Absolutely love your user name!

I am concerned when regular posters start to think this way although I myself do not. I mean today there was a bit of a spat but between a poster who is only here infrequently and another who I dont recognise at all. These things happen and I still think the vast majority of regular posters know how to behave and those that dont can be ignored.

Just to say I completely agree with that as well - except for chillax which is bordering on a reportable offence.

Be interesting to see if the This Morning ratings suffer a dip next month when Phil goes off to film more Mr and Mrs and they partner Holly with Christine Bleakley. Might be a few hair appointments that week.

Breaking the male/female presenter role is an unusual step for TM so I guess this is something to do with ITV trying to test a new role for Christine post DOI becoming DOA. Do they want to see if she can front this sort of live interview style show?

At least it is just for a couple of days, so any negative impact will be mininal.

Channel 4 Racing's drop in viewing figures is no laughing matter http://gu.com/p/3mchg/tf

Silent Witness has achieved 5m+ overnights consolidating to ~7m+ and against a 6m show on ITV - not sure how that is not performing to be honest.

I think it is getting silly that certain posters regard observations and criticisms of something they like as a "personal attack". If someone said "Your bias towards X is so obvious it is cringeworthy" I wouldn't take that as a personal attack because it isn't. It's an opinion, perhaps controversial, but an opinion nevertheless. However if someone said "You are an idiotic moron who only likes X because you're a pratt" then that I would take as a personal attack. It's these over sensitive posters who clearly are unable to deal with being offended (part of life I'm afraid - in life everyone will be offended and will offend) that are making it hard going at the moment!

But, despite my sermon, I won't disappear completely. I will just be more selective as to who I reply to.

...........its just that the race is now the 3.30 at Kempton Park rather than the Grand National it used to be -given the amount of viewers all soaps have lost.

Series one of Splash was almost certainly artificially inflated by the post-Olympics interest in Tom Daley, as well as the complete lack of anything to watch on any other channels when it aired. Neither factor have applied for series two of Splash, and neither factor have applied to series one of The Jump, so I'd hesitate at being so confident in comparisons of their fortunes.


It was the first run of the show to truly capture the attention of viewers outside the die-hards, or the press, since the year of Shilpa Poppadom-gate, more than half a decade ago. It's also widely acknowledged (even by the likes of Dancc) that the transfer to C5 has totally revitalised the show, where before it was dying (and died, even) a slow painful death.

It's been averaging, what, about 2 million in the overnights? A 2 million consolidated figure normally get's a programme into Channel 4's weekly top 10, so I think its a foregone conclusion Channel 4 will want recommission it.

Will there been a 2nd year dropoff (aka Splash)? Who knows. The only way to find out, I guess, is to throw it back into the schedules next year.

Rather than seeing Jump series 2 in six months time though, I wouldn't be surprised (as others have already mentioned) is to see The Games back, in a stripped format, with The Jump returning a further 6 months after that, staying in a winter slot.

This France v England Six Nations match has been excellent in the 2nd half and coming to a nail-biting conclusion. It'll get excellent ratings and also great thing is only 5-mins of post match analysis, so there will not be much there to drag down the average. Also the first 5mins of Splash are going to be hit very hard against the 6.5+ watching BBC One at that time, so job done in that respect.

As you say interesting that they're going for two female presenters (something I can't ever remember them doing before) but hasn't Bleakley filled in for Holly a few times as of late? And of course they already know she's capable of presenting this kind of show since essentially that's what The One Show (and indeed Daybreak) is. It will be interesting to see if they do anything else with Bleakley going forward. Is she still under an exclusive deal or has that come to an end now? I can't remember how long the original deal was and if they resigned her or not.


From this perspective then surely the upcoming Winter Olympics and Paralympics is driving attention and interest in the show then? Something that can't be said for a second series next year.

I am afraid C4 have abit of 'form' when it comes to this sort of thing. A big high prfile capture of some sports rights which they then cock up or gradually lose interest in and then give up the rights in a relatively short space of time. On the plus side they did get rid of McCririck.

On the flipside to that of course is that they've done absolute wonders for Paralympics coverage. You can always rely on Channel 4 to be somewhat schizophrenic.

Aww, Cheers! I hope it's seen as a homage to my home town rather than because I am some kind of deranged fan of The Krankies.

Not that there is anything wrong with being a fan of The Krankies...

(It's just that I'm not)

The final whistle was at 18.53, so only 2-4 mins of post game analysis. Perfect scheduling by BBC, hardly any post game analysis to drag down the average.

Edit: off air at 18.56

That's a bit harsh - they only really did that with the athletics and perhaps with skiing. They'd have kept the cricket if they could have matched Sky's financial clout (and there were reports that they weren't far off when the ECB decided to withdraw their sport from terrestiral TV).

They completely screwed up the ratings though - ditching Highflyer was a huge mistake and in winning exclusive rights by doing that they stripped away pretty much everything which made C4 Racing far superior to the BBC coverage.


Great game of rugby this evening in Paris - loads to discuss. Just a shame the BBC think The Voice is more important.

France v England finishes at 18:53, programme off-air by 18:56. Only two-and-a-half minutes of post-match to drag down the programme average, and next to no knock-on delays to the timings for the rest of the night. Not far off perfect for BBC One.

EDIT: As Samuel said.

The only concern will be if the rugby's nail-biting finish was being watched by 7m+, with the News unlikely to get that high, meaning The Voice suffers from a smaller lead-in figure than it might've got otherwise. But the demographics are so different it shouldn't make that much difference.

Yes, I definetely took it as a homage to Aberdeen from a proud Aberdeen-onian! (I went there in 2004 - there was a fabulous Fish and Chip shop. The cod were more like great White sharks in size!)

Excellent scheduling from BBC One. We've seen with Itv's long 30mins of post-game analysis after England games, how much the audience can tail off and drag down the average. Having 1-2mins of analysis tonight was perfect, will bump up the average, provide a big lead-in for the news and The Voice and round off a very strong day for BBC1. The hardcore rugby fans interested in post match analysis can watch on the red button anyway.

Not really on the same level though, is it. Tom Daley's Olympic final was watched by a peak of 16m viewers, the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremony this Friday will be lucky to get a third of that.

Yes you cant take their Paralympic coverage away from them - the BBC just couldnt be bothered to schedule it properly and quite rightly lost the rights.

I ,mentioned a while back that rugby games tend to overrun, due the number of TV replays being used at the moment.

On this note I've always been somewhat curious as to why ITV in particular have never separated the football and post-match analysis into two different shows giving them two different ratings. Are they just concerned that the post-match show would rate so poorly it would look terrible?

Far from perfect - an absolute insult to the game and not the sort of decision the BBC should be making. There isn't even a red button forum tonight. It doesn't need half an hour but they should at least have been allowed to go through to 7pm.

Why does The Voice need 80 minutes anyway - surely the best way to protect it's ratings is to strip out all the filler and make it a half hour programme.