Pretty poor ratings across the board last night with LIVING & SKY benefiting.

Regarding scheduling BBC1 seem to have given in up against the DOI final which is very surprising after providing strong competition throughout the series.

Also interesting to see My Family taking the Thurs 8pm slot after the latest 2 comedies flopped. It's never going to live up to the 6m/7m it was getting a while back and if there is a repeat on Sundays I can see that getting more than the first showing.

Interesting to see them persevering with the comedy at 8pm. My Family might work well after EastEnders - its still popular if it inherits a big audience and I've a feeling that move might work quite well.

I wonder what this might mean for Fridays at 9pm though...

I think Thursday at 8pm could be good for My Family, but I'm a little suspicious the slot has been announced this soon, rather than being listed as "unplaced".

Perhaps the final schedules will see it isolated from EastEnders (as The Green Green Grass was) at 8.30pm, with a bit of wishy-washy light factual in between.

Maybe Have I Got News For You and Armstrong and Miller pairing up from sometime in April?

And maybe even a little bit of Vicar of Dibley in the meantime...

I have to admit, some of the Beeb's 9pm slots over the next few weeks look incredibly bare. At the moment, we have:

Thursday 12th: Comic Relief does The Apprentice
Friday 13th: Comic Relief 2009
----------
Monday 16th: Rogue Traders
Tuesday 17th: Mistresses
Wednesday 18th: Nature's Greatest Events
Thursday 19th: The Hottest Place on Earth
Friday 20th: QI and Not Going Out

So, out of the five days, only one of them is Drama; two are documentaries; one day is Comedy and one is lifestyle. Go forward a week....

Monday 23rd: TBA [nothing is on DigiGuide; nor on BBC PO]
Tuesday 24th: Mistresses [last in series]
Wednesday 25th: The Apprentice [new series]
Thursday 26th: TBA [nothing is on DigiGuide; nor on BBC PO]
Friday 27th: TBA [nothing is on DigiGuide; nor on BBC PO; although likely QI/NGO]

Concering the BBC Press Office announcements today:

All The Small Things - don't really see this as a 9pm drama, but could slot quite well into Lark Rise To Candleford's slot. They're probably not starting it straight after LRTC finishes, so to keep it out of the way of Dancing on Ice.

Queens of Pop - slightly worrying to see this in the scheudle. Seems more like summer filler fodder to me. Hopefully it's just plugging up some gaps until the big dramas come back. Waking The Dead and Ashes to Ashes MUST be due back the week after, or BBC One will only really have The Apprentice and No.1 Ladies Dective Agency (whose scheduling opposite Dancing on Ice and then Lewis is slightly worying).

My Family - good move putting it there. I maintain that they should have kept back Green Green Grass to run after Life of Reily, with Watchdog at 8:30. This would have given them comedy output at 8pm on a Thursday from January until the start of June. As I've always said, I could schedule BBC One better than the current lot.

And for all of those who thought it was just a rumour:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pre.../12/wire.shtml

The Wire is coming to BBC Two! No details on transmissions yet, but it says that they have the rights to all sixty episodes and that they'll air striped across the week, so I'm not too sure how this will work out.

Monday 23rd is a documentary about Cleopatra (according to RT website).

We should get Thursday and Friday from Digiguide by 7pm tonight.

Primeval is starting on the 28th of March, so the final episode of the series will potentially be on Britain's Got Talent Final night. Sandwiched between the 2 BGT shows, it should bring in really good ratings.

Heard Armstrong and Miller wasn't on until the end of the year.

This was said by Ben Miller the other week

That's interesting. Maybe series 2 of the Omid Djalili Show this spring instead?

Probably means Monday to Friday for 12 weeks. Or everyday for 8 and a half.

Oh, stripping it across the week is not a good idea. Far fewer people have the time to watch five episodes a week of any series, no matter how great, than have the time to watch it once a week. Lots of digital channels make this decision - for cost reasons, I imagine - and the result is much lower ratings than they might get if they showed stuff once a week.

That's particularly true for an intricate serial like The Wire - I imagine if you miss a couple of episodes there you might feel so left out that you would give up entirely, whereas if you miss a couple of episodes of a Poirot or a Starsky and Hutch then it doesn't matter.

Many have said on here they much prefer watching it a few episodes a week on the boxsets than one a week on TV, perhaps the BBC share their sentiment?

BBC are probably pumping The Wire out for the benefit of PVR users. And on the back of that, I hope it's on at 11PM or later so it doesn't conflict with any of my existing 10pm double recordings!

Just seen The Secret Millionaire advertised for sundays, it's good to see that Channel 4 are trying to improve thier weekend schedule by putting some of thier most popular programs (SM and CDWM) there.

New series or repeats?

New series.

Bit soon after the last one isn't it? Surprised considering how well it did in the ratings that they still managed to fool people.

Poor Ratings for TV last night.

Waterloo Road deserves more than 4m viewers. It's a fantastic drama. Eva Pope is a fantastic actress and the acting is so good. It should get 5-6m. If it was in last years thurday night slot it would have much better ratings. It was like when the moved life on mars to tuesday night it lost a million viewers from the first series.

Tonight TV is Fantastic with EastEnders and Comic Relief Does the Apprentice and also Jade Goody's wedding on Living.

Am I right that more people would probably be watching tele on Sundays from say between 15:00 to 17:00 (i.e. mid afternoon) compared to, say 13:00 to 15:00?

The BBC have released the F1 scheduling details, which has the F1 re-run on the Sunday, March 29th down as from 13:00 to 15:00. From a ratings perspective, I think the Beeb have committed an own goal, and really should have scheduled it later on in the afternoon from 15:00 to 17:00/17:30 so more people would have been able to watch it compared to earlier in the day. Had it been scheduled for 15:00 to 17:30, 4m and over would probably have watched it, but now that the re-run is on earlier, I don't see the figures going above 4m (I'd be surprised if it does - unless a British driver wins). Last year, ITV's schedule was [thanks to EmilioLargo for these]:

04:30 to 07:30: 810,000 (54.43%) [Live]
15:00 to 18:00: 3.75m (23.01%) [Re-Run]
~23:45 to 00:45: 305,000 (7.71%) [Highlights]
Total Race Audience - 4.86m (full ITV F1 ratings can be found here)

I think by scheduling the re-run earlier at 13:00 the rating might be a little bit lower (although I guess the live rating will be significantly higher as the race will be on from 06:00 to 09:00 this year - anything ~1.5/2m would be good for the live broadcast).

I'm also quite looking forward to the mountain climb doc.

I seem to remember the last series had a reference in it that suggested that it was filmed a good while before it aired (before the previous series aired, I think), so these might thave been filmed a while back, too. They may well have filmed several series worth of episodes in one go to avoid the recognition problem.

In ratings news, low across the board for last night. WR isn't doing as well as it deserves to, really, although it might perk up next week with the return of Kim. Whilst I'm not exactly a fan of her (she even annoyed me in the trailer last night) it seems like she has a lot of fans who think that the show hasn't been the same without her. Also, according to the latest official figures, the episode 2 weeks ago added 0.54m on with officials to end up at almost 5m.

WR is completely on its own at the moment, though, with a crap lead in and a show which attracts a completely different demographic after it. It should perk up with The Apprentice returning and the hour long One Show's, which will give BBC a solid Wednesday schedule.

BBC1's schedule for the weekend of 21st-22nd March is a disgrace, with repeats everywhere. They seem to have completely given up, and when is that last episode of Total Wipeout going to air?

On a different note, sorry you're leaving (or left) Polonius, best wishes for the future.

Just looking at it now (here it is for anyone who hasn't yet seen):

Saturday
17:20 - Six Nations Rugby
19:30 - Total Wipeout (R)
20:25 - Lottery
20:35 - Casualty
21:25 - Live at the Apollo (R)
22:10 - News
22:30 - Match of the Day
22:50 - A Question of Sport

The Sunday schedule is absolutely shocking TBH. Apart from the F1 (albeit that's in daytime) they must have something new on the weekend after surely?

Two repeats, the lottery, and Casualty. It's enough to drive you to drink.

What's that I hear? An extended series of Let's Dance on the brink of commission?

Best of luck with it chum.

Always sad when a regular moves on. I, for one, will miss your posts.

Take care now.