BBC2 A Cabbie Abroad will dent it I think. This is bound to pull in around 2m+.

I do think this could be the last normal big brother, that a shame, I would have gone next years

Tonight looks really good and Fun, as it all kicked off last night with number of housemates.

(I am fan of this show but I feel like, that this series as kicked off to early, it just really a little staged, or that just me? )

And for Tomorrow , I hope corrie don't dent EE to much tomorrow and I wonder how much would dent Corrie, EE will get worse off but should pick up after Corrie ends!

(I think Friday Clash is the ones to really look out for)

My sister in law like Corrie and The rest of US like EE!

So we decided to watch Corrie from 7:30-8pm and then Eastenders for Hour and then watch the rest of Corrie at 9PM on ITV Plus 1

That and BBC One tries to put up an alternative to the football whereas ITV simply do not. That no doubt has an impact on the figures.

Don't waste your time wondering about something that will never happen.

Big Brother is not going to end up on MTV, of that I can assure you.

What annoys me about these two clashes is that they both could have been avoided. They aren't showing any soaps on Tuesday, yet they could easily have aired the episodes clashing with EastEnders then, Emmerdale at 8pm and Corrie 8.30pm. They clearly have no qualms about airing soaps out of slot, and it would have boosted a poor night for them, but I suppose denting EastEnders is the bigger priority.

To be fair we're used to filler aplenty generally during the summer on itv. I don't think we could reasonably expect much from them on the odd night where they don't have a primetime game during the WC.

Still, an hour of Ultimate You've Been Framed! was a bit of a joke I suppose. Would it have been the worst idea in the world to repeat ITV2's Plebs in primetime ahead of the next series starting? Even if it rated terribly and I can't see how it would do much worse than Our Queen did last night, it could at least benefit them in the longer term.

I kind of fancy BB's chances tonight due to a big row last night and S Korea/Nigeria not being a huge game and considering both of these teams first games were dull, no more than 5m surely. I am off on holiday tonight so will not be around until Saturday morning, guessing some will be happy about that

It'll be me walking around on eggshells instead. Actually, I won't. Because I don't care.

It's the usual suspects finding fault with BB plus SamuelW who hasn't denied that he would be unhappy about itv picking up the rights to CBB.

BB has some things in its favour tonight which we couldn't have said last night, or indeed many nights in the past few weeks. Channel 5 will certainly take this sort of thing into account, unlike the "experts" on here that focus on the lows, ignore the fact many episodes are in line with / up on last year and refuse to accept that it's down overall because the WC stopped it gaining any momentum, even when there's strong evidence to support this theory.

One thing is certain about BB, ITV wouldn't want it. It doesn't rate high enough for the main channel and apart from IAC, stripped reality shows have fallen out of favour with them, and ITV 2 is moving away from reality shows towards imported shows and films. I still think it would be ideal for MTV.

I suppose they wanted a decent lead in for the football rather than half hour filler. If they aired it Tuesday they could have boosted their evening by Emmerdale and Coronation Street from 8pm.

I really think it will stay put. MTV won't get it, I'm sure and ITV wouldn't want to touch it with a barge pole. They rejected it when BB was beating Love Island in 2006, I doubt they'd want it now.

Racing Post - Channel 4 Ratings suffer 20 per cent rating slump

By Tom Kerr

FINAL viewing figures for Royal Ascot released on Sunday show that the meeting has lost almost 60 per cent of its television audience in just two years on Channel 4.

In another blow for the broadcaster, which has suffered a string of disappointing viewing figures for its racing coverage, it emerged Saturday's final day reached a peak of 883,000 viewers compared to 1.096 million the year before.

Saturday's broadcast was watched by an average of 605,000 viewers, down 27 per cent on 2013's average audience of 827,000.

In the final instance of the BBC's coverage of Royal Ascot two years ago an average of 1,899,000 watched coverage of the Saturday, three times the 2014 figure.

And in just two years Royal Ascot has lost 58 per cent of its TV audience, Channel 4 achieving a five-day average of 583,400 viewers compared to the BBC's 2012 five-day average of 1,382,600.

The five-day-average was also down 11 per cent on Channel 4's 658,000 average in 2013.

However, in a detail which highlights the competitive environment Channel 4 are operating in, that smaller average actually represented a marginally higher share of the total TV audience - 7.7 per cent against 7.6 per cent the previous year.

Nevertheless, the latest figures are likely to provoke soul-searching among those who signed the deal to make Channel 4 the exclusive terrestrial broadcaster of racing, a move that has dramatically reduced the television reach of racing's premier events.

Earlier this month Channel 4's coverage of the Derby was watched by a peak of 1.55m, the smallest television audience this century and less than half the 3.3m who tuned in to the BBC's coverage in 2012.

A Channel 4 spokeswoman said on Sunday: "Royal Ascot is one of the highlights of Channel 4’s schedule and we are proud of the high quality coverage delivered by the Channel 4 Racing team over the last five days, which included a range of new presenters, features and innovations.

"We have continued to experience declines in total television viewing affecting all channels across the week and this is reflected in the share of viewing - which has grown despite the impact of World Cup football broadcast on other channels.

"Channel 4 has made a long-term and significant commitment to racing and we want to showcase it to the widest possible audience – which is why throughout the year it has been supported by major marketing campaigns and wider programming.

"We will continue to review and invest in our coverage and work with the whole racing industry to provide the best showcase for the sport."

It wouldn't go on the main channel but I could certainly see it on ITV2, but I doubt they'd be able to get it cheap enough without using all of the digital channels budget. That being said I think BB has performed fine so far this year and with ratings mostly over 1m its safe enough for another year with better demos than their usual fare.

Re Racing - Samuel will be lapping that up. Food for thought though-real declines due to changing the broadcaster.

I dont think that was the sole reason for bb11 being up. Often the last series of programs rate even worse than usual, such as Dancing on Ice recently. BB11 was up because it was a better made series than bb10, so even though it faced the world cup, the viewers stuck with it because they enjoyed it.


BB7 and BB11 were hardly dented against the world cup. BB7 and BB11 had to endure more days of when England were in the world cup compared to this year.


The first C5 bb series was a last minute effort, out of its usual summer slot. The second C5 BB series aired partly against The Olympics, one of the biggest events of our generation, in a different league to the world cup [besides England games]. The fact you are comparing BB15 to BB12/13 which had massive factors going against it, suggests that this series isnt doing very well.


Channel4 has a far lower weekly reach than BBC1. It's common sense and you dont have to be Einstein to work out that the reduction in racing ratings have to do with many of the races moving from BBC1 which reaches 80%+ of the population to C4 which reaches about 60%. It's bound to impact the ratings.

Well no, that detail highlights the great weather we've been having. Channel 4 racing figures haven't been particularly good by any means, but Racing Post does seem to have an agenda, as previously noted.

As the audience shares indicate, the final day of Royal Ascot was surely hurt by the weather.

That being said I think C4's coverage was worse than ever this year. Not only did Gok Wan even turn up on The Morning Line, supposedly a show for racing previews, his contributions on the main programme became even more cringeworthy.

His seemingly never ending segment in the betting ring with Gleeson and Stevenson when he ended up backing the top three or four horses in the market in a 14 runner sprint really took the biscuit. If there's been a worse piece of live TV on any channel this year, I'd like to see it please.

I had to laugh out loud at this tweet from C4 Racing:


Talk about deluded. Nobody I know who is a racing fan thinks the programme was anything other than diabolical all week long and Twitter was full of complaints as well.

Surely football isn't lead in dependent, especially a Brazil match. The second option would have been more benefit to them.

One thing's for sure, when they finally see sense and revamp it the utterly delightful Gina Bryce simply must be one of the lead presenters. She was easily the best thing about the programme this week. Yet criminally underused.

I would pair her up with someone like Oli Bell from Racing UK who now has plenty of experience, is more than ready to step up and IMO would be more suited to a mainstream racing programme than Nick Luck who I feel adds more to Racing UK than he does C4.

Equally BBC One should've responded by starting EE at 8:30pm for an hour. The One Show from 7-8 followed by Panorama at 8, EE at 8:30 and Miranda or MBB at 9:30. Either way, they are only showing a New Tricks repeat at 9pm, so could afford to push EE half an hour later.

C4 will continue to make the right noises right up until the announce one morning that they have decided to give up the coverage etc etc . We all know its coming.

I agree its about time BBC started to protect EE more but if I were them I would also go the attack against ITV soaps.

You wouldn't have thought so - I'm sure something like a Love of Dogs repeat would have performed fine at 8pm. I'm slightly surprised that BBC One didn't move EastEnders out of the way as it's been on at 7pm so often of late.

The Hunger Games would have done better nearer the release of Mockingjay but still a great rating. I wonder if 5 will now get the Paramount films now they're under ownership of Viacom. There is two years worth of terrestrial premieres still to air like Transformers Dark of the Moon, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol and Tintin etc

The Sony films from 2012 and 2011 that have yet to premiere are The Smurfs, Arthur Christmas, The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists, Men in Black 3, Thirty Minutes or Less, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Green Hornet to name but a few

Interesting, but I do wonder why BARB don't have some kind of failsafe to deal with issues like this, like how in the singles chart they used to (and probably still do) flag up anamolies so if someone bought a hundred copies at once they wouldn't be counted. Surely it's obvious if the Friday 8pm episode is getting no timeshift at all and the last half hour of the omnibus is getting a ridiculous amount there's a cock-up somewhere.


It's a figure of speech, of course, it's a "fixed rig" programme where they're sticking cameras around a hotel and they'll be spotlighting a number of families who will have obviously completely spontaneous, unscripted and uncontrived conversations and encounters which definitely won't be completely set up by the producers, honest.


There was a bizarre story in The Sun the other day saying that Carr was finishing two weeks earlier than they originally planned because the World Cup competition was too intense, despite the fact if it had continued for another two weeks it would have been up against Honduras vs Ecuador, proabably the least appealing match in the entire tournament, and then next week no World Cup football at all and indeed a Norton clip show. And it also suggests they're more concerned about the umpteenth episode of Carr than the critically acclaimed Friday Night Dinner. What an odd story.

I think it is a ridiculous thing to have Norton and Carr on at the same time, if for no other reason than it hardly illustrates C4's commitment to innovation if they're just replicating BBC1.


Yes, and also France's group is extremely weak so it's hardly a must-watch. Like Nigeria, too, there are lots of people of Ghanian descent in Britain, when England played Ghana the other year it was hugely successful, it got a massive attendance and lots of attention. I would say Ghana, Nigeria and Australia are the three biggest "second teams" for British viewers.

Also as well it's worth pointing out that BBC1's opposition to World Cup matches has been far better than ITV's. On Monday ITV had the soaps but after 9pm they were awful with the Dentists documentary, last night they were rotten all night. As opposed to Friday when BBC1 had Masterchef and tonight they've got three decent-sized shows.

The same is true throughout, at teatimes BBC1 have had new episodes of Pointless opposite World Cup games, ITV repeats of The Chase. Last Saturday teatime ITV had repeats of Tipping Point and You've Been Framed, this Saturday BBC1 had the Grand Prix qualifying. And so on, ITV have offered next to no competition. If they think it's a waste then it's up to them, but it doesn't do their reputation any good.


Hmm, I dunno, not the best scheduling yesterday with the first half when the Argentina match was still going on, I'm guessing the rating probably massively increased in the second half when people switched over for the Germany game. Be interesting next week when it should miss all the football entirely (unless ITV show the early game and it goes to extra time).

Speaking of sport-based programming opposite sport, you'll note that tomorrow ITV start a repeat run of You Cannot Be Serious! Albeit at midnight, but what a bizarre thing to show again! Anyone fancy some jokes about Euro 2012 in the middle of the 2014 World Cup? Demented.


Rubbish, I watched hours and hours of football, it was brilliant. The last two Saturday nights' telly has been the best for months.


I think this might be the first time in the tournament the primetime match isn't the highest rated thing on TV for at least some of its duration - as Iran vs Nigeria was when Corrie finished - because I think Countryfile, Antiques Roadshow and Casualty could all beat it. I think that's a very appealling line-up for non-football fans. The problem for Casualty, of course, is that they can't say when part two is going to be.

Tonight is also the last 11pm match of the World Cup and I'll be sad to see them go. Although I must admit I've only made it to the end of two of them.