I don't think they can anymore.

BBC Entertainment is shocking. Talk about serious investment makes me laugh. Entertainment budgets have been slashed.

But diving is less interesting than swimming and it lasts a second. I will watch Tumble next week to see if it features more gymnastics. I believe most things need to be given a chance. Unlike the majority of TV viewers theses days, I have a better attention span than a goldfish has got.

Were you not one who suggests ITV copy too much. Now your saying there are no formats left to find. Make your mind up.

That's the one thing ITV is investing in more, whereas the BBC is slowing down and pumping out more flops than hits.

The BBC put more effort into drama where they know the audience are more likely to be attracted to it and boost the overall number with an olde audience.

Are the BBC bringing back The Guess List?

Not working though is it!

Well maybe I being unfair. They have had mild success but they have given up on trying to find something original and are going down the route reviving things.

I'm not sure that is sustainable.

That IS true. ITV see themselves as an entertainment channel and pump hundreds of millions into the genre.

BBC always seem slightly embarrassed by ent shows and they could have gone for an ent Channel Head (Mark Linsey) but went with a documentary maker. Says it all.

FAR too much cheap factual on BBC One these days, imo.

Samuel, you miss the one crucial point, and it's one other's and myself have made several times today. Cast your mind back to previous formats. What were these formats?

BBC1 in particular has always had less success with formats than ITV. BBC1's formats were: The Les Dawson show, The Mike Yarwood Show, The Two Ronnies, The Dick Emery Show, The Little and Large Show, and so on. Sure, from time to time they had success with shows like The Generation Game and Blankety Blank. But their last truly successful, original British quiz was Bob's Full House thirty years ago. They have had middling success with Every Second Counts and the occasional lottery quiz, but with Noel's House Party long gone, BBC1 have relied on personalities to provide their saturday night line ups rather than formats. Even if the formats to these personality driven shows were pretty identical, they were successful because of the people in them. Les Dennis' Laughter Show was just a rehash of the shows that went before them. So, the very fact that BBC1 are struggling with LE formats is because they have never been particularly good at devising formats. So, without big name personalities, BBC1 will always struggle with LE.

ITV on the other hand had a massive advantage over BBC1 because they had oodles of different talent and ideas coming from each region so it wasn't hard to find a successful format. They had some terrific formats that didn't rely on personality which is why ITV seem to have more ideas even now in the LE dept than BBC1 does. Even if ITV's shows don't succeed, they do have plenty of ideas. Which is more than what BBC1 has or ever had.

Late to the party but what a hopeless performance by Tumble. After all the hype in here for weeks on end and even The Sun yesterday predicting it would be as big as Strictly, I expected it to at least start respectably. The share isn't horrible I admit but the raw figure certainly is. Even if it grows a bit in line with increasing TV audience as the new season approaches, it's got a major mountain to climb to get anywhere near a half decent level. I am tempted to suggest it's DOA with a start as bad as that, especially taking into account the trajectory of previous shows in this already tired genre like Splash.

Far too much cheap comedy too.

Not a great start by Tumble and I doubt it'll get any better. God knows what the focus group said that convinced the Beeb to green light it. Did they even have a focus group?

Absolute disaster, deservedly so as it was awful, and the only way it can go is down.

This problem with light entertainment is clearly damaging to the BBCs public support. If they were a bit thin with drama it wouldn't matter as much.

So they need to get in an entertainer to run BBC1 sharpish.

The biggest turn off for me with Tumble was the lack of warmth and atmosphere - it felt like it was being filmed in a tarted-up aircraft hangar (although it was actually BBC Elstree!).

If you think about the two biggest LE shows on the BBC - Strictly and GBBO (I'm calling it LE as I can't really think of another genre!) - they are both very simple ideas on paper but they're brilliantly executed with the right just kind of style and ambience. There was none of that sort of gusto in Tumble, which felt like it was robotically going through the motions, even down to its 'showmance' and some banter between the judges as an attempt to generate mild conflict.

No such thing as cheap comedy. It's one of the costliest genres there is.

God, I hope they aren't sending ideas to focus groups before they get the green light. Bake Off and Strictly would both never have seen the light of day in that case.

Great British Bake Off is factual programming.

Well if that's the case no wonder the BBC are so short of LE ideas! They can't even get other genres right!

Poor start. Surely it rate higher than that with the evenings getting darker and strong lead outs like DW and SCD to come?

The problem I had with it was it felt like an amalgamation of SCD, SYTYCD and DOI. It might improve when they use other apparatus. Bland judges and presenter too. No better than last year's Stepping Out.

Only way is up right? Making The Voice look mega. Any news on Kylie's replacement?


Bigger than Edge of Heaven (1.1)? Amazing Greys? Let Me Entertain You? GMB? Weekend? Speakmans?

Tumble wouldn't have been cheap. It probably rivals anything since The Voice launched in 2012.

In terms of spending on talent, the only people the BBC can't afford are Ant & Dec and Simon Cowell. So that's not the problem with Tumble.


ITV aren't taking big swings in entertainment though. They'll make it to the end of this year without a single major new series launch. The next one will be Rising Star. Which, unsurprisingly, is from ITV Studios!

Cheap in the sense of tawdry. The comedies are crap, but surprisingly rate well.

They do get panels to ask for people's opinions on shows, but ultimately the buck stops with the channel head.

I would say the only comparable is Amazing Greys, which was a big flop and a pretty inexcusable purchase, given that it bombed everywhere else in the world too.

The others are either not ent shows or cheap factual. Speakmans would have cost 30K an hour, so why compare it?

Also, I don't get why people are saying Tumble will get better when they intro apparatus. How are they going to continue the weird pairs thing if they're on the parallel bars or pommel horse?

They mention Bake Off and The Apprentice as entertainment successes but they started on BBC2 and came from the factual department.

ITV are hiding their failures somewhat because they still have some old shows that are doing ok, IACGMOOH, X-Factor, BGT, Ant 'n Decs Thing.

But in LE what have they created recently that's any good? As bad as the BBC really.

I think it's because light entertainment needs a hands-off approach from the top-dogs at the BBC and ITV. But they just can't help but get involved.

BBC1's problem is that outside of Mrs Brown's Boys their comedies don't rate well at all. Miranda came from BBC2 and Still Open All Hours is a resurrection of Open All Hours....which also started on BBC2.

And ITV's biggest sitcom is a resurrected BBC sitcom in Birds Of A Feather, so they aren't doing much better.

The truth is neither side has produced a mega hit in 10 years. The biggest in that time is probably The Voice and that was bought in as Rising Star has been.

Sad thing is that I don't think anyone has any ideas any more on both channels, Saturday night will end up with One Show at this rate.

In the days of Bill Cotton light entertainment was the cornerstone of BBC 1's Saturday schedule and they were extremely good at it. I can recall shows like The Generation Game and The Two Ronnies pulling in 19 million viewers and wiping out ITV. Now, apart from SCD, they seem to be floundering. Tumble is OK, but certainly isn't on a par with the much loved BBC One greats of the past and will probably go after one series.