gain control of Saturday evenings and BBC1 Sunday evenings. ITV have themselves to blame though and they could have had it both ways it they'd kept the soaps on a Sunday, because that's the main reason in Heartbeat and TOF not performing as well I think. But to have AR only 0.3m below EE's HIGHEST RATED episode of the week is amazing for BBC1.

I do think Stephen Fry would have worked much better on BBC2 though.

The only repeat is tonight at 19:00 on ITV2, and I doubt that'll rate highly.

Got a source for the steady audience? I can't find it in the usual places, they only seem to be reporting an amazing growth in the audience for AR.

Not that I don't believe you, I just want to know if there's another source I should have in my favourites!

K

''The BBC bulletin has averaged around 4.9 million viewers across the year to date, compared with around 2.5 million for News at Ten.

It is thought that there is frustration within ITV News at the inheritance it receives from ITV1's schedules.''

^^Very interesting article, but the above particuarly interests me. I thought ITV NaT average was lower for a start and it seems it's not only us on the ratings thread that realise one of the main reasons for it flopping is the poor inheritance as it's proven from a strong lead in it can get a strong audience, not BBC1 NaT standards, but a good 3m-I'm still waiting to find out what it will get from a Doc Martin lead in aswell...

Also it's interesting to read that ITV obviously find Trevor to be superior to Julie and the chemistry will be different when he leaves. Personally I think Julie & Mark work better on screen together. However reading some comments on the article I can see ITV getting rid of NaT before 2009 is out and having Julie present it half the week and Mark the other half.

http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/2..._with_33m.html
Second sentence. Why does no-one trust me?

I'm not sure about control of Saturdays/Sundays for either channel, as remember Frost was a good bit ahead of BBC1 for 2 hours last night, and BBC1 are doing quite well on Saturdays.

It wouldn't surprise me if Coronation Street returned to Sundays in the New Year (maybe not Emmerdale).

They should repeat it on ITV1 on Saturday morning or early evening

Wow. What a crazy set of ratings!

I think its pretty clear what BBC One will be putting up against Brittania High for the next eight weeks!

I wasn't expecting too much from BH given the poor slot, but considering the promotion I was convinced it would pull 5 million at the very worst. Thing is, its not like people have tuned in and decided they don't like it - people have actively avoided it on the basis of the promotions they've seen. Either ITV have badly overestimated the demand for this kind of family show, or they've stuffed up the promotion and scheduling big time. Probably a bit of both, I suppose.

Decent start for Little Dorrit - especially given that it mostly clashed with Touch of Frost. It'll be interesting to see how that does in its regular Wednesday and Thursday half-hour slots. Good move to put the omnibus on Sunday teatimes though. Should add a couple of million to its total.

My reasoning behind it was that ITV seem to have found something which can perform well against SCD and also a clip show which can beat a high profile drama. Also then there is the XF reguarly coming out on top pushing Casualty down about 1.5m lower than it should be getting, then the XF Results performing excellently for the slot they are in.

On Sundays both Heartbeat and TOF aren't performing as well as they used to and I believe BBC1 are denting these with SCD and Stephen Fry. TOF may be ahead, but isn't as dominant as it used to be as Little Dorrit was only 1 million behind TOF.

However I agree and I can definetely see Corrie returning on Sundays when the football starts on Wednesdays, with Emmerdale staying in its current timeslots.

From the days when Rzt got the 16-34 top 10's, I think Corrie was on around 1.1m, EE on about 1.7m and Emmerdale a good bit less than Corrie?

Hollyoaks is usually around 900,000 for the C4 showing so when you take the E4 showing then you probably have one of the highest rated shows on TV for young viewers. Not as much as Eastenders or X Factor (roughly 2.5m), but still a healthy audience.

Big night for E4. For what must be the first time in forever, they have moved Friends out of the 8pm slot and into 9pm. But then they have Dead Set stripped across the week at 10pm. Alot of advertising has gone into it and it seems to be the headline of E4's autumn schedule which is thinner on content than ITV2. But ITV2 have had a whole host of flops.