Davies wrote three episodes of series 1 and also the premiere episode of series 2. He has now quit writing for Mr Selfridge, partly because he is now concentrating on writing a major drama project for the BBC called War and Peace, which will be one of the biggest drama hits of next year.

Red or Black was the best thing X Factor 2011 had going for it in terms of other itv shows. Even the last episode on a Saturday managed overnights of 4.51m (against Doctor Who) and 5.83m - and it was those figures that got the whole thing a second chance. They'd kill for those numbers at the moment! Of course this pattern didn't continue the next year when they made it a Saturday show and it failed to make it out of the 3's.

The midweek ratings were pretty dismal though. And the whole thing was doomed by the weight of expectations (not to mention the lack of any obvious role for the contestants to play!).

I have just done intensive research on the Rugby World Cup 2015 fixtures. It appears that unless XFactor airs as early as 6.30pm [which isnt gonna happen], there will be no episodes of The XFactor in 2015 for 5 straight Saturdays between 19th September and 17th October 2015. Dont know how Itv will get around that, it will delay the live shows surely and will they then reduce the number of live weeks or overflow into January 2016?

The Rugby World Cup schedule has been done in such a way that fortunately for them their Sunday and Monday primetime schedules will not be affected. So the dramas on those nights will be fine. In terms of the Saturdays though, good news for Strictly Come Dancing which will be able to have a free run for 5 weeks and establish itself quite well.

England v Wales at 20:00 on Saturday 26 September 2015 should be a massive rater. However all Strictly needs to do is start at 18:30 to avoid it.

Like SamuelW I can't see The X Factor starting at 18:30 for five weeks (directly against Strictly, even if The X Factor does come back more competitive in 2014) so I guess a change of day will be needed? I suggest Sundays for the audition shows, leading into the dramas at 21:00.

Would XFactor have to change its format then to accomodate that? Last year they had room auditions on the Saturday and then the same contestants in the arena auditions on Sunday. Would be weird if one Sunday they had room auditions, the following Sunday it went to arena auditions, then room auditions and so on.

Also what happens to bootcamp and live shows, will they be cut down? Or go past December and overflow into January? Wouldnt that have a knock on effect on how Rising star is scheduled in 2016, if that gets a second series.

Indeed.

Guess List would hold onto more of the BGT lead-in audience than Less Than Amazing Greys.

I was not suggesting the show might be a comedown. I was referring to sharing the presenting duties. I haven't followed Graham's career closely, but I can't remember him ever not being the sole presenter on anything he's done.

Then there's the issue of being second fiddle to Brucie, and missing the two editions Bruce wants to present.

We don't know, do we, if the split auditions will persist into the 2014 series, let alone 2015. And I've got a feeling that Rising Star won't survive its rookie series.

All in all, too early to say, although it will certainly be interesting.

Personally I'd start it all a week earlier so the auditions aren't affected, as they'd run Saturday 22nd August-Sunday 13th September. The following weekend I can't see them airing a first round France v Italy game on the main network. It'll go on ITV4. So bootcamp weekend could run as normal on Saturday 19th/Sunday 20th. Then things get a little more complicated. For judges houses last year they aired 2 x 110 minute episodes, one on Saturday and one on Sunday. So I guess they could just air them across 2 Sundays (27th Sept and 4th Oct). That seems reasonable enough (they could edit it so that we see some decisions across both shows, like they did last year).

For the 2 live weeks affected I'd just run performance shows on Sundays from 7-9pm. Then results shows Mondays 8-9pm, with the displaced Corrie used elsewhere. I know it means overlapping with EastEnders but that isn't the end of the world and they could then avoid disrupting the 9pm drama (and give it a big lead-in too).

Not ideal but I don't think it'd be too bad.

Pretty easily I'd have thought. Double bills on Sundays. Or better still, Sundays at 8pm and Mondays at 9pm (Mondays are a day off for the RWC). There's no rule that says XF has to be on Saturdays or not on at all. So long as they're consistent with how they do it then it might actually work out quite well.

They wouldnt be able to have a Monday night results show on 12th October because there is an England Euro 2016 qualifying game that night that they'll be showing. Also it wouldnt be a wise idea airing Sunday performances 7-9pm, Strictlys results show will dent it a lot surely.

That's a bit awkward. I guess the best solution would be to do some kind of twist that means they could get the whole thing done in about 2 hours that week. I know it'd mean losing an hour but they'd make up for it elsewhere in the series.

That slot would be fine for the Sunday performances. Strictly would dent it a bit but that would be cancelled out by being on a Sunday rather than a Saturday. They'd dent Strictly too.

"Britians Got Talent" gained alot in plus one viewers. Wonder how it will hold up against "Eurovision" next week, its always had a clash before. Im glad itv have moved it away.

With most live football gone from ITV by then, this will be a massive consolation for the third button. Also since rugger attracts a more middle class audience than football, this will be demographically brilliant for ITV. I think the RUWC offers ITV Sport a temporary breathing space as without it, there would have had almost no sport to show on their main channel.

I think the move will do Eurovision a lot more good than it will BGT, it's basically serving up 11m viewers who could get hooked if it looks like the UK might do well. I think BGT will be fine, the 7pm start and shorter run time might depress ratings a bit but the main impact will be that +1 will take a big hit as will Same Day timeshift. On the plus side, it's not a holiday weekend. And if it does drop, it will recover the next week with the FA Cup final lead-in.

I'm pretty sure that, regardless of ownership, as ITV Breakfast Broadcasting Ltd holds the separate "National Breakfast-time" licence the condition is that they have to supply programming strictly from 06:00-09:25 every day. This would explain why the traditional but rather odd timing has persisted since 2009 when ITV took full ownership.

On the BBC yes.

p.s I wish you would post links to this news you come by. I know you have several 'sources' that feed you this information but it would be nice to see a link to a website.

I thought Scott and Bailey were created by Suranne Jonea and Sally Lindsay from Corrie - nothing to do with Sally Wainwright.

P.S. Love how some folk here who are so dismissive of +1 are now quick to bump up the Friday night edition of EE by including the omnibus rating.

It was. Sally Wainwright wrote some episodes for it. I think given that she's writing for the BBC for two dramas her leaving won't matter and might be better, being that the writers there at the moment can concentrate on Scott & Bailey alone and not 2 other dramas.

Happy Valley was the best launching midweek drama on any channel since 2011 based on overnight ratings, excluding +1 and repeats.

That's not what it's about at all - the omnibus is picking up timeshift viewers who really should have been assigned by BARB to the Friday 20:00 episode, and would have been if the BBC had been using a technical solution to distinguish them (an inaudible audio code embedded in the broadcasts).

What about shoving Jezza K into the afternoon?

6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine
10.00 This Morning
12.30 ITV News at Noon
1.00 Loose Women
2.00 Dickinson’s Real Deal
3.00 Jo Frost’s Family Matters
4.00 The Jeremy Kyle Show
5.00 Paul O’Grady

Huh? No one is doing that, people are just proving that catch up viewers that should be going to Friday 8pm showing are being added to the omnibus. I see no one adding the omnibus rating to the 8pm rating. (Bravo on the next-level spinning though, moving past just spinning ratings and onto twisting other people's posts to fit an agenda as well.)

They went to Wainwright with the idea, she then wrote most of the episodes, with Amelia Bullmore writing three. I assume Bullmore will be the one writing Series 4.

STV & UTV could in theory opt out and show their own programming at 9:25 which would be impossible if ITV scheduled programming across the junction, therefore programmes still need to end at 9:25