And who could blame him!

Strange how BBC and ITV differ. Rick Mayalls death was second item with ITN but relegated to the "and finally" slot on BBC News. I think the BBC misjudged that to be honest- and I don't think they even mentioned Alan B'stard (although I was distracted momentarily). Rick was a bit of an icon for a particular generation.

Am I imagining it or did he say he was taking a break?

No you're right, he had an exit speech and everything.

We could see a surge for GOLD's screenings of Bottom and The Young Ones tonight. Just a coincidence - they have been in the Monday schedules for a few weeks.

This week is arguably one of the hardest to predict scheduling wise with the launch of the World Cup... so instead of discussing it, why not try and put your predicting where your mouth is and have a go at the DS Ratings Prediction Game?

The schedule can be found HERE; just hit reply, delete the quote marks and get predicting!

Best of luck and thank you to everyone who takes part.

It was covered on the Six O'clock news though - 2nd or 3rd item I think.

BBC Officials we 01 June

Countryfile 5.63m
Happy Valley 7.10m
Casualty 5.08m
Holby 3.73m
Antiques Roadshow 5.14m
HIGNFY 4.58m
DIYSOS 4.08m
Quirke 4.29m
Graham Norton 4.07m

Jamie Theakson is earning his money tonight. First Road Rage Britain on ITV at 9pm and then Traffic Cops at 10:40pm. He is now the 'go to' man for voicing any shows to do with traffic or police.

With a title like Road Rage Britain, it sounds like it should have been on on a Wednesday night on BBC1 presented by Chris Hollins.

The Gail Platt doc was a fun walk down memory lane. Imagine if the ratings thread had have been around during the Richard Hillman era of Corrie. Although we'd still have many in the soaps forum slating it and demanding the producer be axed!

The New Statesman was of course on ITV whereas the other stuff was on the BBC, although like most news programmes, access to archive doesn't matter these days as they just nick poor quality videos from YouTube. It's either cheaper or less time consuming or both.

The January run did well - dipped towards the end but still not bad, even in total figures.

I think X Factor is the only other itv show with a 16-34 skew over 25% (Got Talent and IAC usually slightly lower). Take Me Out is nearer 33% from what I remember so it's a rare thing for them, far younger than anything else. Typically I think an itv entertainment show gets recommissioned easily on 1m 16-34's and those skews mean that TMO does that.

Ultimately, The Chase posted decent improvements in total viewers but not enough to make it a worthwhile exercise. And Take Me Out costs a lot more to make as well. I wonder if they might relocate those Celebrity Chase episodes to Sundays at 6pm?

I'd fully expect to see TMO reappear in Q1 next year. As it stands, they've got Rising Star but that will plug the DOI gap. They've still got the Splash gap on Saturdays and I don't think anything has been announced? So I can't see them dropping another 75 minutes from the schedule.

Interesting sports news as Sky Sports announce the launch of Sky Sports 5, home of European football.

That's the point I was making. For those demanding it, what "alternative" coverage could ITV bring to the D Day commemorations? Other than including it in their regular programmes, which they did.


Media Guardian, there. The other amazing thing about that story is that they managed to go through the whole thing without finding an excuse to bash the BBC, which now seems to be compulsary in every story on that website. The highlight was two weeks ago where the top three stories were all Beeb-bashing (one about them failing to broadcast the shipping forecast due to a technical problem), ABOVE the phone hacking trial and a long-serving Sky executive resigning.


The first series of Survivor in 2001, with Mark Austin, dominated the schedules, and was initially shown four times a week with the programme itself on Mondays and Thursdays at 9pm and then eviction interviews on Tuesdays and Fridays at 8.30 (and on the first night they also dropped Emmerdale for a preview show at 7pm). It absolutely died on its arse, especially the eviction interviews which were of absolutely no interest to the general audience (especially in the first week, half an hour devoted to someone who had appeared on TV for less than an hour). By the end of the run, it was just twice a week with the main show on Mondays at 9pm and the eviction interview on Tuesdays at 10.30 - but they still did a two hour live final to very little effect.

The second series in 2002, with Mark Nicholas, was down to just one night a week with the main show on Wednesdays at 9.45 (after the Champions League to give it a lead-in, but they even kept it there when there wasn't football) and then, after the news, the eviction interview the same night at 11.05. But nobody was interested.

The problem with Survivor was that it was all pre-recorded and on film so it felt like it didn't matter, and was also boring as hell.

That's the point I was making. For those demanding it, what "alternative" coverage could ITV bring to the D Day commemorations? Other than including it in their regular programmes, which they did.

W

That's the point I was making. For those demanding it, what "alternative" coverage could ITV bring to the D Day commemorations? Other than including it in their regular programmes, which they did.

With the Cenotaph it is basically one fixed event and BBC and ITV would probably have to share camera positions in any case; with D Day there were dozens (if not hundreds) of events taking place across Normandy and ITV could easily have selected different locations from the BBC. But it's pretty obvious ITV have no interest in covering this sort of thing any more (they gave up the Olympics, where there were plenty of different events to cover after 1988).Their problem is that history tells us the majority of viewers turn to the BBC and an event like a royal funeral cannot carry advertising so it's a loss-maker from a commercial point of view.

My viewpoint remains the same, although I respect your reasoning and am not trying to undermine your opinion at all. ITV is Britain's flagship commercial channel. It has PSB duties to undertake and whilst I don't expect The Cenotaph to be covered, at least having a thirty minute "reflective" documentary on Remembrance morning together with the two minute silence would be fine. They have no observation at all on remembrance Sunday and just because it's included in the news doesn't make it acceptable. If ITV want to be regarded as a premier service and want the nation to tune into their coverage for important national events then they need to be seen to be doing a credible job of covering such events and/or at least making the effort. When the day comes that the Queen passes away and her funeral is covered by BBC1 and ITV, ITV can't complain that viewers tune to BBC1 by 3 to 1 to watch it. I'm not suggesting at all that ITV should have full on, extensive coverage of D-Day last week. They could have had a highlights programme at 5pm of the day's events, it really wouldn't have hurt. I do concede that your point about covering the same event as BBC1 at the same time would have been fruitless and I agree with you. It's not about showing identical coverage to BBC1, it's about showing alternatives. For instance on Rememebrance Sunday why can't ITV do this:?

10.30am A Soldier's Tale:
A reflective programme for Remembrance Sunday that examines a day in the life of a family as they look back on the life of their son and brother and pay tribute to the man who died whilst on active duty. Followed by two minutes silence.

That is enough. But instead they offer nothing. And that is frankly, to ITV's shame.

"@TVRatingsUK: After soaps and news, #DavidBeckhamIntoTheUnknown was Monday night's most watched, averaging 4.60m/20.7% from 8.30pm."

Typical. The kind of programming ITV had on last night at 9pm was the sort of stuff that would do well on the BBC, and the Beckham thing do badly on ITV. I imagine it dented Corrie a bit.

Traffic Cops did abysmally for BBC1 in prime time last Autumn! My, how quickly we all forget the discussions of Autumn's past. There is always limited interest in these type of shows. I doubt ITV care much though about last nights ratings. To them they're treating these next few days as end of term before the World Cup starts. Then I suspect a big summer of launches to follow. As for the David Beckham programme, heaven knows why it did so well! I couldn't have thought of anything as dire as that to watch last night. A celebrity doing wondrous things to enhance their image? Yuk!

Find it incredible that 4.6 million people would watch this.

I didn't think the David Beckham programme would be anywhere near as high! Probably averaged a higher rating across 8:30-10 than normal, definitely 8:30-9. Will be interesting to see ITV's ratings opposite this.

Well this was much lower than I expected. You were right Neil.

"@Jake_Kanter: ITV Encore’s 9pm showing of Broadchurch was its best effort on launch day. The drama drew 120,600 (0.6%). #tellyratings"

Could it mean a permanent shift to 7.30pm for Panorama? Clearly there are signs that an audience will come to BBC1 on Mondays at 8.30pm if there's something to watch. The regional programme Inside Out and things like Bang! could easily move to Wednesdays at 7.30pm instead of an hour long One Show.

A few reasons off the top of my head....
He is very popular.
It was heavily trailed.
It is World Cup themed in the week the World Cup starts.
From the trailers it looked like it featured his wife and children , people might be interested to see the family dymanic.
There was no competition.

Well it might build across its run, and it is a rpt remember. Although I still struggle to understand the need for this channel when Broadchurch could do 1.5m+ on ITV3 over the World Cup.