I heard that The Prisoner has been delayed until the Autumn by AMC in America, but I don't know whether ITV have delayed it too.


I agree, I think the premise sounds dreadful, and I think it could be looking at Rock Rivals ratings.


I think Primeval will air at 7pm with BGT at 8pm, tbh, as those are the slots that both had last year (infact, they could run at 7.30pm and 8.30pm to try and beat the weather a bit).

Where does Beat The Star fit in to all of this, though? It's due in the Spring, so it looks like it'll be on Sundays again, which I don't really like, as the 2 hour dramas will probably be airing after it at 8pm.

As for the Summer, The Wish List is due, as is Mr and Mrs, which I think will air in the Summer. Also, new Philip Schofield gameshow The Cube is set to air on Saturdays in the Summer (so expect The Wish List to take Sunday with Heartbeat, as it's the one that would fit in best there, I think).

Also, a new 3 part documentary series, Holloway is airing on Tuesdays from 17th March. It looks like another flop to me, tbh.

Its £275m over 4 years

Yeah if Beat The Star went on Saturdays it would be too late after BGT, but I can't see ITV airing film repeats when BGT is on because it's a massive slot with a lead in from BGT. I agree that Primeval will probably and should air before BGT to get the best audience. However I can see a few of the game shows airing at Sunday 7pm even though I don't think it's the best slot for them. Beat The Star particuarly would work much better on a Saturday.

The thing with these 8-10pm ITV Tuesday factual programmes is that people won't watch them whatever they are, unless they are established. Holloway could probably do well if the factual brand was rested for a while, but now I can see it doing 2.5-3m.

I'd like them to do that, because I like BGT more than Primeval. But I wouldn't be surprised if ITV thought they could add more than a million to Primeval with the right lead-in.


Will it be 2 hour drama's though? Kingdom is due and they have loads of Hearbeat and The Royal on stand-by. I was actually thinking they could air some of their ITV3 drama's at 9pm after Heartbeat/The Royal as they might appeal to a similar audience.


I think one of them might go out midweek.

About £70m a year, of a £1 billion programming budget which is 7%.

But it's a good thing that the channels are still making a profit (albeit reduced by the recession). If you read some of the press reports in the last few weeks, you could be forgiven for thinking ITV's channels were on their last legs.

I think their channels might even stay profitable throughout this recession, with the cuts to the overall programming budget, and an increased focus on the most profitable programming.

Obviously, the redundancy packages will cost a fair bit, and there's the pension situation which won't be solved quickly, but hopefully there'll be far fewer exceptional costs in the March 2010 announcement.

Thing is, that wouldn't really be the sort of "premium sports content" you were talking of. To take a few Twenty20's, the BBC would have to compensate the ECB for the amount they would lose from Sky - who pay a premium to take all cricket coverage. Its very unlikely the BBC would see it as a price worth paying for a bit of averagely rated cricket on BBC Two.

Of course, what I'm sure they would be keen on is Ashes cricket, but Sky would be highly reluctant to see that go as its surely one of their absolutely central subscription drivers.

--

In terms of Tuesday night ratings - pretty average all round really. ITV still weak - if slightly better than previous weeks, but as has been stated, neither BBC One or C4 will be over the moon with their 9pm offerings. Both should be doing a bit better.

I don't think ITV's programming is any worse than it was five years ago. It might even be better.

The FA Cup/England contract was bad management, though. Of course the England games are valuable and potentially profitable (at the right price), but not when they're lumped in with a club competition where, with the possible exception of the first weekend of January, one of ITV's two picks in each round is almost certain to be an unattractive affair, and where the the viability of the other pick relies upon Man Utd staying in the competition!

Something that amused me today was a quote from people at ITV I heard several times when they said: "ITV1's audience share has gone up compared to previous years"..... erm excuse me, but figures posted in this thread would suggest exactly the opposite!

I thought I heard them say "over 4 years"!!!!

I've not heard that, but what they have been going on about is that the "ITV Family" has maintained its audience share and slightly increased its share of TV advertising.

SOCI [Share of Commercial Impacts] has gone up, which is not quite the same thing but is the measure of the number of adults watching their ads.

SOCI going up can be due to the placing of the ads better [ hence the mass of threads saying ITV are running ad free in the 10pm shock horror!!] plus of course ITV is only competing with other commercial operators so the BBCs share is irrelevant.

In a way it highlights that all day share of all adults [beloved of ratings forums everywhere ] is not necessarily what a commercial channel wants to optimise to generate maximum revenues.

PS Michael Grade is on Jeff Randells show on Sky News now.

Tuesday 3rd March
USA Overnight Ratings

8.00pm:
FOX - American Idol.......................22.68m..........8.3/22......7.0/21
CBS - NCIS.....................................13.66m..........2.6/7.........1.5/4
NBC - The Biggest Loser: Couples...8.26m..........3.2/9.........2.5/7
ABC - Homeland Security.................5.67m..........1.6/4.........1.1/3
CW - Reaper....................................2.36m..........0.9/2.........0.9/2

9.00pm:
FOX - American Idol........................25.74m.........9.8/24.......8.3/22
CBS - The Mentallist........................12.76m.........2.7/7........1.4/4
NBC - The Biggest Loser: Couples....9.66m.........3.9/9.........3.2/8
ABC - Scrubs.....................................3.75m.........1.3/3.........1.1/3
CW - 90210......................................1.15m..........0.5/1........0.6/2

10.00pm:
ABC -Bachelor: After The Final Rose...10.85m.......4.1/11.......3.5/10
CBS - Without A Trace........................10.50m.......2.3/6.........1.4/4
NBC - Law and Order: SVU..................7.02m........2.4/6.........2.0/6

NETWORKS:
FOX - 24.21m & 9.0/23 & 7.6/21
CBS - 12.31m & 2.5/6 & 1.5/4
NBC - 8.32m & 3.2/8 & 2.6/7
ABC - 6.63m & 2.3/6 & 1.9/5
CW - 1.75m & 0.7/2 & 0.7/2

CBS was on repeats.
Reaper was a season premiere.
90210 was a repeat as was Scrubs and Law and Order.

Did that Scrubs repeat get a higher rating than the new episodes?! I thought they were getting something like 4 million?

I've edited, it should have been 3 instead of 6. Thanks for pointing it out.

Also, Friday Night Smackdown equalled some ratings records for MyNetworkTV among households and 18-49's, drawing just short of 4 million viewers.

And FOX are apparently satisfied with the results of their "Remote Free TV" experiment where they have halved the amount of adverts in their new shows, Fringe and Dollhouse.

And as for Monday Night Raw:
- 5.53m P2+ viewed RAW this week, with a median age of 36.2 and a male skew of 67% compared to 6m P2+ viewing RAW last week, with a median age of 36 and a male skew of 68%.
- RAW ranked #1 in A18-49 with a 2.35 rating (2.64 last week) and ranked #1 in cable in M18-49 with a 3.12 (3.58) rating.
- This week's episode was down 11% with A18-49 and down 13% with M18-49 from last week.

The wrestling especially RAW tends to float up and down a lot.

Much of this ITV mess is to do with bad management decisions and not just the recession. Buying Friend's Reunited and Ask Jeeves when they weren't hot was just stupid.

How is The Big Bang Theory fairing in the US right now? I'm a late starter on this show, picked up the DVD a few days ago and already I'm almost halfway through the first season. It's rather good

Friends Reunited cost £120m. The might get £50m for it. The drop in ad revenue of say 20% in a full year will hit ITV for about £400m, so Friends Reunited although not good business is small beer in the scheme of things.

Very well. It has settled in very nicely to its new slot on CBS this year, regularly drawing about 10-11m viewers and significantly higher than its first season where the show finished with just over 7m. Last month, when the show aired after Two and a Half Men for one week only, it got an all time high of 13 million viewers.

Recent reports suggest CBS are getting set to renew it for 2 more seasons.

And yes, it's rather good and not just because of Kaley Cuoco (Penny)... but she helps.

So how can ITV be helped? If Ofcom's rules on advertising were relaxed would it help?

They seem to want reductions in things like local TV production. I think they get fined by OFCOM just now because they are apparently too London concentrated.

Product placement is the other one that has come into demand recently.

And the relaxing of CRR (contract rights renewal) which was originally set up to protect advertisers from ITV abusing its position with advertisers after the merger and restricting the amount ITV can charge. Of course, now ITV needs the help more than advertisers.

As Grade said on Sky tonight, run ITV as a business.

Compare ITV with RTL on the continent:

ITV are told:
a) at what price they can sell their ad time
b) at what time, frequency, etc
c) who they can buy their programmes from
d) where those programmes have to be made

None of this applies to any other commercial network in Europe outside the UK or indeed to Sky in the UK.

So a loss of £70m? How much are they cutting the programming budget by again??

well first they may not sell, but if they do its a distraction from the core issue, which is that the ad funded highly regulated tv business model is broken in the UK & wont ever make sense again.

Nobody seriously sees the ad market picking up for 2-3 years. If ITV makes losses of £400m per year for 3 or 4 years its curtains for them.