I guess, but University Challenge gets exceptional audiences for that slot, I don't think 1.2 million is so bad for BBC2 factual.


Well, sometimes it helps to make a splash with some new launches, but putting out three new series in a row never seems to work because then their perception of one tends to colour their views of the other. I mean, how frequently on this thread were Vicious and the Job Lot referred to in the same post even though they were very different series? It just meant you got constant comparisons between the two.

I'm referring here to brand new series, of course. If there are returning series in there too then it helps, we can see that with Britain's Got Talent giving Amazing Greys a leg-up on Saturday. But you should never do brand new series right next to each other.

The long term prognosis of Itv2 and Itv3 are not good. Itv2 is going to be losing the stuff which actually rates well for them to Itv Be in terms of ratings share % such as TOWIE, The Jeremy Kyle Show and Real Housewives. Once they go, theres no way the American import replacements are going to rate as well as those. Celebrity Juice's audience has dropped 50% since this time last year. The Magaluf Weekender rated poorly this time. Second series of Fake Reaction was a disaster. Mark Wright and Tom Daley's new vehicles bombed straight out of the gate. And the biggest flop of all- Two and a Half Men which has killed off all primetime momentum for the channel. Theres no sign of any new hits coming through, it's not a good outlook for the channel.

As for Itv3, the emergence of UKTV's Drama channel [part owned by BBC worldwide] has caused real damage to them. Previously OAPs only really had one option to watch drama repeats, now they have two. And more and more people are choosing the Drama option because by now all the Itv dramas have been repeated plenty of time. Viewers want new repeat offerings and as a result, itv3 are doing bad. When Itv Encore launches, thats likely to take a few more drama viewers away from Itv3.

When Itv1 used to lose share, the Itv digtial channels normally made up for it cos they were growing. Now that the digital channels are doing bad too, this is a dangerous position for the broafdcaster to be in. The main channel is losing share as well as the digital channel. BBC Television meanwhile is getting stronger, more mainstream, promoting more, showing more aggression in terms of comissinioning & scheduling and winning more sports rights.

The gulf between the BBC and Itv simply will continue to get bigger, there is no way the gap will close in the short or medium term, with the way Itv are currently heading. This is actually good for the BBC and all other commercial entities including the newly owned Channel5. Itv losing share is good for all other channels, who will be trying their best to pick up those ex-Itv viewers and it is also good for viewers at home on the whole, because they will try more channels and be more experimental in terms of what channels they watch rather than being habituated to Channel 3.

I think that when a programme on BBC2, Channel 4 or Channel 5 faces Corrie or EastEnders, over 1m should be seen as a success. I think 2m is what they should be aiming for away from soaps though for factual.

Speaking of which The Watermen won't be on at 9pm in Scotland for the next few weeks. So the overnights will be affected.



Always felt Vicious should have launched after BGT. That scheduling successfully launched Scott & Bailey. Also, Vicious and The Job Lot should never have launched together but with a hit show on before as a lead-in.

Indeed, hardly worth mentioning.

Two afternoon shows in slots that change frequently anyway, a returning show at 5 and a new drama. In the olden days the first Monday in January and September, almost the entire schedule would be brand new.

Good Morning Britain obviously going for a low key launch, but it won't stop some declaring it a flop after day one and going over the top like it was a 6 part drama. Considering there will be about 250 shows a year, it has to be on air months before you can tell how it is going.

April 28th is an ideal date to launch, besides waiting until September. It's the last date before you start colliding with bank holidays, university wind down, summer holidays etc.

Its cheap to broadcast so no reason to get rid of it.

Apart from all those OAP's suck on BBC1 all day. If these viewers of BBC started to drift away and check out other channels, would that still a good thing?

What a ghastly list. All but two down YOY. ITV really need to up their game, and hopefully later this year/early next year things recover. I have no idea why things such as OTR and Catchphrase are down so much from last year, whereas BBC1 still remains strong. I suppose you can always rely on the older generation who would watch AR and CF.

I think its a matter of certain public places and OAP homes stuck on BBC1 and the bosses won't change channel.

Do they have BARB boxes in nursing homes? Doubt it, so wouldn't make a difference.

Lol, the minute anyone leaves the BBC for anyone else, they are now declared as rubbish.

EastEnders repeat is a low priority for BBC3, their directly commissioned content is much more important. Same reason why ITV2 side line their soap repeats compared to the early days.

Indeed. He's kept some aspects of BBC Three ticking along nicely, e.g. factual, but messing around with the EastEnders repeat, which regularly hit 1m, even 1.5m before he took over, and reducing its audience to as low as 0.1m was a balls up on a monumental scale.

And as for making BBC Three's new sitcom slot the same as BBC Two's (10pm), the mind boggles.
Interesting. Has she been told there are no plans for her?

Discovery throwing themselves off a huge mountain. And setting a date for Everest Jump Live.



I doubt it. Most of the Eurosport rights either come through the EBU where they get the rights as the subscription partner while the FTA rights are dealt with separately, or through arrangements direct with federations where they get the subscription rights and again the FTA rights are sold separately. Even where they have exclusive live rights like with Superbikes there are FTA highlight deals in place which would stop them using C5.

The thing is though if ITVs returning shows are mostly down I am not sure what they can do to up their game. I think its a liitle baffling to see so many LE shows all down together and in the case of OTR and Catchphrase they are only in their 2nd series. They have also suffered reductions in a lot of dramas as well.
They have of course had some big hits this year as well we should remember but clearly not enough.
Could Samuels talk of ITV reach being down be at least partly responsible?

In a bid to help boost ratings, the BBC staged a major press screening today of EastEnders' upcoming episode involving the death of a major character: https://twitter.com/SunTVMagazine/st.../photo/1/large

Critics who watched the episode have said it is "astonishing" and "harrowing", with the acting being incredible. The BBC are soon going to launch an advertising campaign for the show with the slogan 'Walford Will Change Forever'. This promo is being described as "jaw dropping".

Indeed, she's probably been told they don't want her back. Until a change a producer a few years down the line.

She might be happy being the "queen of Bingo"

Slightly better than being the face of Farmfoods.

You've missed off your third paragraph.

The one about expectations now increasing, nothing less than such and such will be good enough etc etc. you know the stuff you'd post if it was a press launch for a new ITV show.

In all seriousness, we have enough people here hanging on every word whenever there is an EastEnders announcement, bigging up every episode like its the second coming, without you joining in as well.

Reduction in Itv reach is definiately partly responsible. It's no coincidence that Itv reach has declined about 10pct, and many of those shows have also fallen around 10pct. If one of two shows fell, then we could put it down to a reduction in quality. But with almost all those shows falling, the decline in Itv reach is definitely a factor. The fewer the number of people in our population willing to tune into Itv per week, the less likely run-of-the-mill shows are to match their ratings of old. Exceptions to this rule are the big tentpoles but for the normal every day sort of thing, they are being impacted by the decline in reach.

We have heard all this stuff before though have we not?

Itv are doing a full blown advertising campaign for Prey. Billboards, plenty of spot promotion, the lot. An example of one of their on-street bus stop promotions: https://twitter.com/dodgethedraft/st.../photo/1/large

Considering Undeniable launched to 5.8m last week, with fairly little promotion, Prey will need to hit ~6.5million I'd imagine to justify the extra promotional cost and marketing campaign. Prey has been getting heavy trailing so I wouldn't be surprised with around 6.7m exc +1 against non drama competition.


I think this next week or two, we may witness a turning point for Eastenders. The gap behind Coro last night was less than a million and it wasnt down from last Mondays audience as much as the other soaps. I have a feeling we could see an upward movement, certainly share-wise.

You are fully aware of ITV's marketing budget and the cost and comprehensiveness of their off-screen advertising campaigns now then? Is there no end to your knowledge of the behind the scenes workings of ITV.

With their declining reach, and most of the population avoiding the channel, I'd say any rating greater than 5m would be good thesedays. Only the BBC would get a drama launching at almost 7m due to their massive loyal audience who are satisfied daily by how brilliant every minute of their schedule is.

All Im saying is if a drama as recently as last week [Undeniable] could launch with 5.8million with a fairly low key advertising campaign, it would be reasonable to expect around 6.5m for a new drama launching in the same slot in a couple of weeks which has been given far more promotion not just on-screen but also off-screen. Clearly having a billboard type of marketing campaign will cost more than just having a normal run of the mill on-screen campaign.

That's the problem I have with EastEnders. They hype things up to the high heavens, and they rarely deliver. We might get the odd good episode for a week or so, but the quality never remains consistent. And I think that's why a lot of viewers have turned away from the soap, including myself.

Although even fans of CS and ED have said the same about them recently as well. I think EE is much better and more consistant now IMO.

The main issue for itv at the moment is probably the decline for Corrie - if episodes are down as much as 18% and it's accounting for 2.5 hours a week it's going to make an impact. We can all see where the other issues are so far this year, particularly that Friday 9pm slot, a slow start on Mondays this year and weakness on Thursdays since the comedies departed. Fridays still aren't great but at least The Cube is doing better than what was there. The drama situation on Mondays seems to have picked up a bit. BGT will likely improve the reach and I note that the most recent weeks shares were on a par with last year.

I'd say there are 2 key "structural" issues for itv at the minute:

Thursdays: Birds of a Feather and Benidorm worked and a longterm goal might be to put more comedy in that slot. But the 8.30pm spot seems a tricky one and would an unknown brand launch so well there? In the meantime the poor performance in that slot is dragging down 9pm.

Wednesdays: All Star Mr and Mrs and Big Stars Little Star are doing decent business in the 8pm slot. But going from very light entertainment into crime drama isn't working and hasn't worked at all since this slot opened up. They ought to look at more 120' commissions for this slot, possibly big pieces in entertainment and drama with the benefit of the Corrie lead-in.

Given that Friday is often not the ideal slot for new drama with the generally dismal numbers across all channels, this all comes together to mean that itv only really have Sundays and Mondays as options for drama.

Looking at their digital portfolio, I'd say itv2 is mainly a "cyclical" decline. Two and a Half Men is crippling primetime and needs to be moved swiftly. And Q1 last year was a particularly strong period for them so comparisons were prone to being less than great. Celebrity Juice is down 22% in most recent officials. TOWIE is up slightly. Plebs is due to return. I think they could use a replacement for Peter Andre. And they're probably hitting themselves for commissioning a Mark Wright series which rated dismally and a Joey Essex special which rated brilliantly. itv3 is perhaps more concerning long term if it is the case that another channel is now eating away at its market share.


I wondered how long it would take you to gleefully report this information! I do hope ITV and ABC tested this technology before buying... Dire timing for them considering this all went down while the great and good of TV assembled in Cannes (where Rising Star was such a hit 6 months ago). So much faith was built on the back of one series doing so well. Now one series doing badly could rock the boat.

On the Israel thing, it's not often I've seen you spinning for X Factor. But both shows did incredibly well, their ongoing battle was a huge story which captured international media attention and ultimately X Factor was only slightly ahead. And I think I'm right in saying that Keshet and Reshet are the same channel (channel 2) they just split the airtime. To try and suggest Rising Star's initial run in Israel was anything less than a strong success is absurd.


It also sounds a lot like the sing off on the X Factor... apart from the voting bit of course... which is the whole point of the show! It's like saying The Voice auditions are a bit similar to X Factor... apart from the spinning chairs.


Thought he'd have gone down the indie route. His contacts must be pretty appealing for indies having spent time as a Controller at both ITV and the BBC in recent years. I'm sure Sky are paying nicely but I'd not have picked him out as an obvious leader for Atlantic.

I think this next week or two, we may witness a turning point for Eastenders. The gap behind Coro last night was less than a million and it wasnt down from last Mondays audience as much as the other soaps. I have a feeling we could see an upward movement, certainly share-wise.[/quote]

The novelty will wear off considering the reveal isn't till next year. Will the viewers that Eastenders lost come back and stick with it? Time will tell.