If it were three days a week the quality would improve and the cast could get off rhe treadmill for a moment. "EastEnders" needs a massive plot line and a live episode to reel back in the viewers who just got away from committing to it. Two and a half hours is way too much of one programme. I watched one with Lindsey Coulson featuring heavily which was really well acted by her but there was no incentive to bother tuning in another night. Perhaps other viewers also feel this fatigue with it and less is sometimes more. You dont need 5 episodes to let people know you are in the schedule you need to make them good so they want to make an appointment to view. I hope Charlotte Moore takes note of the experimentation with "EastEnders" and goes for a live episode and axes the Friday edition for good.


As for "Call The Midwife" I hope this bombs this series and they have to stop spending money on 1950's bicycles, teapots and babies because it plummets to under 3 million.

Why, out of interest?

And do they actually spend money on 1950s babies?

EastEnders is very good at the moment but needs a water cooler moment to get viewers in. Ratings will stay around the levels they are until that happens.

The Friday episode isn't going anywhere as there is nothing else BBC1 can put there regular that can get 6-8m viewers. Nonsense idea. So many people come up with this nonsense idea. Improve EastEnders and you will get people watching it across the week.

Call The Midwife dipped for series 2, if it dips again then alarm bells will sound.

Regarding EastEnders remember that most storylines happening now were started by Newman. It's just DTC has made changes to the storylines. Most is climaxing now.

It won't be long before there is a long running storyline that will have people talking and in turn bring some viewers back.

Stacey's return will no doubt bring some more viewers in and we don't know what else they have planned for that time either.
Friday episodes can stay where they are The figures have improved and I don't see the need moving EastEnders out of a slot it's had since 2001 now.

EastEnders shouldn't have any LIVE episodes until next year for their 30th. Perhaps have 2 (One Monday and one Friday both 40mins each) or just go for an episode running for an hour with no ad breaks obviously.

They've already done that. I honestly think it's the best now that it's been in a good three years if not more.

It does need something significant to grab the casual audience though. Theoretically that should have been Danny Dyer but it didn't really translate in increased numbers.

Thanks ronant. The One Show is doing well lately, fairly consistently attaining a share of 22%.

Eldorado's biggest problems were Julia Smith & Tony Holland. They made several mistakes with casting like getting some people that weren't actors, focusing on Bunny & Fizz instead of the more interesting Joy and Marcus Tandy. After getting EastEnders so right Julia & Tony got Eldorado so wrong. After stinking out the show for so long the best thing that happened was Julia Smith going and Corinne Hollingworth being brought in. She made the show really good. If only she was there from the start.

I think the last time it was this good was Jan-March 2010.

The Carters have not really had a big storyline as such. It's more about getting to know them at the moment.
Perhaps something big is being lined up that will get people talking and turning it.

At present most of the storylines are just climaxing.

Which is why people saying ditch the Friday episodes are insane. Get the quality up and people will stick with the show across the week. EastEnders is good now but ratings aren't going up. Lots of good storylines playing out but no big storylines playing out like the Kat/Alfie/Roxy wedding day storyline.

Errrr??? Maybe things just take time?

Argument going in circles.

The 1997 series was on Mondays at 9.30 in the summer, though. It did really well at the start but then on Sundays it was being swamped by the ITV big guns, BBC1 were very weak on Sundays at the time, but presumably it would have seemed too much of a demotion to move it off there. It's like when they suggested to David Renwick they move One Foot off Sundays in 1995, which he refused because it sounded like a demotion, only for it to go up against A Touch Of Frost and come out second best, and Renwick later said they should have moved it.

Obviously you can't compare Birds of a Feather's ratings now to then, there are a million and one variables since. ITV aren't bothered about what it got then, they're bothered about the fact they've got a sitcom, any sitcom, getting over five million for show three.


Ha, but of course all this crap from years ago means I can never remember anything the happened last week. You should watch me in work forgetting to do stuff because my brain is so full of rubbish from the nineties.


The reason why they went for unknowns is because that had worked so well on 'stEnders with Anita Dobson and Leslie Grantham, only for lighting to fail to strike twice.

The other thing about Bunny and Fizz is that the entire first episode was a dramatic dead duck because it was mostly based around Bunny and Fizz coming back and the cliffhanger was Bunny unveiling Fizz to everyone. But Fizz was on the cover of the Radio Times, so we all knew what she looked like! I know publicity is a different department but surely you realise your audience is media-savvy and will see the promos, so don't base episodes around stuff that's bound to be spoilered.

It's like the first episode of Episodes where the entire plot revolved around them hiring Matt Le Blanc to be in the sitcom. But we knew he was going to be in it, because he was in the opening titles. That kind of scripting always winds me up.

Channel4 has started to trail their major new entertainment series 'The Jump': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4jYG...ature=youtu.be

It's a brilliant achievement - it's been on for so many years, but the audience is still there for the programme and I'm not surprised, it's one of the best shows on TV I think. The show is performing very well - according to Wikipedia, the first two parter of this series was up in the ratings y-o-y.

Interesting. I had this down as a probable star vehicle in terms of marketing, the fact Steve Redgrave isn't particularly highlighted suggests to me that C4 have more confidence in the show as a whole than most in the real world do. I hope it lives up to their expectations.

Provisional schedules for Feb 1st:

BBC1
2.30 6 Nations Rugby - Wales v Italy (2.30 ko)
4.30 6 Nations Rugby - France v England (5.00 ko)
6.50 News
7.05 The Voice UK
8.25 Who Dares Wins

ITV
6.20 News
6.45 Splash!
8.30 Take Me Out

In previous years the News has been squeezed in at 4.25 so the evening schedule gets the big lead in from the rugby. However the schedulers appear to love the idea of the News before The Voice, bizarrely, giving Splash a massive helping hand. That'll also mean virtually zero post match coverage, so there will some annoyed rugby fans too.

Does mean though that in the event of the rugby majorly overrunning TVUK isn't affected.

It's better to have less post match coverage in order to boost the overall average rating. Often we've seen when there is long post match coverage like the Itv england games, the audience falls away which drags down the average. Better to have minimal post match coverage in order to boost the rating.

But they can't drop the news so it would be affected...


Depends if you're more interested in making a high quality programme which serves the audience well or the ratings average for that programme. It doesn't drop much on the BBC anyway.

Anyway I don't think BBC1's ratings of any concern whatsoever at the moment - 24.5% all day share yesterday for just an average Thursday and it got up to 26% on Tuesday. I'm a BBC fan but it would be nice to see it having a bit of competition...

Saturday 8th will be interesting - BBC1 will have more 6 Nations pushing share close to 30% probably and BBC2 will have the Winter Olympics, potentially pushing ITV down to third. Wouldn't be surprised.

Birds Of A Feather rated very well for several years. I think they had double digit millions for most of their runs. It did one year go up against London's Burning and started the series behind it but ended the series overtaking it. I think many people forget how popular it was.


Not quite correct Steve. Eldorado didn't just have unknowns it had many people that weren't actors. That was its biggest problem like the girl playing Fizz, not a trained actress and then they made her the main focus of the show. Marcus and Joy were far better characters and it should have been built around them from the start.

Nope. Ratings are stable but not going up to 8m regularly. Every show needs a hook to get people in.

My mistake. Can't they at least shorten it, though? If the ball went into touch at 18:55, getting the news on air by 18:57, would they really need to delay TVUK by the whole seven minutes just to make up for that?

To me Dyer has so far been disappointing, little impact, I thought his character was supposed to be stirring things up ? I assume Alfie's trip to Australia coincided with Shane's spell in pantomime in December ?

Eldorado just became a national joke, an amateur show made as if by a Blue Peter presenter with cardboard and sticky back plastic. One of the least unexpected things when it was axed.

I do seem to remember (no doubt someone will know right or wrong) that the first Eldorado had a lead out of a showing of Crocodile Dundee which back then still had clout (does anyone know the ratings for that night?). It is a sign of the times that CD got just 0.88 million on Saturday night iirc.

Looking at the Rugby schedules , as is known the BBC will have F A Cup football back next year too-so early evening quarter 1 Saturdays potentially even stronger.

They haven't really got anything big happening. it's about building the Characters up a little. In 2 weeks time the Dad comes in and the carters seem to hate him. Mick made a comment about him the other night.