decent ratings for Apparitions considering is a supernatural drama, whether it can retain the majority of its audience remains to be seen. ITV1 had a mixed night with The Bill doing very well and Cop with Cameras pulling 3.5m shows it has a built in audience.

Channel 4 had an excellent night with CCDWM beating BBC One at 8.30pm and Cutting Edge beating Buzzcocks and Graham Norton though Channel 4 have decided to put CDWM on a Friday which is very silly but I guess it is to boost Cookalong's ratings.

I think the live, final show is meant to be longer, perhaps 90 minutes? I'm not sure what date they're planning to show it, though.

I think Sports Personality rates quite well these days, even though it has usually been up against Emmerdale and Coronation St in recent years. It messes up BBC One's Sundays nowadays, though. They used to commission 13 weeks of early evening drama and comedy for autumn Sundays in the late 1980s/early 1990s, so SPOTY was perfect for filling one of the three remaining Sundays before Christmas, but now it disrupts the schedules for popular shows like SCD and Antiques Roadshow. Plus, it always overruns, which doesn't do the 9pm drama any good.

Who's got the Royal Variety Performance this year? BBC? They'll have to fit that in somewhere too. Maybe a weeknight?

Some interesting ratings last night most notably from CH4 and FIVE with their respective 8pm slots performing excellently and boosting the rest of their schedules. It will be interesting to see what happens with CH4's clever schedule change moving CDWM to Friday at 8pm from next week trying to boost the Friday schedule. IIRC 80TC got the best rating of the series and Russell even puts in a decent performance, as does Fonejacker all seemingly because of CDWM.

It's interesting that FIVE's heavily promoted series (Dangerous Adventures for Boys & Unbreakable) have become flops, but a series hardly promoted at all (Secrets Of Egypt) becomes the dark horse as the top rated British show of the week. It also seemed to boost Danger Men, the filler series for the football which had been struggling.

Average night for ITV1, but Emmerdale is in a dire state and there really can't be any excuses for last nights episode rating so poorly. It seems viewers have finally started to turn off after months of waiting for the show to improve. Fortunately when Corrie went through a bad patch viewers stuck with it, but The One Show seems to be gaining more and more viewers which is worrying for ITV1.

BBC2's plan of moving Graham Norton to 9.30pm didn't seem to work that well with it losing 0.8m of its lead in in the cursed slot for BBC2.

Decent start for Apparitions, but if it had any chance of holding up against IAC it needed to start with a stronger figure than that imo, because I can see it falling to around 3m by the end of its run at this rate. With Little Dorrit & The People's Hospital underperforming it should mean ITV can gain a huge figure for IAC's 2 hour bumper show next Thursday. The competition in general seems much weaker this year from BBC1 and I can't see Survivors holding onto its episode one audience after its sudden schedule change to Tuesday after the first episode.

A Place in the Sun gets beaten by Police Interceptors and Mastermind on a Friday and I can't see it doing much better on Thursday. It will be interesting whether PI and Mastermind get dented on Friday against CDWM as they are pretty solid performers.

I agree about how Unbreakable and Dangerous Adventures underperformed despite being heavily promoted though Five have had a much better autumn than last year and 2009 is going be interesting for Five when Richard Woolfe takes over as controller as he was responsible for turning Living and Sky around.

Tuesday 11th November 2008

8:00
CBS NCIS 18.79m
FOX House 12.88m
ABC Dancing With the Stars (Recap) 10.43m
NBC Biggest Loser: Families 7.55m
CW 90210 2.73m

9:00
CBS The Mentalist 16.46m
ABC Dancing With the Stars Results 16.39m
FOX Fringe 8.88m
NBC Biggest Loser: Families 8.53m
CW Privileged 1.87m

10:00
CBS Without a Trace 12.21m
NBC Law & Order: SVU 9.42m
ABC Eli Stone 7.44m

Wednesday 12th November 2008

8:00
ABC 42nd Annual CMA Awards 15.40m
FOX Bones 10.87m
CBS The New Adventures of Old Christine 6.88m
NBC Knight Rider 5.34m
CW America’s Next Top Model 3.71m

8:30
CBS Gary Unmarried 6.71m

9:00
ABC 42nd Annual CMA Awards 16.69m
CBS Criminal Minds 14.80m
FOX House (R) 6.22m
NBC Life 5.83m
CW Stylista 1.73m

10:00
ABC 42nd Annual CMA Awards 15.53m
CBS CSI: NY 11.62m
NBC Law & Order 7.91m

I can see APITS getting around 2m on Thursday-it's a show which I think will do better not against the soaps. CDWM I can also see getting around 2m though, because as you say PI and Mastermind are solid performers.

FIVE have had an excellent Autumn really with the only main weaklink so far being Unbreakable.

But Sky would of seen an increase in subscribers so would of benefitted either way

The only way to save Emmerdale is to start cutting episodes. Quality, not quantity. At the moment the production dtaff are having to create a big storyline at least once a week, while every other soap (even Corrie with it's double headers) is able to develop storylines at a more realistic pace. At the moment it's stuck ina downward spiral. Of course, EastEnders pulled itself out of a slump as recently as 2006, and Coronation Street managed it in the early 00s as well. But this just feels more terminal - for the simple reason that EE and CS had time to pull it around. They generally had little competition against them and made wholesale changes. Emmerdale have already made changes in a bid to improve and seems to have failed; while it has hard competition up against it with The One Show and EastEnders during the hour longs.

The Bill is doing strongly at 8pm for them, while Cops on Cameras did reasonably at 9 o'clock. New dramas really seem to be struggling nowadays, with Appartitions not claiming a very strong figure when considering the opposition.

But then Sky are losing subscribers all the time to Freeview as the more discerning of their customers decide that "most of the stuff they watch" is on there anyway. So yes, they may have seen a marginal gain from disgrunted VM folk, but hardly anything notable in these difficult financial times. To assume all the unhappy customers went flooding to Sky is extremely naive; I remember very clearly the day they were removed and BBC News were covering the story, they spoke to a Virgin customer who said she would stick by Virgin and catch up with the few shows she liked on Sky via download. Although admitting to this on national TV was somewhat misjudged, you can understand her logic - the only decent stuff Sky seems to put out after all are a few "big hitters" from the US, all of which are readily available over the internet if you want them or alternatively on DVD boxsets, so why go through all the hassle of changing providers?

The whole thing was ridiculously overblown and should have been settled many months ago. As I said it didn't do either party any favours, with both of them conducting themselves appallingly; i.e. Sky's adverts 'warning' Virgin customers about the imminent removal of their channels when the situation was largely their doing, then Virgin's pathetic retaliation following their withdrawal renaming Sky News "Sky Snooze" etc. Awful, just awful. Nobody benefitted, not least the customer who was largely forgotten in all this.

Sky now have 9m subscribers which is an all time high, so I'm not sure where you are coming from with this.

I sky+ Little Dorrit as it just isn't right for me in those slots. I watch the episodes at the weekend 'as' one long episode. Having said that its slot at 6.15pm on Sunday immediately prior to Antiques Roadshow is effectively doing now what I've done from the start. Much more Sunday teatime stuff.

What do people think the ratings will be like when the analogue signal goes off?

According to ITV press, Coronation Street is only on 3 times in the week beginning Monday 1st December. It airs at 7.30pm on Monday, Wednesday (1 hour) and Friday, with no 8.30pm editions. A mistake perhaps? Or is I'm a Celebrity going to air at 8.30pm for one and a half hours?

If it is in the middle of the night, pretty low

I think that may be IAC final day.

Isn't it running all through that week?

The final tends to be longer, doesn't it?

Maybe:

19:00 - Emmerdale
19:30 - Corrie
20:00 - Tonight
20:30 - I'm A Celebrity
22:00 - Filler (Tarrant on TV)
22:30 - I'm A Celebrity
23:00 - The Late News

However, they COULD test the following schedule out.

19:00 - Tonight
19:30 - Emmerdale
20:00 - Tarrant on TV/You've Been Framed/Something Else
20:30 - Corrie
21:00 - I'm A Celebrity
23:00 - The Late News.

OR, IF SOMETHING IS REALLY FLOPPING
19:00 - Emmerdale
19:30 - Corrie
20:00 - I'm A Celebrity
21:30 - Britannia High
22:30 - I'm A Celebrity
23:00 - The Late News.

Anyone know how Sky News did on its return to Virgin?

That doesn't mean they are not losing customers to Freeview though, and clearly they are intimidated by its success otherwise they wouldn't be rushing out with these badly thought out pay TV proposals to replace their free services on Freeview.

Still, we can thank Ofcom's reluctance to actually do anything (another consultation anyone?) for putting pay to that idea for the time being. In the meantime I hope this so-called 'regulator' wakes up and smells the coffee with regard to BSkyB's dominance in the pay TV sector already and put a stop to Picnic, but alas, it doesn't seem likely.

They are also the most innovative service. Sky HD & Sky Plus for example. Freeview take up is often driven by 2nd tv use where the main tv has Sky.

This is an ill-informed view at best. Freeview+ recorders offer the same functionality as a Sky+ box, but without the subscription. In fact, often they offer MORE features than Sky+. The only weakness of a Freeview+ recorder compared to Sky+ that I can think of is the fewer number of channels on offer but Freeview has the main ones covered.

Sky HD admittedly is an innovative service, but plans for HD on Freeview are really gaining momentum now which will certainly weaken Sky's offering.

^ And will probably boost BBC HD's ratings.

i would like to apologise for my rudeness and the way i rebutted George S posts yesterday, it was wrong of me to belittle his opinions and posts and for that i apologise, if i ever venture onto the ratings threads again i will act with decency and show George S and every other poster on that thread respect that you deserve, i acted liked a pratt and for that i am sorry for any offence that it will have caused,

Poor viewers, being subjected to 3 episodes of Corrie tonight. I wonder if the BBC1 episode got significantly higher ratings than either of the ITV1 episodes?


I've said this before, rzt, but you are compiling your own list of the top official ratings for us on this thread. We all agree it's daft to include certain shows twice in the Top Shows of 2008 list and others once only, so just strip out the lowest-rated editions and have a list with some consistency to it. Please...


I think this will do very well, not least because it's sandwiched between two portions of stodge, and BBC1 will be 20 minutes into Casualty when TXF1 finishes. I'm sure it will be a laughter-free hour of crap, but it will get a big audience - 8-10m eminently achievable. Sadly, the returning Outnumbered will be, well, outnumbered.


Duff scheduling, mainly. Also, a 14 part series requires a major commitment. I didn't bother. They should have run this as 7x 1 hours, and on Sunday evenings where period drama belongs.




Maybe the youngsters got on the wrong bus?

Just realised that ITV have hacked We Are Not Amused into two parts, interspersed between the two parts of TXF.

How silly, why not just show We are Not Amused for 90 mins and then TXF pt2 at 10.05pm?

Presumably a ploy to boost TXF pt2's ratings?

Viewers who want to watch the comedy gala, but not the Cowell padded-out tat, will not be particularly amused...

I'd assume that they felt viewers of X Factor have become accustomed to a 45 minute gap between the main show and results as oppose to 90 minutes (and probably organise phone lines and production on that basis). And it will only help We Are Not Amused which will probably lose viewers across its first part, then pick up the XF inheritance again and dwindle away.

Apparently Robin Williams was particularly funny at "We Are Not Amused", but I can't see it pulling in X Factor size ratings. Probably battling it out with Casualty at around 5-6m.

Quite ridiculous that Britannia High is even failing among its target audience and falling behind a show that has 90% of its audience 35+ and an average age of 61!