Because I never have. Simple as that. Not everyone has a constant agenda on this thread.

Here's this week's Drama Top 20 (YTD) for up to and including the 25th May.

Ranking is based on the series average using their consolidated ratings (+1 rating reported separately). Ratings courtesy of D.M.N, BARB and rzt

Another week, with no movement at all in the top 20. Of the 2 new BBC 1 dramas, From There to Here enters at No. 22, while Quirke can only make No.25.

(c) = series is complete.

And for completeness, below are the primetime dramas which registered 1m+ for week ending 25th May (i think i've got the days right)

Monday
Game of Thrones: 1.64m (+1: 0.1m)

Tuesday
Holby City: 4.27m
Happy Valley: 7.33m
The Mentalist: 1.72m (+1: 0.26m)

Wednesday
NCIS: 1.4m (+1: 0.22m)
24: Live Another Day: 1.18m (+1: 0.05m)

Thursday
From There To Here: 5.51m
Person of Interest 1.23m (+1: 0.15m)
Person of Interest 1.03m (+1: 0.12m)

Friday
SHIELD: 1.67m (+1: 0.25m estimate)
NCIS: 1.44m (+1: 0.16m)

Saturday
Casualty: 4.8m

Sunday
Quirke: 4.94m
Fargo: 1.53m (+1: 0.25m estimate)

BBC Officials we 25 May

Countryfile 4.92m
Happy Valley 7.33m
Casualty 4.80m
Holby 4.27m
Antiques Roadshow 4.95m
HIGNFY 4.65m
Watchdog 3.90m
DIYSOS 4.06m
Quirke 4.94m
From Here To There 5.51m

Starts at 7pm next Monday.

I think that Holby City is vulnerable to a concerted push from ITV. BBC1 need to build this show back up. They're trying with more trailers but it has become wallpaper now. EastEnders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale can pop a rating for a publicised episode but Holby doesn't like it used to.

I also think the quality of the 9pm drama on Tuesday draws people in just like on Mondays for BBC1. Panorama is a terrible lead in for a 9pm drama on Mondays but some have worked there.

The papers are just milking the situation about GMB, they sense blood and love kicking something when it's down.

Speaking of which Daily Express has one quoting bookmaker odds on Good Morning Britain's future. But hey it's all publicity! They like being in the papers!

http://www.express.co.uk/news/showbi...d-being-sacked

From May 2015 onwards ITV will no longer have to show European football on Tuesdays. While this can rate well if an English club progress, quite often dead rubber matches have struggled to get past 3 million. Being freed of football means ITV could probably show a strong drama opposite Holby City. Also since ITV tends to appeal more to women, who mostly don't like football, this could be a good win for them.

I have noticed a few trailers for Holby - like you say maybe they are starting to take an interest and trying to give it a bit of a boost.

We can see from the above figures a Drama core rating of four million stuck with BBC1 from EE through Holby delivering that four million to the next drama on BBC1 at 9, that Drama block works well. Week in week out it works, Holby has been up at five million and has had some interesting actors in it, like Paul O Grady, Clearly it's bring plugged now do it's fallen a bit to a level the BBC is not happy with, these ongoing dramas hook viewers in and are cheap against normal drama costs. But it's the core Drama audience sticking on one channel from 7.30 to 10, it hands over four million drama viewers to, Last Tango in Halifax or Happy valley, move shows like The Paradise from that protection on Tuesday to say Sunday and they loose viewers.. Monday has been an uphill struggle on BBC1 post Panorama Comedy rather than Drama has worked there and the main drama show to do well here was New Tricks.

No other night is as solid for BBC1 and consistent, other nights it's a rollacoster between BBC1 and ITV. Both up and down with ITVs M.O. bring to sandwich Eastenders and grab it's viewers back straight after, in fact, post EE, Holby dies the best normally to keep hold of the viewers gained on One.


What we see where the BBC does best is to hold in there keep it's nerve, BBC Breakfast had dome people on DS say it should change or is boring but is a banker, no major changes and ratings up., Holby beef it up a bit with a star name, and it can hold it's own with anything ITV throws at it, Waterloo road shows moving a show around kills it.


Yes it's being plugged a lot now. What it needs is a star name back it's had many, it gets viewers back and moving it to Thursday recently for one night lost viewers.

Wouldn't ITV love a cheap drama 52 weeks a year that pulls in for to five million each week?


That's how it always starts death by a thousand cuts, as soon as the papers turn on a show viewers start go re think if they should be watching and are they out of touch, it's bad publicity and it's failing fast.

* HD estimated at 500k.

Coronation Street:

Mon: 8.39m [+730k] / 8.64m [+770k]
Wed: 6.51m [+720k]
Fri: 8.34m [+1.1m] / 7.73m [+1.01m]

EastEnders:

Mon: 7.83m [+870k]
Tue: 8.8m [+840k]
Thu: 7.5m [+740k]

Emmerdale:

Mon: 6.55m [+510k]
Tue: 6.7m [+560k]
Fri: 6.29m [+480k]

Avg, for the week:

EastEnders: 8.04m
Coronation Street: 7.92m
Emmerdale: 6.51m

Source: Barb

When's the last time EE out averaged Corrie? Probably over 2 years ago. (Backfired massively for ITV who messed up their soap schedule for Harry Potter)

I think you'd have made a lot of money if you'd put a bet on an episode of EastEnders being only 0.4m off Britain's Got Talent at the start of the year.

Thank you as ever for the data.

Those four performances I mentioned were brand new, Darts has to have been new because of the different line-up, Brotherhood of Man have different haircuts than they did when Figaro was a hit, while one of Showaddywaddy had a broken arm. None of them appear in any other episode. The two Legs & Co routines were also new (although BBC4 used the Summer Nights routine during its chart run as they couldn't afford the video).

The other Christmas show that year should have been on 21st December but was cancelled due to a strike. I don't know how far they got with that, though, I would assume they'd start recording a Christmas show a bit earlier than the week of transmission, so presumably some of it had been recorded. The script for that unmade episode is somewhere on the internet.



Of course, when they had the 9.45 slot they started showing Corrie at 7.30 on ITV2 for a while. The benefit of that 9.45 slot though came when Tonight was doing very poorly in its early days at 10pm on Thursdays so they moved it to Wednesdays so it could benefit from that Corrie lead-in (they still had the second group stage at that point so there was Champions League virtually every week in the autumn).

In the second half of 2001-02, however, they moved Corrie to Tuesdays at eight for three months so they could put the second series of Survivor on Wednesdays at 9.45 to give it a bit of a leg-up. Then in the final season of ITV's exclusive rights, 2002-03, they had matches on ITV1 on Tuesdays and ITV2 on Wednesdays, and then in the next deal specifically went for Tuesday nights for the reasons we all know.


This must surely now be one of the most screened Bond films in primetime, even beating some of the Connery ones, ITV show it all the time. They last showed it in primetime at Christmas! They may have been better off swapping it with Casino Royale which they showed after the news on Friday which seems less over-exposed.


Yes, that line is the stupidest line in the whole thing. Given ITV have done as much as they can in recent years to dump kids shows, why would they possibly be considering doing that? This type of story reminds me of when some tabloid showbiz hack, in the Mirror or News of the World, wrote that the Spice Girls were splitting up in about 2000, and when they kept on releasing records they would always say "The Spice Girls, who I exclusively revealed are splitting up", so when they did finally split up, about eighteen months later, they were able to crow about the fact they said it first. It's a bit like saying "Christmas, which I exclusively revealed is coming up this year".


But what difference is that to what they have now? You say rolling news but that would just be reports and live links and interviews which we already have, the only thing that would be lost is the Andi Peters stuff. It would still cost the same as well, because GMB is hardly splashing the cash, it's just four people talking most of the time. I would doubt it costs any more than a standard news bulletin, apart from the presenter's wages. And much like the kids shows, when have ITV ever exhibited any enthusiasm in doing more news? Certainly the ITV audience hasn't demanded more of it. Besides the fact that would be a total replication of the Beeb's (and Sky News') programme, which everyone who wants is already watching.

Meanwhile this week's Broadcast brings us the news that the Sammy and Bruce repeat on ITV late last Sunday night got 400,000 viewers. There are also some massive timeshifts for Channel Five programmes in the consolidated chart, The Mantalist up 96.7% to 1.85 million, the Thursday 10pm episode of Person of Interest up 79.2% to 1.43 million and the 11pm episode up 137.9% to 1.12 million. That's higher than anything on Sky Atlantic, the supposed timeshifter champion, so kudos to C5 for that.

Here are some ratings for the sport channels, with corrections...

Champions League Final (Sat, 18.00, SS1) - 1,177,400
Monaco Grand Prix (Sun, 12.00, SSF1) - 1,101,800
Championship Play-Off Final (Sat, 14.00, SS1) - 997,300
What's Billed As A Froch vs Groves Preview But Is In Fact Extra Time In The Champions League Final (Sat, 22.30, SS1) - 766,200
Monaco Grand Prix Qualfying (Sat, 12.00, SSF1) - 578,400
League One Play-Off Final (Sun, 14.00, SS1) - 519,200
Heineken Cup Final (Sat, 16.00, SS2) - 450,600
Twenty20 Cricket (Tues, 17.30, SS2) - 428,700
ODI Cricket (Thu, 17.00, SS2) - 325,700
What's Billed As Live International Football But Will Also Include Extra Time And Penalties In The League One Play-Off Final (Sun, 17.30, SS1) - 314,100

Sadfly we can't see what the Play-Off Final highlights got on BBC1 as the sport chart isn't in this week, they rather irritatingly only run it in alternate weeks. Broadcast also reveals that the 25-34 audience for The Dunchess of Malfi on BBC4 was a grand total of zero.

Please do, even I should get within 1m of that.

Has to be said they deserve every thing they get for that stupid decision.

Unfortunately Steve it's nothing to celebrate. Obviously a positive that so many are catching up with C5's feature programming, but a big negative that so many are presumably missing the adverts and an increasing amount on the channel, even in traditionally strong genres like US drama, isn't considered appointment-to-view in many BARB homes at least.

The return of CSI will tell us more. If even that lacks punch in the overnights then I'd be a bit concerned, really. Obviously it's not the force it once was and Happy Valley poses a threat to all broadcast competition including CSI, but I still expect it to be doing at the very least 1.5M in the overnights without too much difficulty.

If Demand 5 is making up a lot of the deficit in some of these cases, then that would be reassuring. But it's impossible to know as an outsider how well that may be doing without them releasing any figures.

Rather distasteful continuity link on BBC One at the end of tonight's EastEnders to Panorama on Jimmy Saville: "Further revelations tonight on BBC One...", blurring the line between fiction and bleak reality. I thought it was in bad taste, anyway.

Itv will surely have to let "Good Morning Britian" run a while before making any decision on its long term future. Helen Warner was interviewed on launch week and she sounded as if the programme would be given time to settle. Whether this is still the case, im unsure.I wonder if the young image of the show has kinda alienated an older audience watching "Daybreak" as there are many which wont watch "BBC Breakfast" .

What is interesting about itvs experiments in breakfast time is that they are trying to put together what they think the audience will want. But the audience does not take to their solutions the programme makers come up with. There is careful thought put into all the projects and surely this is quite informative for other broadcasters to see what works and doesn't work. Breakfast is a difficult area to get just right obviously.

I do notice the tabloids love a bad news story about a television show and when a show is falling in the ratings, such as BB in the late noughties, the critics are given open season and the other journalists told to ignore it as it's no longer front page news, Wonder if Cowell has a bad XF and BGT sheds a couple of million next year, then it will be put the boot in time, after years of his shows being beyond criticism as they were what their readers enjoyed.

It's a shame the TV channels can't stick the boot in and report on the newspapers falling circulation figures.

Didn't notice that at all,

I think most people get what Eastenders is and what Panorama is. No blur on two long established shows.

Well BBC1 announcers now promote what the headlines will be on the news, which is more distasteful in my opinion.

True but the tacit link between the revelations in EastEnders and the revelations in connection with Jimmy Saville grated with me. Clearly I'm alone on this one.

Secret life of cats is getting a universally positive reaction on twitter.

See just because its factual, doesn't mean it's cheapo rubbish that should be criticised.

Very clever also was that all the ads in the ad break were cat related.

I think we can say ITV made up for the God awful Harry Potter/Corrie scheduling with how they scheduled Corrie/BGT last week. Should get some good ratings. Good to see EastEnders doing well too and hopefully it can regain some momentum this week.

Loving the hyperbole - "universal". No doubt the whole nation is tuned to itv now.

Isn't this a copy of Horizon's identically-named documentary on BBC Two a few months ago?

Genius originality at itv.