God, the Saturday night schedules look pretty uninspired. Considering the big two have been bludgeoning eachother to death with Harry Hill, X Factor, SCD and Merlin over the past 3 months - January just looks like a let-down.

Demons looks quite good, and I guess Harry Hill will move back to Saturdays once the FA Cup has gone. But Family Fortunes and Millionaire (celebrity versions again!) don't particularly set the world alight.

Probably better than BBC One, mind you. Total Wipeout could be a trashy hit - it seemed to work in the US, and they've got a presenter in Richard Hammond who will make light of it all. But on the other hand - its clearly ridiculous and the audience could shun it entirely. The Eurovision show looks painful and predictable and then they're relying on the unispiring Lottery and Casualty later on.

Why was Merlin run against X Factor when it could have been held back to boost this schedule?



On another note, good to see the BBC scheduers looking for new slots for the half hour sitcoms. They will at least get a chance to prosper in the 8pm Thursdays hour after EastEnders

Monday's ratings;


Ratings from DS are up. I wish DS would also show figures for the australian soaps shown on Fiver from 6:30pm- 7:30pm. Anyone know how Neighbours is doing on Fiver at 7pm? I wouldn't expect the catch-up edition of Neighbours to do that well.

Those are Mondays surely?

Last night ITV showed Sleep Walkers: Secrets of the Night at 9pm It got 2.7m (12%)

oh sorry. my mistake. I'll change it.

Tuesday overnights from Brand Republic:

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/86...me-5m-viewers/

BBC1
7pm The One Show 5.4m
7.30pm EastEnders 6.8m
8pm Holby 5.9m 23%
9pm Survivors 5m

ITV1
7pm Emmerdale 6.6m
8pm Millionaire 4.3m 19%
9pm Sleep Walkers: Secrets of the Night 2.7m 12%

BBC2
8.30pm Nigella's Christmas Kitchen 2.6m 11%
9pm Horizon 1.2m 5%
10pm The Culture Show 600,000

FOUR
8pm How To Look Good Naked 1.7m
9pm Country House Rescue 2.4m 10%
10pm Man Hunters: Meet the Gigolos 1.1m 7%

FIVE
8pm Combat Chefs 1.1m
9pm CSI: Miami 2.5m 11%
10pm CSI: NY 1.6m

-pretty quiet night all round

thanks GeorgeS, how does Neighbours over on Fiver at 7pm?

It's nice to see Survivors hitting the 5 million mark. I've heard good things about it so I will try catching it on the I Player.

I am looking forward to Total Wipeout and Demons in January. I can see Wipeout being a hit, but I think it's hard to tell with Demons. I hope it's a hit, considering the flops ITV had with some dramas last year. It looks very good and it's about time ITV had a new hit, instead of relying on already established dramas.

I don't know about this week but it usually gets an additional 200,000 to 300,000 on fiver.

It's pleasing to see Survivors rating well; it might have seen a 1.5m drop between the first and second episode, but it's no Bonekickers!

Strong night for the BBC, winning nearly all the primetime slots. Even the one they didn't win, The One Show got a healthy 5.4m. I love the fact that a programme begins with a small audience and over time can improve so much. The same with Harry Hill; I remember a few years back there was talk about ITV not renewing Harry Hill's TV Burp. Thank god they have.

These ITV1 9pm documentaries are not working. I can't remember the last time one got more than 3.5m! Could perhaps switching Millionaire and the documentary work? If Millionaire can get 4.3m against Holby, it could possibly get more in the 9pm slot. And the documentaries in the 8pm slots would probably still rate similarly to before.

Strong night for Five- Tuesdays has always been good for them due to the CSI shows. As Jonwo stated previously, though, Five need another flagship show. Channel 4 might have just the one (Big Brother), but it's on for so much longer than CSI. It's hard to think of what Five can do. I vaguely remember they tried some talent thing on Friday nights a year ago with celebrities involved, but that didn't work out. Minder will rate well when it is shown, so hopefully Five will give it good promotion.

I notice ITV are not airing The Bill on Wednesday 14th January. Interesting.

No outstanding ratings last night
ITV, Five and C4 all getting about the same in the 9pm slot with only BBC1 rating well.
I think its time to rest How To Look Good Naked for a while because the format is getting tired as the figures show.
I would also like to see Millionaire and the documentarys swapping on a Tuesday night for ITV, I think that lead to better ratings for both

Could Five try airing a reality/talent type show? They seem very popular in this day and age and the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 all have a show like this that rates well for them.

Maybe Five could try something like this out as it could help boost their ratings a bit? I know they had that 'farm' programme with celebrites a few years back.. but they could make more of an effort this time round.

The Bill @ 8pm and Millionaire @ 9pm could work well for ITV. That would leave the documentaries for 8pm on Thursdays

Any idea why? It's a shame that ITV don't keep a consistent schedule for the Bill. I can see its ratings suffering eventually, if the show is on air one week, and off air the next..

There will be a live FA Cup replay that night which will fill 7.30pm to 10pm (or I guess just possibly 8pm to 10.10pm if they move kick-off to 8.05pm).

Ah. Fair enough then. I'd imagine that The Bill will permenantly move from Wednesdays in the Summer.

Survivors looks stable at 5 million now - re-commission might be up in the air as you'd think (as with any post-apocalypse stuff) the strongest stories might be over. I guess the budget isn't exactly cheap either. Time will tell, I suppose.

Holby City has been rating better over the past couple of weeks, and makes for quite a consistent night for BBC One.

ITV do struggle with their single documentaries but theres very little they can do. Until May next year, the football spread occassionally across Tuesday and Wednesday essentially torpedoes any chance of establishing series on those nights. I think swapping the documentaries and Millionaire is about the best they can do at the moment. They'll look forward to the football moving entirely to Wednesdays from May, which allows them much more room for manouvre and a chance to build a coherent schedule on Tuesday nights with drama or documentary series'.

I've noticed that the final episode of Survivors will be against The Bill at 9pm. Sshould be an interesting ratings battle there.

4.5-5m each I guess, with Survivors probably just winning.

Yeah, there are four weeks from January on Tuesday nights before Champions League kicks off to perhaps try some Tuesday night experiments:

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm House Guest
8:00pm Journey to the Edge of the World
9:00pm Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
10:00pm News at Ten
10:30pm Tarrant on TV
11:00pm Westcountry Soccer Night
11:30pm The Westcountry Tonight

Champions League does not start again until Tuesday 24 February.

It's easy to overstate the impact of the Champions League - ITV has only 6 Tuesdays with Champions League left this season. In case anyone is interested, they are:

Tues 24 February
Tues 10 March
Tues 7 April
Tues 14 April
Tues 28 April
Tues 5 May

ITV then has the Champions League Final on Wednesday 27 May.

After that, it restarts in September on ITV1 only (ie no more ITV4 games) on Wednesdays.

Good news...something many people on this thread have been saying for many months. If only they had kept AYG and aired it here...strange that they aren't even giving it a chance.


ITV are trying a lot more it seems at the weekends and after the last 2 episodes of ASFF air they have a lot of good Saturday night entertainment coming up.

Interesting move trying out TV Burp on a Sunday. I'm liking these ITV experiments...trying The Bill & Millionaire at 9pm and now TV Burp on Sundays.

ITV seem to be keeping their Monday night dramas in place for 2009 and trying to put crime related stuff on Wednesdays and to an extent Thursdays. Though I have seen ITV have a lot of dramas for Q1 2009 and probably why they are airing for 4 9pm slots each week. ITV's start to 2009 is a lot safer than 2008's, but will probably perform a lot better. Something they should have done at the beginning of 2008 to immediately boost NaT.

Never thought I'd see the day that people would be mourning the loss of After You've Gone. What next? Will we be lobbying Bafta to consider Hole in the Wall for an award?

No Barb update yet this Wednesday. Have they left for Christmas already?