Some massive week-on-week declines in the US on Sunday night.

For ABC Once Upon A Time (3.1) is down nearly 20%, Resurrection (1.8) down more than 25% and Revenge (1.3) down about 20% as well. On Fox The Simpsons (2.0) is down nearly 50%, Brooklyn Nine-Nine (1.6) down nearly 40% and Family Guy (1.9) down nearly 60% with Mulaney (1.0) barely registering. That's all pending adjustments though so it might get a fraction better but ouch basically.

Once Upon a Time was always going to be down on last week with the Frozen linkup. 3.1 is still an excellent result for the show if confirmed, well up on the 2.6 last season's equivalent episode managed.

Not an unexpected drop for OUAT and still above a 3.0 but ABC need to go back to the drawing board for Sundays other than that.

Horrible for Fox, while again you would have expected a drop after last weeks hyped premiers those are huge, even for the established shows.

To be fair, The Simpsons and Family Guy both had highly publicised event episodes last week - Family Guy had the crossover and Simpsons had a death. Once Upon a Time also had an event episode with the Frozen crossover. Not surprising they all dropped dramatically.

Indeed all very predictable imo and iirc Fox had a massive lead in from the Football last Sunday which CBS had this week. Also OUAT and Resurrection ticked up by .3 in last weeks finals.

Itv are very heavily trailing Granchester. I was listening to Heart Radio today and there were constant adverts for it on there all day. 'Brand new sensational Itv drama with Robson Green' was what the voiceover kept saying. So Itv are going all out to promote it, usually it's only the BBC who promotes its shows on the radio l. I think Itv must be hoping for 6.5m+ minimum excl +1. It is their most crucial New show of the Autumn. As the reviews say, in theory it ticks every box for mainstream hit. But will the recent Itv weekly reach crisis and Coro crisis prevent the show from rating to it's fullest potential? Huge day tomorrow for the former commercial giant as all eyes rest on Grantchesters rating.

6m including +1 will be fine as a starting point for Grantchester.

Saying that, ITV would prefer it to start with 4m and finish with 8m at the end of the series then start with 8m and finish with 4m.

Haha Samuel saying ITV as a former commercial giant, as if to suggest ITV has gone from BBC size down to rating like a multichannel.


ITV Samuel have set a target for Granchester to reach a peak audience of 55million viewers tonight, while the BBC will be happy with 1m for NT tonight.

Realistically ITV are probably expecting a figure closer to Cilla based on its performance last week. 6.5m would be a good starting point inc+1. Whether it will get that I don't know, I think it will be closer to 6m.

I used to be a Downton Abbey viewer, just to clear that up. I even defended the show on here last year or the year before. The problem with the show is that a lot of its really exciting storylines came to an end around series 3.

For example, all the 'will they/wont they' love storylines which hooked viewers from series 1 such as Mary/Crawley, Bates/Anna storylines pretty much came to a conclusion in series 3. Also the whole world war thing has been done. The nice party scenes have been done a number of times, as has the whole inheritence of Downton storyline. Series 4 was solid but lacklustre and following the departures of a few big characters including Matthew Crawley [who essentially was the golden male star of the show], the buzz isnt there anymore. The show will continue to decline, even though it's a pretty big hit, it is no longer a Call The Midwife or Sherlock type of mass hit.

The 'Downright Shabby' thing is just a joke,no need to take it personally. People on television have been calling DA that for years.

I think the BBC could seriously consider targetting DA next year. It is showing signs of weakness to a below-par BBC One drama. If the BBC airs something substantial against it, it could be the final nail in the coffin for Abbey.

A lot of the time you make very good points but it's not like Channel 4 and 5 have suddenly overtaken ITV

When's the last time a drama on any channel has doubled its audience in a single series? It never happens. The most a drama can hope for realistically is maybe an increase by 1.5million or so.

What Grantchester has going for it scheduling wise is that once New tricks ends, it could increase its audience from episode 4 onwards automatically due to oap-drama viewers switching over. Whatever BBC1 airs in that Monday 9pm slot after NT ends will probably end up rating lower than NT has been doing, so prime position for Grantchester to add on viewers.

Just seen a new drama called Royal Pains on ITV2, Lets just say it a telling point on the changing ITV2 content because of ITVBe.

Swift response from BARB. My email and their reply:



Nice to have the omnibus anomaly officially confirmed. I'm not sure I'm convinced about Weatherview but I'll give it some more thought.

EDIT: And it rules out the idea that X Factor 's Saturday episode is suffering from the same anomaly, because the ads would always be different for the Sunday repeat (and indeed the breaks are shorter and/or less numerous in daytime, so even if they were the same adverts the audio wouldn't match).

Sunday Night At The Palladium down a million week on week. That is the kind of damage that Strictly Come Dancing does to a show. We saw it with Celebrity Chase too, down a million since when it wasnt facing SCD. Basically if Itv ever wants a show to get a solid 4m against SCD, it needs to be a program capable of getting 5million normally. But they dont have hardly any of those kind of second tier entertainment shows.

It's actually five years old now and aired first here on Universal but interesting to see how it gets on.

The problem with the ITV2 refresh is it's inconsistent with Kyle still hanging around like a bad smell for three hours in the day. The programme rates and is of value to the old target audience, but is it as relevant to the new audience they are wanting to attract? On paper no, and yet it remains. Not the new start I wanted to see when they can't fully let go of the past.

The truth is they haven't bought enough or commissioned enough for this new era of ITV2, and at this point it's a stretch to call it that, to be anything other than an anti-climax, and hence in the mornings you even have imports that flopped miserably first time out - and when I say flop miserably, I'm not exaggerating - getting another shot, seemingly purely because they have nothing else that doesn't tick the trashy / guilty pleasure box and is therefore more suited to ITV Be.

It may improve with time and I hope it does because a repositioned ITV2 has a lot of potential, particularly if BBC Three as we know it ceases to be. But there's an awful lot of work to be done and at the moment it's all looking very poorly executed. Not quite up there with the disastrous start made by ITV Encore, but a close 2nd.

Moving the X Factor repeats and Xtra Factor Saturday show to ITVBe could be a start.

It was last night with the Russian royal family story.

Though I was arguing more about other social changes and fashions and change in the role of the occupants of the house.

These are important parts of the story and will not see massive change if it stays in the 1920s.

At times in this series the fashions are about the only interesting thing to watch.

Making the cast older would also change the dynamics and allow children to feature.

Plus the cast have barely changed in what is supposed to be about 13 years so far. About time they had some wrinkles.

Tessa Peake-Jones was on This Morning plugging Grantchester as well.

Apparently half the real village of Grantchester are in it as extras and they gave them a special screening of episode 1 in the village hall the other day.

Oh, and unlike her OFAH character, her Grantchester one never smiles throughout the series!

I see Marvellous went up in the officials to 2.15m, from 1.52m overnight. A healthy crude timeshift of +41%. Number four in BBC Two's chart, behind University Challenge (2.95m, up +5% from the overnight), Gardeners' World (2.28m, down -2% due to a Wales opt-out) and - pleasingly to me - Only Connect (2.18m, up +11%).

The problem with ITVBe and ITVEncore is they were set up before a full and comprehensive plan was put in place for the original versions (or, in Encore's case, itself). So everything is a bit of a mess.


So pleased they moved it to BBC Two. I think I might have mentioned that they should do that once of twice.

I have also said that The X Factor should start one hour before Strictly ends... *gulps*

Heartening that the powers that be read this thread.

I take full responsibility for Only Connect's move.

I will not take responsibility for The X Factor unless it works out well for it. Though ITV need to clarify the start time first...

Monthly Shares: September 2014

BBC One: 21.4% (20.5%)
BBC Two: 5.3% (5.5%)
ITV: 15.6% (16.8%)
Ch4: 5.1% (6.2%)
Ch5: 4.6% (4.4%)

Channel 5 (+5% year-on-year) and BBC One (+4%) the big winners. Channel 4 (-18%) by far and away the worst performer in September.

That is not strictly true. The 2011 series (Barlow's first season) was very up and down. The auditions rated excellently and were the most watched auditions ever even eclipsing the 2009/2010 auditions which was when the show was at it's absolute peak. The performance shows and results shows were rating very differently with the results shows sometimes over 2m higher than the performance shows.

It's very easy to come on here and criticise TXF for how it's rating now compared to it's glory days. Looking back now, the 2011 series was actually a huge success - the rot only set in for the 2012 series and then it remained flat for 2-years - and now this year its rated rather oddly. The Saturday shows were out rating the Sunday shows to start with but that has now reversed.

It's maim problems over the last fortnight IMO are as follows:
1. The Friday night scheduling was pure insanity. That type of schedule was never going to work and they shouldn't have changed it. I expect they'll never be trying that experiment again.
2. The last two Saturday shows have faced Strictly - so obviously the ratings were going to take a hit. Strictly starts earlier and therefore get the jump on XF and rates higher overall (just like the Emmerdale/EE situation on Tuesdays).
3. The format for Boot Camp was heavily criticised and overall the feel was much worse than last year. The Judges Houses format also needs work.

There's obviously still a rather large audience willing to watch TXF as the Sunday shows have proved over the last 2-weeks increasing massively on the Friday and Saturday shows. It's been the terrible scheduling that's let it down.

So much for Channel of the Year!