Clarkson (Who else?) using a racist term during an episode. And the hilarity ensued!

Demographic Breakdown - BBC Breakfast vs Daybreak
TOTAL - 1.67m (37.6%) vs 608k (14.7%) - 2.7 to 1 ratio
04 to 15 - 51k (8.1%) vs 45k (6.9%) - 1.1 to 1 ratio
16 to 24 - 41k (19.4%) vs 23k (12.5%) - 1.8 to 1 ratio
25 to 34 - 122k (27.8%) vs 72k (17.6%) - 1.7 to 1 ratio
35 to 44 - 168k (32.9%) vs 80k (16.0%) - 2.1 to 1 ratio
45 to 54 - 287k (38.0%) vs 133k (18.3%) - 2.2 to 1 ratio
55 to 64 - 358k (45.3%) vs 128k (17.4%) - 2.8 to 1 ratio
65+ - 642k (57.7%) vs 127k (13.7%) - 5.1 to 1 ratio
....
ABC1 - 851k (45.0%) vs 194k (10.8%) - 4.4 to 1 ratio

Breakdown for Monday 24th March 2014. Includes +1.

When you look at that, it is going to be a very long time before any ITV Breakfast show comes close to beating BBC Breakfast.

A complete and utter battering for Daybreak among the 65+ demo. Most other demos around 2 to 1 but when it comes to the people who watch tv in the biggest numbers [the 65+s], Breakfast rules - a 58pct share! These are very loyal viewers who will not switch over to Good Morning Britain under any circumstances. GMB has no chance of closing the gap significantly, the loyal breakfast viewers wil stick with what they know.

I presume you've spoken to every one of them then?

some how I dont think ITV will be crying over the fact the over 65s are not watching Daybreak, seriously I amazed any of them are up at that time, and those that are, most likely still pop to the village shop every morning to get the latest news paper ( how it works in my village) blissfully unaware the news in the mornings paper can be.

If you're a 65+ year old who has for the last few years become used to watching good solid BBC Breakfast, with its detailed news coverage, nice regional coverage, Bill Turnbull, upmarket ad-less coverage... why on earth would you tune to Good Morning Britain which will have less upmarket news coverage, adverts, competitions, more showbiz news etc? Its a no brainer, the 65+ year olds will remain loyal with Breakfast. A 57% share of that audience is magnificent.

Should just close down then and show a blank screen until 9:25, or maybe entirely and just leave BBC1 as the UK's single TV channel, they'd then get 100% share.

We know generally that pensioners like BBC1 and are a large part of why plain week in week out shows do well, but I'm surprised this even applies at Breakfast time. What are all those over 65s doing watching Breakfast if they've retired. They should be getting a well earned lie-in.

Here's this week's Drama Top 15 (YTD) for up to and including the 13th Apr.

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

Last week's new entry, The Crimson Field suffers a familiar drop following the broadcast of it's second episode, dropping from 4th to 7th place. ITV's newest Monday drama, Undeniable slots in at No 9, pushing all other dramas down one and Shetland out of the table.

those 65+ will be watching the "stair & bath lift" channel also known as ITV 3, for repeats of old classics within 30 seconds of Escape the Country

Why doesn't ITV just completely shut down? Would suit Samuel just fine

I think the low rating for the football was to do with how DULL the game was. I'm surprised that many stuck with it

I think Itv should give up the breakfast slot and just aired kids shows then. Theyre spending too much money on their breakfast programming and it's not worth it based on the ratings theyre currently getting and the reputational damage Daybreak [and soon to be GMB] does to them. Might as well air kids programing and let BBC One get on with it appealing to the mainstream audience.

76% aged 16-34 - brilliant profile for MTV. I saw a bit of it and wasn't impressed, but this is certainly a promising start. It's a while since The Valleys launched now and that was very much an extension of Geordie Shore so it's good for them to have a new format (although this does share a cast member with GS). They're looking for a couple of UK formats that are different to their existing shows in 2015, will be interesting to see how that works out for them.

I bet Samuel takes the Radio Times every week due to his loyalty to the magazine from when it was a BBC publication, but I expect he almost threw up in WHSmith when he saw that disloyal traitor (not my words) is next week's cover star.

Yet again, posters are failing to recognise that Daybreak only lost on average around 200k viewers to BBC Breakfast. GMTV used to get 1m vs Breakfasts 1.4m. The struggle isn't getting them back from the BBC, it's getting them back from the other mediums that the rest of the viewers have gone to! It may also be that Daybreak viewers are just watching less of the show, as a result bringing the overall average down.

At one point in the early 2000s, GMTV used to beat BBC Breakfast. I think it was only after the phone scandal that engulfed a few other ITV shows that the tide began to turn.

And after Eamonn and Fiona left, and once BBC Breakfast became less serious and dumbed down compared to the hard news programme it was. Even the current incarnation of Breakfast used to be presented from a desk for a few years.

Thanks for your concern, but don't worry, because they already do that, in the seventies and eighties they were extremely casual about how long a programme lasted and hence the episodes of Fawlty Towers vary wildly from thirty to nearly forty minutes. When Challenge repeated the first series of Blankety Blank earlier this year, one episode was five minutes longer than all the others because there was a long tie break and one was five minutes shorter as it was all done and dusted quickly. That's how they used to do it.

Frankly I'd rather have programme durations decided on the content of the programme than "pre-defined running times" or what a digital channel will have to do in five years' time. If they decided 'stEnders needed an extra two minutes because the story demanded it, so what? It's certainly not the first time they've gone over thirty minutes, there have been a couple of Friday episodes in the past few years where the following programmes have been billed to start at 8.35. This time they decided to round down rather than round up to make it look less messy.

In any case, this happens every night because the 10.35 programme on BBC1 never staarts at 10.35, it always begins a few minutes later (though you'll note last night it was actually billed in the TV guides as starting at 10.40). I'm not bothered about the Ten O'Clock News starting two minutes late like I'm not bothered about News at Ten starting two minutes late. I'm bothered when it starts half an hour late for no good reason.

Anyway, the Beeb do have guidelines about the duration of programmes, on the Look Around You DVD they note that one episode was such a fraught production, with loads having to be edited out, that the finished programme was one second longer than the absolute minimum duration permitted for a half hour show. But they can make exceptions, like they do with credit squeezing.


We don't know that, actually, because that suggests over 65s are totally indiscriminate viewers who are too senile to change channels when if anything they're the most critical and discerning viewers. And everyone I know over 65 always gets up first thing in the morning.

Whilst that's true and GMTV never recovered from that, when GMTV was axed, it was around 400k behind the BBC. Daybreak turned the gap into a gulf (now around 1m) by gifting BBC Breakfast some viewers, but losing the majority of viewers elsewhere. Before targetting the viewers that they've lost to the BBC (whether lost by Daybreak or GMTV before it), they need to win back the viewers that Daybreak have lost to radio, smaller channels or even technology. I think its perfectly feasible that if GMB gets the content right and viewers connect with it, it could rise to having solidly around 7-800k viewers whilst the BBC Breakfast ratings won't budge.

Was is it racist though?

The biggest thing ITV need to learn from Daybreak is to be in it for the longterm - and stick with what you set out to do - don't panic and turn it back into GMTV because a million viewers haven't returned on day 1. Good Morning Britain's aims don't sound too different from the original Daybreak - and history now shows the original Daybreak was the most successful incarnation of it. ITV need to show they have confidence in the programme so that viewers can have confidence in it too.

I can't see it overtaking Breakfast but they'll be hoping to be in a respectable (rather than distant) second best. Breakfast's fate is in it's own hands really - so unless they announce Katie Hopkins as Susanna's replacement they should be fine.

Wouldnt be much of a ratings thread though.

It's a racist term in some countries and Asian people spotted it immediately. Clarkson knew what he was doing. He always does.

Okay then, let's go back to Monday 24th March and see what viewers were watching between 06:00 and 09:00 aside from Breakfast, Daybreak and Lorraine - highest programmes listed for each channel, excluding +1 here...

- Channel 5: 357k for Peppa Pig at 08:20
- CBeebies: 300k for Postman Pat at 07:20
- CBBC: 205k for Deadly Pole to Pole at 07:45
- Channel 4: 174k for Everybody Loves Raymond at 08:00
- Sky News: 161k for Sunrise at 07:30
- CITV: 136k for Pokemon Galactic Battles at 07:45

You can't really 'win back' viewers from kids channels.

Itv are screwed. BBC Breakfast has a massive monopoly on the adult mainstream audience. GMB is not going to attract any of those child viewers, and ex-viewers who have moved onto radio arent going to tune back to Itv1.