I'm thinking more if TXF continues to decline and ITV decide to finish it in 2 years time that Rising Star could replace it.
However, you are right about ITV, they have some decent hits, but in recent years BBC One has overtaken it and they did develop a terrible image in the noughties that they still can't shake off.

Not seen it mentioned here but the Tories have accidently done the BBC a favour by stupidly refusing to allow pubs to stay open late for the England v Italy World Cup match, so that should boost home viewing.

Absolutely stupid decision (but it's the Tories - what do you expect?), but I thought the 11pm closing had been scrapped a couple of years ago anyway.

For the record I've never once said that Rising Star was capable of 6-7 million in fact I've been consistently pessimistic about its future. Having said that I think in general you're overplaying the strength of the BBC's hand and the dire situation at ITV. Dancing on Ice, a show on its last legs, has held up surprisingly well against Call the Midwife this year. The idea that a new and exciting format wouldn't be able to pull down a 6+ million audience in that same slot seems questionable to me. That doesn't mean that Rising Star is the right format of course. Equally given how vulnerable The Voice has been during its first two years on air the notion that the BBC indefinitely have Q1 weekends sown up and ITV can't possibly play there seems ridiculous. Takeaway is back in a few weeks and The Voice moves out of the audition stage in a few weeks as well. Lets see how strong BBC1's all out domination and crushing of ITV is then before getting ahead of ourselves.

I'll also just say Call the Midwife has never regularly faced strong competition on Sunday night. In fact the only time it has, Christmas Day, its ratings have taken a hit. Its entirely possible that the right format on ITV could take some of the wind out of the sails of Midwife which would cause some problems for BBC1 on Sunday night.

Plus you have a tendency to overplay this 'total reach' card.

Firstly let me ask you this, what is the total reach of the entire ITV network not just the main channel? Secondly why is the only mention of a new ITV format going to occur on ITV? You don't think any other number of outlets might pick that story up especially if ITV play it right? In fact I'll make a bold prediction that before the end of the year one of two things will happen either ITV will hire Cheryl Cole as a judge for Rising Star or they'll leak to the press that they're in talks with her to do Rising Star. This in turn then leads to a series of 'is Rising Star the new X Factor'. Now not only is Rising Star going to get press coverage for a ratings competition with The Voice on BBC1 but also because maybe ITV are grooming it to replace The X Factor. This also has the benefit of boosting The X Factor's profile because now it and Rising Star are in competition with one another for on air talent (and Simon Cowell is unhappy about it).

In truth its incredibly easy to see how ITV can create a huge media fire storm for Rising Star that can build a massive level of interest for it and not just for it but also for The X Factor. In contrast to all that what exactly are the BBC going to do with The Voice next year? They've just done the big refresh of the presenters and the judging panel what other cards do they have to play? Maybe they replace Tom and/or Will. Or worse yet have to replace one of their popular new judges. Again this isn't to say that Rising Star is going to be huge (I don't think it will be) more that you're looking at it incredibly simplistically and unsurprisingly overstating the BBC's strength here.

The press will mention it but the most powerful way to promote new shows is through tv, where it reaches millions of viewers quicker than newspaper promotion. Itv's reduction in reach across the network will have an impact on how new shows like Rising star launches. Of course the press will talk about it, Im not saying anything otherwise, but with fewer people in our population willing to tune into Itv per week compared to BBC1 or compared to where Itv was at 5 years ago, will make it harder for Rising Star to launch significantly well. Also lets not forget how you were predicting Breathless would launch with 5million last Autumn due to all the promotion it was getting etc, even though I kept saying it would not do well on debut for a number of reasons, and it ended up launching with just 3.4m. I sense another situation here with Rising star where it wont launch remotely close to how the Voice opened a couple years ago and that it will end up as a ratings disappointment.

And in terms of the Xmas day CTM example you gave, Christmas day habits are completely different to usual [Downton abbey for example rates much lower than usual on that day, Doctor who rates much higher than usual compared to regular series episodes, etc] and it aired in a very early slot. On Sundays at 8pm CTM has faced some pretty stiff competition including DOI [when it was getting 7m+], Wild at Heart [6m+], Coronation Street but has always held up well against them. It wont have a problem sweeping away Rising star. The BBC are much stronger than Itv with their Q1 winter weekend schedule and Id bet you a lot of money that Itv wont be able to overturn it next year. Call The Midwife and The Voice are too powerful and popular for whatever Itv has coming up.

The Voice is doing well but it's still not getting X Factor sized ratings and isn't doing series 1 Voice ratings.

Any pub can ask for an extension for a special event, it costs £21 to apply.Not sure what it's got to do with the government in any case, I think you'll find it will quietly go away.

The Voice is getting XFactor sized ratings. The averages Score posted included +1. Without +1 or repeats, the Voice is rating around the same levels XF was the last two years and well higher than what XFactor series 3 was getting.

They lost a lot of their interest in the cricket, as the years went by, though:

They started ending Test coverage before play had finished for the day, to make way for Simpsons and Hollyoaks.

They even persuaded the ECB to alter the start of play to 10.30am instead of 11am, resulting in matches in Late August and early September starting on dewy pitches!

They cut the amount of preview at the start of each day.

They halved the duration of the Cricket Roadshow, reduced its scale and ambition, and cut the number of editions.

Simon Hughes hinted they weren't even showing every match they had rights to broadcast in the later years.

They cut the highlights from 50 minutes to 25 minutes.

They tired of overseas tour highlights.

And, then there were the horse racing interruptions. Far more than the BBC had, and far longer in duration. To add insult to injury, at the end of their coverage of a race, they would go to a long break, then return to the race course just to have a presenter say it was time to go back to the cricket. That was done to avoid the break restrictions (one ad every three overs) on the cricket. And, although they did a smaller scale version of what the BBC did in their final two years (a mixture of cricket and racing on BBC One, with simultaneous uninterrupted cricket coverage on BBC Two) with cricket and racing on C4 and uninterrupted cricket on a digital channel, they very often didn't bother flicking the switch, so frequently, Film 4 or whatever would carry on broadcasting the preview loop all afternoon instead of the cricket.

And then there was S4C, who opted out of hours of cricket for Eisteddfods, on one occasion losing their link to the Welsh festival, so rather than returning to the cricket, they broadcast white noise for a few hours instead.

All that and more played into the ECB's hands when they wanted to chase the BSkyB dollar.

Does getting a second singing competition put The X Factor team's nose out of joint? I'd be thinking they are considering replacing me. Could the long-term thinking be to put it on in the Autumn to replace X Factor?

Most Watched Live Shows of 2014 so far
01 - 8.48m - Coronation Street (20/01, 20:30, ITV)
02 - 8.25m - Call the Midwife (19/01, 20:00, BBC1)
03 - 7.15m - The Voice UK (11/01, 19:00, BBC1)
04 - 7.10m - EastEnders (06/01, 20:00, BBC1)
05 - 6.84m - Sherlock (01/01, 21:00, BBC1)
06 - 6.82m - Birds of a Feather (02/01, 20:30, ITV)
07 - 6.77m - Emmerdale (06/01, 19:00, ITV)
08 - 6.74m - Countryfile (19/01, 18:00, BBC1)
09 - 6.45m - The Musketeers (19/01, 21:00, BBC1)
10 - 6.27m - BBC News (03/01, 18:00, BBC1)

11 - 6.00m - Death in Paradise (14/01, 21:00, BBC1)
12 - 5.78m - Antiques Roadshow (12/01, 20:00, BBC1)
13 - 5.58m - Pointless Celebrities (04/01, 19:00, BBC1)
14 - 5.55m - Dancing on Ice (05/01, 18:15, ITV)
15 - 5.52m - The National Television Awards 2014 (22/01, 19:30, ITV)
16 - 5.49m - The National Lottery: Who Dares Wins (11/01, 20:30, BBC1)

Data up to January 25th. Excludes +1, includes HD. Only one programme per show and only one news bulletin per channel.

Only top sixteen at the moment, will expand to a top 20 over time.

Last night's The Voice outrated the series one premiere (8.43m/37.6%).

It is however the press coverage (or coverage in other media) that tends to drive the debate and conversation that can dramatically raise the profile of these kind of shows in particular. This is exactly what happened with The Voice when it launched and a large part of the reason that the BBC opted to launch it opposite Britain's Got Talent – they knew the press would give them mountains of coverage for it which can be infinitely more effective in driving interest to the show than promotion across the BBC network alone. Meanwhile the point of my comments on the press coverage was to point out (as I said in the post itself) that this idea that Rising Star won't or can't get a huge amount of press interest is nonsense. You might wish that to be the case but its actually incredibly easy to envision any number of ways that ITV can create a media fire storm for Rising Star. Again as I said previously that doesn't mean its going to produce results in and of itself though.



Although it didn't seem to effect the return of Birds of a Feather. Or indeed the launch of Broadchurch. Nor did effect the return of Saturday Night Takeaway last year and I suspect it won't impact on it this year either. Downton Abbey also seems to be doing fine.


Actually what I believe I said was that there's absolutely no reason why ITV (and indeed the BBC) can't launch drama in the Autumn at 5 million especially given the level of promotion it was getting.


Which is a false equivalence since absolutely nobody is suggesting it will.


Downton Abbey is another show that is very rarely, if ever, given any kind of real competition so I'm not sure that's really the best example to use here. Meanwhile Doctor Who does exactly what shows are supposed to do on Christmas Day get higher numbers so again I'm not sure that's the best example you can use. Meanwhile your examples of what its faced on Sunday night somewhat undercut the argument that it has a stranglehold on Sunday that can't possibly be broken.

It needs to do that though I think in order to justify another series. Especially as its playing out with hardly any competition in a ratings high spot of the calendar. I thought it might reach 9 million overnight and not drop below 8 to be honest as its not got a lot of pressure from itv at the moment. Perhaps it depends on whats leading it in. Im not sure of its highest ever overnight and rating. Presumably from series 1.

Well you say that but the week before the Voice started everyone said " Spash's" ratings were good circa 5 million, and TV started and everyone switched over, last year everyone said Spash's did well.

Getting eight to ten million on Saturday night is excellent no one should play it down in any way, ratings going up during the show, indicates people enjoy it.

I agree about DA. It does less well on Christmas day because of stronger competition from BBC1. The same can be said for Call The Midwife. There is absolutely no way of knowing how strong both dramas would be if the opposition put up stronger competition. It can be argued that BBC1 especially makes no effort in competing with DA which could inflate the ratings of DA. Or, you could argue that DA is such a powerhouse that it will destroy everything in its wake. (By Any Means). If CTM had launched 4 years ago against a much mightier DOI, would that be the giant it is now? I agree with your point though Alex. If either side put up real competition, with programming people genuinely wanted to watch, they'll watch it, even if it means they don't watch the show that has traditionally been in that slot. Nothing should be taken for granted. No one expected SCD to be the hit it has become.

The Voice and BGT pumped each other up in the early part of the 2012 series. The Voice doesn't have that assistance this year, which offsets the seasonal advantage. The share is down just a point on the March 2012 opener which rated similarly (slightly lower), indicating that the seasonal issue isn't that crucial when comparing January and March.


Lewie's list: http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showt...8#post70710268

The highest overnight and official were both on 14 April 2012, the fourth and final blind auditions episode: 10.68m (45.5%) overnight, 11.99m (47.0%) consolidated. (Consolidated share taken from Broadcast)

I don't expect it to be a huge BGT style beast. It would be unrealistic to think it would be. I see no reason why it can't pick up 5-6m though because not everyone wants to watch, or likes to watch BGT. And, gymnastics does have enough variety in them to make it entertaining to watch.

Based on how the first series of Splash and The Jump have rated for their respective channels, I'm optimistic about how Let's Get Ready To Tumble will rate. The production values will be higher than those two shows, the discipline will be more varied than Splash, performances will be longer than 5-second dives, the coaches involved [Beth Tweddle and Louis Smith] are both popular with tv viewers having both recently won entertainment shows, quality of coverage will be higher too. It has the hallmarks of a hit. BBC One will schedule it for whatever time BGT isnt airing. If BGT is at 8pm, Tumble should air at 7pm. Or if BGT is at 7pm, Tumble should go at 8pm. Eitehr way, I sense a 5m rater for BBC1.

The Saturday audition shows for The X Factor's last series officially averaged 9.67m. It is looking unlikely that The Voice will be able to match that given the officials so far (9.35m, 8.88m, 8.86m).

The X Factor's highest rating in series 3 was 10.78m when Leona won. I'd be very surprised if The Voice series 3 matched that as well. Maybe in series averages but The X Factor was still only just establishing itself back then whereas The Voice has been a big show from the launch.

Sorry, I haven't contributed to this thread before, so this is just a polite enquiry to find out how this list is worked out. At number 5. in the list you have Sherlock, but on another list I think it was nearer the top of the chart with a much larger figure?

Thanks.

I was thinking more in terms of series 1 highs.

If last night's Voice ends up with 9.45m it will have beaten the series 1 premiere which had 9.44m. It also needs to pass the highest rated edition of series 2 which was 9.50m. This week's edition could end up doing that.

Hello, and welcome.

The list you are enquiring about is the figures for those that watched at the very precise time the programme aired. It does not take into consideration anyone who watched on +1, later in the evening or final consolidated figures. Just the raw, as broadcast figures. Hope this helps.

That explains it then - and thanks for replying so quickly.

DMN is the demo split for Death In Paradise the same as last year?

I've wondered what the format of Rising Star is after the auditions, as it seems to have a similar problem to The Voice in that it has a gimmicky opening round and becomes another singing contest. I don't know if it can happen, but what if they come up with a new DOI format moved to Saturday's in Q1, shift Splash to Sunday's along with off thier rockers & Catchphrase and incorporate the (admittedly good idea) of Rising Star's auditions into X Factor? It would be a good way to not upset Cowell too much and possibly breathe some life into a floundering format?