Is it now? When I used to watch it a lot in the late 90's it seemed to be a bit more country. I havent seen it in ages though.

7 episodes takes it up to the week before Easter.

Aye. It does have WWE wrestling, but probably two thirds of its schedule is taken up with reruns of those shows. They do also have some original productions in Monk, Psych, and Burn Notice, which all fill out the weekly cable top ten ratings, along with NCIS and wrestling.

They were also the US network which aired Canadian co-production The Dead Zone, which I think was shown on FIVE here.

Michael.

All channels taking US imports are suffering because of a change in the US ratings system. Usually they run a "sweeps" month every 3 months but because of the digital switchover, Nielsen changed sweeps to March instead of February. It means that quite a few shows (such as The Big Bang Theory) will go on repeat for a few weeks where they would usually have returned. But when they return, they will be running nearly every week.

I think that is part of E4's current problem. They have hits in 90210 and mainly Skins which seems to be performing very well following the changes. But the Tuesday schedule is struggling without original material for a while and Wednesdays just seem to be films. Sundays used to be home to Desperate Housewives, but that's off as well for a few weeks.


Presumably it will just take a one week break with Collision running Easter Monday to Friday?

I didn't think of that but you're probably right. Collision will be 'event drama' in that it will be stripped nightly, and Easter would be a good time to air it.

So, they are going to break a week of LAOUK up to air it possibly. They should just have:

May 18th week: Collision
May 25th week: BGT Week
June 1st week: Hells Kitchen

Sunday 15th February - US Overnight Ratings:

7.00pm:
CBS – 60 Minutes..............................13.08m...............2.1
ABC – Funniest Home Video’s..............8.00m..............2.4
FOX – NASCAR Coverage.....................5.55m..............2.3
NBC – Dateline.....................................5.15m..............1.3
7.30pm:
FOX – American Dad............................3.44m..............1.6

8.00pm:
CBS – The Amazing Race.....................9.29m..............2.7
NBC – Dateline....................................8.87m..............2.2
ABC – Extreme Makeover:HE...............7.97m..............2.6
FOX – The Simpsons............................6.82m..............3.2
8.30pm:
FOX – King of The Hill...........................5.32m..............2.5

9.00pm:
ABC – Desperate Housewives...............13.90m............4.9
CBS – Cold Case.................................. .10.80m............2.5
FOX – Family Guy......................................7.33m............3.8
NBC – Movie:XII, Part 2............................4.41m............1.0
9.30pm:
FOX – American Dad................................5.88m.............2.9

10.00pm:
ABC – Brothers and Sisters......................9.07m.............3.2
CBS – The Unit.........................................8.31m.............2.2
NBC – Movie: XII, Part 2...........................4.06m.............0.9

NETWORKS:
Audience & 18-49 Rating/Share
CBS – 10.37m & 2.3/6
ABC – 9.74m & 3.3/8
FOX – 5.72m & 2.7/7
NBC – 5.61m & 1.3/3
[LIST][*]Ratings were all slightly down due to President’s Day holiday weekend. [*]The Amazing Race debuted for its 14th season, its lowest ever start and 16% down on series 13.[*]Brothers and Sisters final half hour rated 9% lower than its first half hour, which had a Housewives lead-in.[*]The Unit lost 5% for its second half hour after a lead in from Cold Case.[/LIST]
Sources:
tvbythenumbers
The Futon Critic
Zap2It

**Elsewhere, while it's ratings may not have set the world alight on Friday, Dollhouse is the second most downloaded show on iTunes.

BGT week won't be that week because the Champions League final is on the Wednesday. The UEFA Cup final is the week before, too, so they won't want anything stripped on those two weeks, so it looks like it'll go:

February 23rd - April 6th: Law and Order: UK
April 13th: Collision
April 20th - May 25th: Law and Order: UK
June 1st: BGT Week
June 8th: Hell's Kitchen

It makes sense, really, as the stripped shows all benefit. Law and Order may benefit from a break too, considering it's such a long run. Doctor Who always misses a week about 6/7 weeks in because of Eurovision, and it never does it any harm; infact, I think it benefits it, so I don't think it's too bad an idea.

Live finals for BGT are taking place in May, according to the ticket website.

In other news, ITV Media says that Mr & Mrs is 9 x 60 min episodes this time around. That's more than last year ?

BGT could still run that week, jumping Wednesday and having the finale on Sunday. It would give ITV a massive week, with BGT nightly, The Champions League final, The FA Cup Final on Saturday and BGT final on Sunday.

How would they schedule it on a Sunday though? Schedule round The Royal maybe?

18:30 - Britain's Got Talent
20:00 - The Royal
21:00 - Britain's Got Talent Results.

It would ruin BGT's momentum, though; they'd be better off saving it for the following week to run uninterrupted imo.

Also, if the plan is to interrupt Law and Order for Collision, then it means that Law and Order's finale would be delayed.

It would be very much putting all ITV's eggs in one basket.

Of course, ITV's share for that week would go through the roof. FA Cup & CL final are bound to rate very highly over around 3 hours. And BGT will be 8/9 hours of 45% shares. That along with strong performances from soaps & The Bill.

But, it's a long time away.

Probably. When the final aired on a Sunday in 2007, the schedule went:

~17.00 F1
20.00 Britain's Got Talent
21.00 Talk To Me
22.00-22.30 Britain's Got Talent Results

The performance show actually outrated the results, which aired too late for a family show imo.

Yes, three key football final dates for ITV1 :

Weds 20 May 2009 - UEFA Cup Final
Weds 27 May 2009 - Champions League Final
Sat 30 May 2009 - FA Cup Final

Chris Moyles quiz starts Sunday 22nd March 10pm according to his twitter. (Ch4)

Desperate Housewives still does well for ABC and Cold Case does reasonbly considering that Sunday is CBS' weakest night. The Unit is a goner and The Amazing Race could be reduced to once a season, maybe as a bridge between Survivor.

There were 7 audition episodes of BGT last year, if they follow the same pattern I expect Sat nights will look like this for the next few months :

A&D's Sat Night Takeaway - 14 Feb - 21 Mar
(+ Colour of Money)

Britains Got Talent - 28 Mar - 9 May
(+ Primeval)

or will there be a gap in between the two A&D series ?

By the look of things there was a gap last year. Last year, the auditions started on 12th April. Problem is for the weekends between the A&D shows.... well... ratings could be.... low (very low!).

How big a feat is that though really? Did a whopping 16 people download it out of curiousity?

To be honest I resent iTunes' TV downloads in that they are far too expensive and you are limited in what you can do with the purchased media. You can't even burn it to a DVD, which in my view, is outrageous! But forgive me, I'm drifting off topic again

Boat Race is Sunday 29th March 2009.

COM should air its last episode on the 18th April. (9 eps)
A&DSNT should air its last episode on 21st March, I think? (6 eps) Could All Star Mr and Mrs fill in that slot?

Depending on which week BGT finishes and whether or not Primeval finishes the same night as BGT or the week before, possible dates would be the 21st March, 28th March, 4th April.

Just to quote myself, so 30th May 2009 will be the day ITV wave goodbye to fooball coverage probably until August when Champions League qualifiers come up.

Of course ordinarily they'd have 7 or so European Grand Prix weekends to see them through the summer. It's going to be a tough summer for weekend share with Morse repeats instead of qualifying / races.

I removed the EDIT bit from my post, because I think ITV said they are not going to cover it.

If they do cover it, I find it very interesting because it'll probably be a ratings battle - BBC F1 vs ITV Boat Race. Last year, The Boat Race [on SAT 29/03/2008] got 4.4m (26.5%) from 16:00 to 18:00.

If the Boat Race is against the F1, I think the F1 will win, even if it is a re-run because of the "obvious" factors [first race back on BBC; new Red Button features; first race of season etc.]; I'd be tempted to say possibly 4.2m for F1 and 3.7m for Boat Race.

Either way, as mentioned previously, ITV will suffer without the F1.... I note that the first two races on BBC are back-to-back: Australia on March 29th; Malaysia on April 5th, which should both bring healthy ratings and shares.

Yes, they are beating ITV1 first-run drama in the ratings. LOL.


"Kudos" in getting beaten by 10 year old Rab C Nesbitt repeats? Blimey, I can see that filling ITV Execs with an enormous amount of pride when the board meets to review the week's performances...



Good old George, always getting it wrong!

7.2m for Wales v England (match itself incl half time) and a peak of 7.7m.

Told you so...

If only the DS numpties had included this in their Saturday round-up yesterday it might have kept some of the ITV1 cheerleaders in check a bit yesterday.

Puts ITV1's pathetic early evening Saturday football ratings into some context doesn't it?


Hm, wonder where they got that idea from...?


And breakfast time starts too rather than middle of the night. Won't be too early to stop people getting up to watch, and non-F1 fans will possibly tune in to the climaxes when they get up.

The loss of F1 in 2009 will be a massive blow to ITV in ratings terms this year. I do wonder if the major impact on share and lack of premium ABC1 ad revenues will be worth it when you think they had to ditch F1 in order to snatch a smaller number of FA Cup and England internationals from the Beeb at greater expense - and none of which have exactly pulled in stellar audiences yet?