I think ITV would probably rather have Broadchurch against Comic Relief Bake Off than against Silent Witness. At least they're aimed at different audiences!

I remember when they put episode 2 of Dancing On The Edge on Tuesday opposite Death In Paradise. Dented both of them. Silly scheduling.

What evidence would that be?It opened with 6.6m on a Tuesday night with little opposition on BBC ONE's strongest night. I'm pretty sure most episodes last year were around the 5.5m mark. Both last night and last Monday were up year on year on overnights. Iain is correct the BBC will be more than delighted with those figures.

Against ITV's flop Titanic in 2012 it didn't break 7m. I think you'll have to go back to when it aired against The Biggest Loser on Monday nights in 2011 to see when it last broke 7m in overnights.
Edit according to this it didn't quite make 7m then either. http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/news/...p1XbKlVMsUraoT

Not so sure with GBBO's high ABC 1 female audience. Would damage it just the same imo

I think ITV will just be hoping Broadchurch stays above the 5m mark excluding +1 for the rest of the series now. It's dropped to such an extent I can see new dramas being an issue to it as much as established ones or Bake Off Specials.

I'd agree with that. I think the point people are making isn't that the lack of money shows in primetime as I don't think it does, but in daytime at the weekends and late night. To be fair weekday daytimes have plenty of money thrown at them, but weekends are sorely lacking. They've clearly decided they're on a hiding to nothing there and aren't bothering. I think primetime is largely fine, although the Summer was particularly poor this year. Having said that, with no World Cup/Euros it might be a bit better this year.

The problem with entertainment isn't the lack of funding, it's the shit shows they're spending the money on! After the disasters that have been Stars and GYAT they'll be hoping for better from You're Back in The Room and Ninja Warrior. Also they could do with the celebrity Bear Grylls format doing decently. Losses for BGT/Takeaway need to be minimised too. BGT will probably launch a fair bit down on last year (no FA Cup lead-in) but should be more even across the rest of the run.

I don't think there's a massive need for more primetime drama. A bit more in the Summer would be nice (even in July/August something in the Monday 9pm slot wouldn't go amiss and would probably do OK) but in the Autumn/Winter there's enough as it is and you'd probably end up in the situation where things start getting squeezed if they add too much more. You've probably got a point about Broadchurch, although that does seem a tad harsh. A 0.2m difference is hardly a kicking, especially as it won last week and will probably still be ahead in the consolidated numbers (not much good to ITV admittedly). It has done a lot for their brand though, which shouldn't be ignored.

Perhaps, although GBBO skews quite a bit younger and I'm not sure the specials will have quite the same draw as the regular series (although I'm sure it'll still do very well).


It hasn't though really has it? In the last series edpisodes against other dramas got in the low 6's including +1 (so high 5's without it) and none of them were as tough competition for it as SW (Jonathan Creek appeals to a different audience as it has a very different tone to BC, SW is basically chasing an identical audience to BC). So 5.7m is hardly a huge drop considering how overnights generally have fallen in the past 2 years. It doesn't really equate to that much at all. If it falls much further however...

Even if it hasn't lost as many viewers as I thought, it doesn't change my view as that point was trivial compared to the main one I was making. They led it blind into a clash with, what was on paper anyway, the drama event of the season on commercial telly and they did so for no sound reason. That sort of carry on does little to reassure me that the BBC is truly ready for the very real challenges it will face in the next few years.

I think you're right that it could be near 7m away from Broadchurch. It launched at 6.7m on a Tuesday and Mondays tend to rate higher than Tuesdays generally (they could have aired it on Mondays later in the year). Had they kept it on Tuesdays it would probably have held that 6.7m as well (it got 6.3m there for part 2 last week and that's with BC denting part 1, so presumably fewer viewers had caught up in time for part 2 than would normally be the case).

ITV only aired 125 hours of scripted drama and comedy last year (excluding soaps) which is the lowest they've aired in many years. In previous years, there's been at least 145 hours of scripted content, even in football tournament years. As recently as 2008, they were airing over 200 hours of scripted drama throughout the week. C14E made it sound like ITV airs drama almost every Monday throughout the year, but that's not really the case - last year there were 17 Mondays during the year when they realistically could've aired dramas but instead showed factual shows (this doesn't include weeks when BGT/IAC were airing). Also there were 16 Sunday 9pm slots not occupied by drama, which could've been. Basically if you look at the sheer number of hours, the number of scripted drama and comedy has reduced quite a bit in recent years, even in the best Sunday/Monday 9pm slots when audience levels are at their highest.

Drama might not make the kind of ratings impact in terms of hours and profitability as a big show like X Factor or BGT (which air for 20+ hours per year each, up to nearly 50 for XF). But those kind of big shows come along for each broadcaster once every 5 years or so on average. In the mean-time, they need to have a stronger day to day schedule to pull in audiences more regularly into the 9pm slot. Drama will to an extent help do that.

Great post!

Crap post!

Or they put Silent Witness on Monday/Tuesday so it could run uninterrupted and avoid FA Cup match days. And they might have decided that as it was good for 5m last year and timeshifted well it would survive against Broadchurch.

It was near to 7m in week 1 away from Broadchurch and would be if scheduled away from it. It could have been close to 7m away from Benidorm last year too but other slots were taken.

Bushmills do you have anymore ratings that you think stick out from Monday?

Looking at the BBC One+1 proposals if they get the go ahead I think we'll be seeing a lot more repeats on Channel 4 and Channel 5 at 10pm.

This slot has become really hard recently, probably as a result of an increasing number of viewers choosing to catch up on the key shows of the night on the +1 channels as opposed to sampling the 10pm news alternatives, and BBC One+1 taking a further 3% minimum away each night is only going to make life much tougher for anything that isn't news or multichannel to succeed.

Event TV will still have a future here - series like Celebrity Big Brother, one offs like Benefits Street: The Live Debate - but beyond that don't expect too much innovation.

There's also a lot of crap on at 10pm. Very few shows do well there apart from The Apprentice: You're Fired or some Channel 4 documentary designed to trend on Twitter. That's the biggest problem with the slot.

Nobody had a bad word to say about Catastrophe on here last night but it didn't cut much ice on debut - only 900,000 - highly likely to fall from there as well. And that's before BBC One+1 comes along and makes life even more difficult.

So I don't think it's the content and it will come to a point whereby it doesn't make sense to continue investing anywhere near as much as they are at the moment in that slot.

C4 being as stubborn as they are will be last to act on it and keep on chucking good money after bad.

Take out the 12 weeks of summer and suddenly there aren't a huge number of opportunities. The odd gap here and there between series. But not room for a whole series "in season". And the case for spending in summer isn't particularly strong. Ideally they'd run a Monday 9pm drama through most of summer (coming off the back of BGT promo) particularly if BBC1 is weak there but realistically it'll be doing 4's at best. We've certainly seem them come and go over the years.

I'd pull out of Fridays (maybe use it for narrative repeats of flagship dramas), pull drama from Thursdays and look at trying to assemble a solid schedule on Wednesdays out of Corrie - some big budget entertainment perhaps. But also some pre watershed comedy/drama leading into the 9pm drama because the gameshow>drama line-up has been a disaster. As has Thursday 9pm drama (even when they had the Corrie lead-in they weren't getting results). Obviously this Wednesday ambition is only for the ~40 weeks that GBBO isn't on.

The big stand-outs have already been mentioned, I think (although Pointless - with 4.1m - and Panorama's 3.5m are worth a hat-tip).

Is Pointless being around 4m so often down to The Chase not getting a bigger lead-in or is it due to more viewers being around in January?

What I find interesting about the Panorama figure is that it's bigger than usual but Corrie was unaffected and posted its highest rating in nearly a year. So viewers are around. They just need something to entice them.

I think Channel 4 and BBC2 squander the 10pm slot as they put comedy there that has no compatible lead-in to give it a boost. I think Wolf Hall/Up The Women might work better than some drama/comedy orfactual/comedy pairings on BBC2. I think what BBC2/Channel 4/Channel 5 should consider is hour long shows starting at 9.30pm to see what happens.

Bit of both re Pointless, I think.

Panorama's audience will always be determined by whatever subject they're covering on the night.

Suppose the quality of TV drama has peaked and its all downhill from now on, with commercial interests outweighing creative interests?
We've had some great work in the past couple of years but the wheel keeps turning.

Well sometimes I wonder if BBC commercial arm of BBC America will take over! That is where BBC is getting revenue these days.That alters what gets made and what doesnt.For instance Luther series 1 did well over there compared to here so BBC America renewed it. There is a strange alliance going on between BBC America which is commercial, and BBC UK which isnt.

Nothing strange about it at all - revenue from BBC America helps to fund BBC1 and 2,all quite open and above board