An easy explanation for that - Alex Walkinshaw, who plays Fletch in Casualty, decided to leave as he did not wish to continue travelling to and staying in Cardiff for filming. The Executive producer (for both programmes) apparently offered him a role on Holby, a role that they had been thinking of anyway.

Proof that Itv wont be investing much in the Tuesday 8pm slot, as people were hoping. From Broadcast:

"The 8pm on Tuesday slot has been earmarked for 60-minute ob-doc series or formats with “an emphasis on leisure sensibilities which are lighter in tone than 9pm.”"

So it'll be the same kind of cheap factual filler, but all year round instead of just the non-football weeks.

I think so too.

But One Born, Embarrassing Bodies and 24 Hours in A&E are shows they are massively dependent on. Between them they fill a ridiculous number of hours per year, and until recently were very reliable ratings wise. If suddenly they begin to fail, what then for C4 ?

This is much more worrying than what's happening with Utopia and The Mimic, as much as they might be stealing the headlines and dominating the discussion in here.

Overnights according to Richard Osman of Pointless in a comment piece in the New Radio Times are (Still)the most important 2 words in TV and the ones producers most dread. So theory that Overnights are dead that sometimes appears in this thread not yet true.

Actually its a different Casualty character that appears in next week Holby.

Channel 4 are an absolute mess, really. When they try and do innovative programming, it rates very poorly despite being critically well-received. When they do mainstream, it rates pretty poorly since that's what ITV does.

Daytime has been a shambles for a few years now, since CBBC left BBC1. Primetime isn't great either.

The schedules need an overhaul and Jay Hunt needs to go. That, and get some more sport in the schedule to prop up the share a little.

I think you're being a tad optimistic about 5m+ each night. The draw of the Olympics is the "Team GB" banner. You could say "Jim Brown from GB" and everyone would cheer them on. You say "Jim Brown from Aberystwyth" and only those from Aberystwyth or Wales will cheer them on. Also, the Olympics was a huge platform for launching BBC1 shows. "Good Cop" and "Hunter" being two. Look what happened to them. trails don't always have the huge ratings draw effect you'd like them to have.

Overnight ratings really do matter the most, especially to commercial broadcasters. It doesnt really matter to commercial broadcasters how many people recorded a program, because most of them skip through the adverts. They need people to watch live and watch the adverts, that's how they earn the majority of their income.

The Overnights Are Dead comments come from those who are disappointed their show isn't the beast it was once. Doctor Who Fans are the worst. If it drops below 5m it's "Oh but overnights are irrelevant, and consolidated proves it's just as popular" when infact it proves nothing. It could be the same DW fans watching a recording of the episode they watched live earlier! But, when DW goes over 10m like it did last year, then everyone goes in some kind of shocked frenzy and the "overnights is dead" argument is not mentioned.

ITV need to find hits in daytime that will make them money. Attracting mainly the older generation really isn't going to cut it. That means ITV have to look harder for programmes to attract the right demo. BBC1 can afford to commission antiques and home programmes as they do not need to worry about advertising.

There is no doubt about it The Speakman's is rating poorly, but are the demo they're trying to attract really going to stay in doors when the weather is so nice outside? Unlikely.

Launching this new Judge programme in the 2pm slot might do a bit better than The Speakman's but as its in the middle of the day its unlikely to get anywhere near 800k to take on the BBC's older skewing line-up.

That said perhaps ITV should look to strengthen programmes during daytime even if they make a loss.

I have to agree, particularly the BIB. If a programme is good enough to watch when broadcast then the audience will, if not then catch-up comes into play.

So, I was right in that if the content on ITV Daytime was equally as compelling** as Homes Under the Hammer, people would watch it, ads or no ads!


**For "compelling" read "interesting to the target audience".



But those still get the viewers .... and ITV used to commission home programmes, the 60min makeover ones. And antiques? Well they have David Dickinson and his Real Deal programme, and I think that there have been others.

Channel 4, 4.1% and Channel 5, 3.9% according to this.

http://gu.com/p/4v8xp

I don't think it's that male skewing shows are difficult to make - just that terrestial network tv isn't prepared to put them on. Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Fringe, Mythbusters, Dexter, - all have/had more men in the audience than women. Hardly a case of one hit a decade.

Tumble has 3 weeks to get some traction before X Factor returns on August 30th I reckon.

how do you get to 110 hours for champions league?

also you need to think of it from a business point of view. if itv paid £160m for champions league football and broke even on this by bringing in the 160m of advertising revenue from male targeted advertisers then they only have to replace like for like. so if they spend 40m on replacing the programme and bring in 40m of advertising they are in the same place, so no loss to their business. they probably won't lose the full £160m of advertising revenue, as they still have football and this will become more demanded as it will literally be the only place to advertise to males en mass so demand is increased and so are rates.

also consider that they still have highlights, so anyone who does not subscribe to BT sport will watch them, this could mean 3-4m viewers (using MOTD as a guide). highlights will go out at say 10pm where ITV currently have no programming that performs so all this extra audience mitigates further the loss.

i'm not saying it's not a bad thing from itv's point of view, but from a business context it's not the end of the world.

People say overnights aren't meaningless and wait for consolidated ratings when overnights are crap.

We had that a lot with EastEnders until the start of the Lucy Beale storyline saw overnights shoot up.

itv had dexter on in peak (10.30) and no one watched it. GoT gets about 800k viewers on sky (more men watch corro than GoT!) and all these shows cost a lot of money!

bbc have had some success with Luther, Sherlock and Doctor Who but this is a very small amount of content with high cost.

by and large men will watch sport and films live and everything else on catch up and demand.

people like to spin it right? i was talking to a friend who works on a well known LE show and asked if they care about overnights and the answer was emphatically yes.

though they all claim that more people watch than is reported and that ratings reporting are about 30% lower than actual viewers (probably helps them sleep at night!).

Overnights is one word

Another bit of proof that the BBC is Scotland obssessed and have deliberately over hyped the Commonwealth Games.

Firstly a question:

Which event is the biggest sporting event in the world?
A) The local school's sports day
B) The Commonwealth Games
C) The Olympic Games

Which event was held in England and did not warrant a commission of a new BBC2 ident?

Which event is in Scotland and does warrant a new BBC2 ident inwhich to use to introduce it?

You do know that over a third of This Morning's audience is comprised of over-65s, don't you?

As for Dickinson's Real Deal, here's the age-demo breakdown:

4- 15 1.9%
16-24 7.1%
25-34 6.4%
35-44 11.2%
45-54 8.5%
55-64 18.9%
Above 65 46%

Your never-ending argument that BBC1 chases old wrinklies whilst ITV is "down-with-the-kids" doesn't hold water. When are you going to accept this?

Is Your Face Sounds Familiar on this year?

I would guess there will still be plenty of people having babies next year. That's who watches it young parents to be and young families, I am basing that on demos that went around a year or so ago, perhaps it's changed? We never hear talk of demos anymore here, I used to love seeing the tables.

I think they are going to invest a lot of the Champions League money into new programmes, but I suspect a lot of it won't find itself on Tuesdays. If they've spent millions on a new show, odds are that they aren't going to throw it on a Tuesday, they'll put it in a more high profile slot. That means that Tuesdays still end up weak. I suppose the one advantage is that they'll have room to launch proper series without them being interrupted by football. That might help them make a bit of progress.

Interesting article overall though (the Broadcast article about ITV wishlists). A couple of departments mentioned about wanting to make more of the Thursday 8.30pm slot which is good. I didn't realise they brought someone in from Sky to work on comedy. Could be interesting. I still really want to see how they plan to replace Dancing on Ice and Splash next year. Between them they took up 7 Saturdays (90 mins each) and 10 Sundays (120 mins each). That's a lot of time to replace and Rising Star certainly won't have that large a commission to cover all of it so they must have a couple of other things planned too. Extending Takeaway isn't really an option either due to Ant & Dec's BGT commitments. We've heard about the Stars In Their Eyes revival (which they surely won't air against The Voice) but not much else yet. Of course we didn't hear about the first series of Splash until around October and it aired in January so there's still plenty of time yet.