'The Fight for Saturday Night' was the title of a documentary shown on BBC4 on Wednesday.

The program was about the history of the ratings war between BBC and ITV, which focuses on the Saturday night ratings. “You can do what you like Sunday to Friday, but the night you have to win is Saturday night.” The program tried to trace the entire history of this war.

Strictly is a relative newcomer to the battlefield. Strictly first appears in this documentary at about 1 hour 15 minutes into the program. There are some brief clips of Brendan and Natasha from series one. Also a few comments on the relative demographics of Strictly compared with X-Factor. There was the odd remark about whether Strictly would work on ITV - it seems to be considered BBC heartland.

Programs change and there is a continual struggle to find new and more entertaining program formats.

Whichever couple takes the Glitterball this Saturday, the real winner will have been the BBC. But this is just one battle in a war that will continue.

This documentary has been criticised by some commentators for being too cosy.

The program is on iPlayer here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...saturday-night

It wasn't too cosy about what happened in the past, but everyone was obviously way more guarded about SCD vs TXF as it's ongoing, unlike raking over the embers of The Generation Game, Game For A Laugh or Noel's House Party.

A documentary about what's going on behind the scenes now would be fascinating - but we shan't get to see it for as long as both shows continue to exist (and I think I'm right in saying they both have a longer life than either of their predecessors …). Which may not be for a long time.