Is ITV a puppy? It seems "ITV Bashing" is being labelled here as some kind of poor defenceless little creature getting constantly bashed and beaten by a thug. It makes me chuckle to think of an image of a little fluffy itv logo being kicked and beaten in a rain soaked gutter. Come on guys, stop being so blinking precious. It's a TV channel, not a living thing!

Great ratings for both shows.

No but it is ****ing tedious reading it constantly

Great ratings for both last week.

As are all the posts pointing it out.

Official figures. Includes +1.

Britain's Got Talent - Auditions 1 to 5 average
2008 - 9.51m (40.8%) s/a down 0.33m versus previous s/a
2009 - 12.13m (49.9%) s/a down 0.04m
2010 - 11.68m (46.4%) s/a down 0.22m
2011 - 10.82m (42.9%) s/a down 0.28m
2012 - 11.90m (43.5%) s/a down 0.07m
2013 - 11.81m (47.5%) s/a up 0.14m
2014 - 11.31m (48.0%) s/a down 0.10m

I agree. That's whay I am giving advice to put it on ignore

I think that covers it. If it wasn't so warm the ratings for both would have been higher. A perfect storm (ironic as the weather was lovely! ) for ITV last night. It happens sometimes.

Hmm lower than the series average for Britain's Got Talent and it will have to go some to match it this week too. Eurovision did well and I'm sure would have timeshifted more had the UK got a better result.

We need somebody to stick up for Adam Crozier and his £8.4m pay packet! Thank God for the ITV freedom fighters on here searching out for negative posts and commenting on them all the time with good grace and class!

Hahahahahaha! Pow I did a funny!

I wont shoot you down much of what you say is true. The only thing is that no channel has the budget these days to be competetive in all slots. There is a lot of filler across the board at present and its likely to continue across Summer but its a fact of life. Apart from BGT Saturday nights are relatively poor but as you point out with those dramas there are still new programs being launched and finding success.
I agree the BBC do have a commercial approach but that has been forced on them by successive governments constantly making them justify their existence.

Samuel's analysis prevents this thread from becoming a 100% SoapyCowellAnt'n'Decw*nkfest!

Cuts it down to at least 90%!

Typical. My first post for weeks and it gets deleted.

Don't know why I bothered...

Superb ratings for both shows!

As long as BBC1 doesn't have a filler filled Autumn like it did last year. That was possibly BBC1's worst Autumn I can ever remember. Sundays against DA isn't really an issue. There's no reason why BBC1 can't put out a PSB documentary series against that. But against IAC last year, BBC1 rolled over on its back and let ITV tickle its tummy!

Hello again Robbie! I said hello to you earlier but it got deleted!

It's their way of saying they love you, Robbie. Treat them mean, keep them keen...

Doesn't work as people still quote him and sadly he dictates the tone of the thread practically every day - as it very evident today. We've lost about a dozen valued contributers thanks to him.

They're certainly being more competitive opposite Britain's Got Talent with Happy Valley and From Here to There airing on Tuesday and Thursday respectively plus Pirates of the Caribbean should be solid enough.

While there's no reason for BBC One to have a weak autumn, in my opinion they shouldn't sacrifice good schedules across the rest of the year just so the autumn is boosted considering commercial networks try their hardest over that period so the quality is better anyway.

I didn't see it at all. Cant you give us a flavour of what it was in a way that wont be deleted

Maybe Andy23 is the moderator.

EDIT: its a joke Andy !!!

I'm not sure that is entirely fair - they were running 2-3 new 9pm dramas a week (granted, The Escape Artist and Ripper Street were weak, but they were not to know that), plus HIGNFY on Friday and some solid factual. There were two repeats of New Tricks - but that was it, everything else was new.

Anyway, it's probably fair to assume the Autumn 2014 schedule will look a little stronger, though. They're dropping Doctor Who, The Apprentice and Bake Off into the mix - all 10-13 week affairs and all pretty high-profile. Difficult to know which of their new dramas will air, but New Tricks & Last Tango will definitely feature. Unless the rest of the schedule really stinks, it seems likely they should see some improvement.

BBC1 was very weak last Autumn. Many big shows didn't start until October. New Tricks suffered from being on Tuesdays. They do look potentially stronger this Autumn.

At I guess I'm going to go with a schedule looking like this:


As for ITV:

No chance, the FA have already said they want to see it at five and I'm pretty sure the Beeb want it there as well, Gary Lineker on Twitter yesterday was saying he preferred it there. I can't see the issue with it either, you get people saying when the last train is but that's an issue for the train companies (hardly anyone goes to these things on the train anyway). You might get home late but if it was earlier you'd have to leave first thing in the morning.

Course it's been over twenty years now since ITV showed the League Cup Final at 5pm which was big enough a deal to get on the news. There was actually a reason for that in 1993, when they first did it, in that they had live rugby on the same day, but it did so well for them in the ratings they kept it there for the next three years until Sky nabbed the contract.


I doubt BT are that bothered, they more or less get the Cup Final for free as part of the deal, they're more concerned with the ratings for the exclusive matches earlier in the competition (like Arsenal vs Liverpool which did very well for them). It's like ITV and the World Cup Final, they're not bothered if that gets three million viewers when earlier in the tournament they got twenty million plus for an exclusive England match. BT aren't host broadcasters for the Cup Final so it's probably one of their cheapest productions of the entire season.

Besides, BT started their coverage over an hour into ITV's coverage so you had to specifically make a decision to switch over (unless you'd watched the rugby) and in addition if you were that big a sports fan that you'd subscribed to BT you were probably more likely to be interested in the Spanish football or the rugby league on Sky, splitting your attentions. Casual fans watch ITV, big sports fans have a couple of events to choose from, and BT's coverage was obviously going to rate poorly. Not a priority for them, though.


The record BGT rating, too, was on a really hot day - the day of ITV's first Cup Final under this contract, in fact, in 2009 when the Cup Final was really late (30th May). Same day next season, too.

Braodcast has come up with the rating I was waiting to see, last week's Perspectives which I thought was a riduclously esoteric subject for near-primetime ITV, Emili Sande on Mexican art. It got 850.000 viewers, in fact, which is probably more than I expected. Be interesting to see what happens tonight when Perspectives goes out against Imagine, the two flagship arts strands being shown at the same time.

Also from Broadcast, here are some Sky Sports ratings which we don't often see...

Palace vs Liverpool (Monday, 19.00, SS1) - 1,189,000
Liverpool vs Newcastle (Sunday, 14.55, SS2) - 1,042,300
Man City vs Villa (Wednesday, 19.00, SS1) - 1,013,200
Man City vs West Ham (Sunday, 14.00, SS1) - 831,100
Spanish Grand Prix (Sunday, 12.00, SSF1) - 642,200
QPR vs Wigan (Friday, 19.30, SS1) - 452,800
Preston vs Rotherham (Saturday, 17.00, SS1) - 429,400
Derby vs Brighton (Sunday, 17.00, SS2) - 427,300
Spanish Grand Prix Qualifying (Saturday, 12.00) - 414,100
Brighton vs Derby (Thursday, 19.00, SS1) - 403,600
Soccer Special (Sunday, 12.00, SSN) - 326,300

For comparison, the Grand Prix got 3.44m on BBC1, with the qualifying getting 2.25m, so not bad ratings for Sky, I think, clearly they've got a loyal audience who are watching every race on there rather than going back to the Beeb. The Liverpool vs Newcastle rating is of course inflated by the fact there was virtually no pre- or post-match coverage, while the Man City match includes an hour either end. But it does illustrate the pull of Liverpool because that was pretty much a dead rubber and most seasons that secondary match would have had a much smaller audience.