No, the second season is on Itv. It is the same insider at the corporation who recently informed me that Andrew Davies has quit writing on Mr Selfridge. What a waste of a BGT lead-in it will be for 6 weeks, airing The Americans out of it.

Oh fair enough. Bad decision showing it on the main channel again. What a waste of a slot. No doubt under 1m most weeks then for 13 weeks.

The intention is that the BGT lead-in will boost it, but that'll only be to around 2million-2.5million if last year's BGT inflated episode of the Americans is anything to go by. Would be very poor for the slot. I think BBC One, even on BGT Saturday nights, could end up running Itv quite close in peak time shares due to Let';s Gte Ready To Rumble which may well become a success.

Considering how much you loathe the corporation I'm surprised you lower yourself to have an insider there, Samuel.

In all seriousness, I agree - surely they should be able to air something with more potential than The Americans considering how it struggled last year?

Very exciting latter part of the rugby, could be a great peak.


That was the premiere leading out of BGT wasn't it? So it will not get anywhere near that again.

It's an insider working to destroy the company from within!

Let's wait until its confirmed before we trust Samuel with this, remember this is probably the same source that said James Corden was going to be a judge on The X Factor last year.

If it does goes in that slot, which I highly doubt (more like 10pm slot) then ITV will drop below 1million which would be a total disaster.

The James Corden thing was from a newspaper article. The information I have received today is from a personal source.

Does this source know you hate ITV and is one of your moles'?

In some other news which has leaked, there is a major new Prince Harry documentary airing on Sunday nights in mid March on the channel. They hope this becomes a ratings-success like the 6m rated Prince William documentary of two years ago and the 5.5million documentary about the Queen last year. It will be the lead-in for the final two episodes of the current series of Mr Selfridge.

That explains quite a lot.

Agree it's been a great game so far.

If England hold on for these last 5mins, it's going to make the final two weekends huge ratings-wise due to four countries being on 4 points. Everything to play for heading into the final two weekends. Just a shame no more England tea-time games.

American shows just aren't big enough for the two main channels, which explains why they rarely show them now and The Americans would be a big mistake for ITV in peak time again.

Can't wait it's going to be tense.

That's it, it's all to play for now

Well, I'm not even going to pretend I like rugby (The Wimbledon effect in play here - we all pretend to like tennis then ignore it for 50 weeks)

Interesting night tonight with the Voice and the Geordies head to head. I don't class either as 'must watch' with the Voice being drawn out and filler and SNT being ad strewn.

Still, nice to have a choice!

True Detective probably the star of the night but with American downloads and the fact its been OnDemand from Sky for a while...might suffer


nb - Did we get Arrow ratings? Aside its random return to a different day which may hurt it.

OK, this is from five pages back before Samuel spent the afternoon trolling the thread, but in the defence of ITV and Christine Bleakley had she stayed at the BBC would she be in any better position now. She'd might still be stuck on The One Show (or had already left), and if the BBC had tried to give her weekend shows they'd have probably been as successful as her projects on ITV. At ITV she has at least got to host one of the key winter entertainment shows and had her own series too, so although she's hardly become a shining star at ITV, she's probably in no worse a position than she'd have been had she stayed wioth the BBC - and with a couple of million extra in the bank too.


Back to ratings news and notice Take Me Out finishes tonight, which I think makes it the shortest series since the first.

Because most channels commission programmes hoping they will flop

I imagine the one your talking about is Prince Harry's Arctic Heroes which has been in production for a while (since the arctic mission was cut short).

Sorry Yorkie it had to be said - well resisted though!


Well it's working - January ITV share is down YOY and I'm sure so will February's. BGT can't come soon enough.

Has Splash been cancelled? In a way it was a show that defied the odds, the critics were calling it the worst show ever last year, yet it got 5 million, but this year it couldn't compete with TV and fell to 3 million.
Also TV effect seems to have hurt TMO, which has fallen to 3.5 million.

Sometimes I think ITV send comedy dramas they're not sure about to Friday nights to die. They have been more successful with straight drama on Fridays like The Ice Cream Girls.

That appears to be ITV's policy with their comedy-dramas, though.(*rolleyes*)

Saturday Night Takeaway is winning the social media buzz over the Voice. Higher buzz on zeebox, more tweets, more talk about it. As expected, it looks like the bookies favourite SNT will win the ratings battle, as we all predicted. But hopefully the Voice can hit the 6million target against Saturday Night Takeaway's 7m+. Anything more than 6-6.5m would be a bonus under these very tough circumstances against the much trailed and heavily hyped SNT launch show.

Laying the foundations for your day of posts tomorrow hey Samuel. Despite the tougher competition there is no way The Voice should dip under 7m. The Saturday Night Takeaway audience is quite different - they like entertainment!