It's 40 shows per year on his new contract.

2008 was the first time the show's run was extended:



http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pre.../11/ross.shtml

0.8 for skins is good? allot better then other British multi channel drama! didnt 'call girl' drop to 0.5??

and i would of thought that is more expencive to make then skins!

Thursday 22nd January 2009

8:00
FOX Bones 9.973m
CBS CSI (repeat) 8.601m
ABC Ugly Betty 7.541m
NBC My Name is Earl 6.500m
CW Smallville 3.71m

8:30
NBC Kath & Kim 4.890m

9:00
CBS CSI 17.526m
ABC Grey’s Anatomy 14.251m
NBC The Office 8.739m
FOX Bones 7.522m
CW Supernatural 3.038m

9:30
NBC 30 Rock 6.426m

10:00
CBS Eleventh Hour 12.312m
ABC Private Practice 9.635m
NBC ER 7.692m

[LIST][*]CSI took a noticeable dip from last week's farewell episode for William Petersen. It decreased by about 5.5m.
[*]Where as Grey's Anatomy increased by just over 1 million.
[*]Smallville went below the 4 million mark , while Supernatural went over the 3 million mark from last week.


[/LIST]

ITV could, instead of making 'The Bill' a 9pm series, split it into half an hour shows on Tuesday & Thursday:-

Tuesday

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm Big Island, Small Country (e.g.)
8:00pm Coronation Street
8:30pm The Bill
9:00pm Journey to the Edge of the World (e.g.)
10:00pm News at Ten

Thursday

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm The Krypton Factor (e.g.)
8:00pm Coronation Street
8:30pm The Bill
9:00pm Moving Wallpaper (e.g.)
9:30pm Headcases (e.g.)
10:00pm News at Ten

This almost guarantees that The Bill will hold onto the audience it already gets, being on for half an hour will enable a mix between soap & cop drama. I think in this credit crunch, ITV would be best with the soap approach to The Bill, because at the moment ITV need ratings, despite The Bill's undoubted quality.

It also enables Coronation Street to find two new slots in its move away from the double episodes on Monday & Friday, as well as a move away from its Wednesday episode on a permanent basis.

This means Coronation Street would need a Sunday episode as well as Emmerdale.

Perhaps to introduce Coronation Street to the Tuesday/Thursday slots, ITV should air hour versions of Emmerdale:

Why do this?

Emmerdale might lose its slot to EastEnders, but overall, around 13/14 million viewers will be watching BBC1 & ITV from 7:30pm-8:00pm, and I wouldn't be surprised if around 10 million viewers stayed to watch Corrie.

Personally I would do the following changes:

Fridays 2nd Coronation Street moved back to Sundays at 7.30pm, the dramas would then be able to start at 8.30pm on Fridays

Wednesday's Coronation Street would move to Thursdays at 8.30pm, , this would limit the BBC's options of running an hour long programme and give a good lead in to the 9pm programme. An hour long quiz show or factual would run on Thursdays at 7.30pm.

The Bill would air either Tuesday or Thursday at 9pm

One Off dramas, either new or repeats would air in a 2 hour slot on Wednesdays in weeks when the football isn't on

I wouldn't touch Mondays, 'If it's not broke, don't fix it'

Nah, The Bill moving to 9pm will work well, and it should never revert back to the soap approach.

I'd do this:

Monday
7.00pm The Krypton Factor
8.00pm Emmerdale
8.30pm Coronation Street
9.00pm Law and Order: London
10.00pm Dexter
11.00pm The Late News

Tuesday
7.00pm Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
8.00pm Emmerdale
8.30pm Coronation Street
9.00pm Benidorm
9.30pm Moving Wallpaper
10.00pm Al Murray's Happy Hour

Wednesday
7.00pm Tonight
7.30pm Football

OR

7.30pm World of Sport (a sport magazine/discussion show)
8.00pm Total Emergency
9.00pm Taggart
10.00pm World In Action

Thursday
7.00pm New Family Comedy
7.30pm Big Island, Small Country
8.00pm Emmerdale
8.30pm Coronation Street
9.00pm Journey To The Edge Of The World
10.00pm The Mole

Friday
7.00pm Golden Balls
8.00pm Emmerdale
8.30pm Coronation Street
9.00pm The Bill
10.00pm Pushing Daisies/Life

The soaps would also return to Sunday.

This would be a stable schedule, with set genres on set nights.

Some interesting thoughts about the implications of ITV's moving of The Bill. It does make me think ITV will persevere with the soap-free weekends, as they do now have enough space in the pre-watershed weekday schedules to accomodate all the episodes.

Theres definately some thinking to be done about where ITV want to air Corrie - it does tend to rate better in the earlier slots, but there is a big incentive to use it at 8.30 as a lead in to the 9pm shows. I don't think they'll want to break up a very successful Monday night schedule - so that double will stay. However, I think they'll definately be keen to have Corrie on both Tuesday and Thursday so I'd be surprised if Fridays second episode doesn't move, along with Wednesdays. The question is whether they opt for 8 or 8.30 on those days (assuming EastEnders won't move).

----

As for last nights ratings, Channel 4 continues its great week with the Great British Food Fight - the use of the collectively promoted season is really raising the viewership for programmes that under normal circumstances, would not rate quite so well. Food seems to be very popular at the moment, with Masterchef on BBC Two also profiting.

Great to see Hustle performing consistently well on Thursdays. Its a great, distinctive drama offering and I'm glad at its continued success. The 8pm sitcom block is notably less successful - Life of Riley continues to decline as people realise that even if it has got Caroline Quentin in it, its still rubbish - and Green Green Grass has been dragged down badly too.

I think ITV will try to keep it as low key as possible, as they know the FA contract will only run for 4 years, and therefore don't want to make any drastic changes:-

Monday

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm Coronation Street
8:00pm Tonight
8:30pm Coronation Street
9:00pm Monday Night Thrillers
10:00pm News at Ten

Tuesday

7:00pm Emmerdale
8:00pm Coronation Street
8:30pm Big Island, Small Country
9:00pm Tuesday Night Travel / other factual shows

Wednesday (1)

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm Champions League Live / FA Cup / International
10:00pm News at Ten

Wednesday (2)

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm World of Sport
8:00pm Awards Ceremonies / 2 hour classic dramas / movies
10:00pm News at Ten

Thursday

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm Quiz Shows along the lines of Krypton Factor
8:00pm Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
9:00pm The Bill
10:00pm News at Ten

Friday

7:00pm Emmerdale
7:30pm Coronation Street
8:00pm Tonight
8:30pm Coronation Street
9:00pm Benidorm
9:30pm Moving Wallpaper
10:00pm US imports

That's how ITV would do it I'm sure, but I wouldn't personally.

Clearly I've got you all wrong, and so I apologise.


Another rating - they just keep coming from you today. Are you going to answer my earlier question?

I have my sources.

The normal rating reports will, however, resume in the next few days.

It's much appreciated. It's great to see the whole days ratings, very interesting

Overnights for w/e 18th January.

Watchdog 4.63m A Question Of Sport 4.18m
That's an indication of the sort of ratings BBC1 can attract against Coronation Street. So why have they given up on the Friday 8.30 slot and stuck on repeats of Sky Cops (overnights last week 2.88m). Who the hell wants to watch that dreary depressing rubbish on a Friday? Why don't they stick on Dad's Army on at this time instead of Saturdays on BBC2? Or they could revive some old quiz shows like Telly Addicts or Wipeout. Or move University Challenge which gets 3.2m on BBC2. Or they could repeat My Family. Or give a repeat screening to Thursday night's Life Of Riley. ANYTHING EXCEPT EFFING SKY COPS!!!!!

BBC Breakfast - Weekly Averages*
06/10/08 to 10/10/08 - 1.14m (30.00%)
13/10/08 to 17/10/08 - 1.11m (29.74%)
20/10/08 to 24/10/08 - 1.10m (29.96%)
27/10/08 to 31/10/08 - 1.17m (28.75%)
03/11/08 to 07/11/08 - 1.22m (30.73%)
10/11/08 to 14/11/08 - 1.13m (29.80%)
17/11/08 to 21/11/08 - 1.15m (29.95%)
24/11/08 to 28/11/08 - 1.13m (29.60%)
01/12/08 to 05/12/08 - 1.22m (31.11%)
08/12/08 to 12/12/08 - 1.16m (30.75%)
15/12/08 to 19/12/08 - 1.19m (30.49%)
22/12/08 to 26/12/08 - 1.07m (34.60%)
29/12/08 to 02/01/09 - 0.78m (33.77%)
05/01/09 to 09/01/09 - 1.15m (32.91%)
12/01/09 to 16/01/09 - 1.12m (31.94%)
19/01/09 to 23/01/09 (exc. Friday) - 1.18m (32.25%)

*excludes Saturday and Sunday

Will put up GMTV's more complicated one tomorrow.

Completely agree with you. BBC One are wasting some of their strongest brands by putting them opposite Corrie @ 7:30.

Friday @ 8:30pm could be quiz night. As you said Question of Sport (which I beleive performed quite well their last year when it stepped into the breach), Mastermind and some revived quizes too.

And how about Watchdog on Thursday @ 8pm. The comedy block is all very well just now, but come the end of Feb, it'll be finished and then what. If they had Watchdog for the first half of the hour and then a comedy for the second half (or even the other way round) they could have the family comedy on Thursday's for most of the year (a few more series permitting).

I don't agree that these shows are wasted opposite Corrie. They screened Watchdog on Wednesdays at 8.00 and QoS on Saturdays 5.30ish and they didn't do too good. Where they are they give a relatively strong performance considering the competition.

I don't think the comedy block will be over by the end of Feb. There's a new series of My Family in the can and Green Green Grass runs until March 5th and might well get replaced by the new series of Perrin, which they're currently filming. I quite like the idea of this being a regular slot. Maybe the new controller of BBC1 thinks likewise. Just a question of improving the quality of the programmes.

Looks like I was right then...

Another bad night last night for ITV, with an underperforming, and rubbish, 9pm show being beaten by BBC1 and BBC2. It's becoming a regular event to see ITV1 beaten into second, third or fourth place at 9pm now. Go back 10, 15 or 20 years and it was a rare event to see even BBC1 sneak past it in that time slot.

I've joked about the "Asdafication" of ITV's brand. Perhaps "Aldification" is more appropriate, given recent output and ratings.


Be interesting to see whether Ross gets back some of the weeks he missed (probably 9 shows at most due to CIN and the Christmas break) by a longer than originally intended run, thus meaning he doesn't actually lose out financially at all - and whether the Daily Mail notices...

True, but don't forget that BBC1 was hamstrung by The Nine O'Clock News until 2000 or thereabouts.

BBC1 has dumbed down incredibly in the last 10 years. That has impacted everyone and forced ITV to move downwards as well.

Inside Big Brother has Friday's ratings: http://www.insidebigbrother.net/news...tracts-35m.ibb

Big Brother Final 8pm - 3.3m (incl. +1)
Big Brother Final 10pm - 3.5m (incl. +1)
Friday Night With Jonathan Ross - 4.7m

Ouch! 3.5m for the final?! BB's audience seems to keep going down and I doubt it will start recovering now.

Strong night for ITV1 it seems. T&R will probably remain stable now around the 5m mark. Corrie hit slightly by CBB though.

3.8m for QI? That's not too good either-everything seemed pretty low last night, even the return of Ross which could have got a lot more imo, but 4.7m is still a good figure for him.

I don't believe that any other broadcaster "forced" ITV to do any such thing - they were more than capable of doing that on their own.

Wasn't surprised about the BB ratings, I wasn't expecting anything over 4million
Its time for C4 and Endemol to now completly change the show because the current format is just not working
I was expecting more for Jonathan Ross but still a goof figure

CBB was only a million ahead of a Real Crime repeat!

QI isn't doing too well on BBC1 either, whereas T&R seems to be doing better than last year in its new Friday slot. Good for Ross, but I thought it would be higher.

That is so untrue!! Both channels have had their fare share of crap but they managed to come up with crap on their own. BBC1 can't blame ITV because the Beeb made Bonekickers and ITV can't blame BBC1 for forcing ITV to make cack like Man-O-Man or Celebrity Wrestling.

BBC1 moving The Nine O'Clock News has made the 9pm slot far more competitive.

That's one way of looking at it Real Crime seems to certainly work better in a 10pm/10.35pm slot.


Mondays & Fridays seem to be the strong points in ITV's schedule atm. It will be interesting to see how Pushing Daisies rates next week..