Too many spin offs. Comic Relief Bake Off was the only one that did well on BBC1.
It did do well on Sundays. Perhaps it would have worked better weekly?

Week 14 schedules: Ben Fogle's New Lives in the Wild and Nightmare Neighbour Next Door return to C5 w/c 28 March. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is the Sunday movie premiere.

And Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a Paramount movie. So Channel 5 has a Paramount deal? I'd say so.

Most of the interest yesterday seemed to be for dancing Dermot, with the main show not really getting a mention apart from the end of that, so I'm not surprised to see it down. Still, they raised a lot of money is the important thing here, and raising a billion pounds over 30 years is very impressive.

BBC One's The Ark is down for Monday 30th in the programme information, either this is a mistake and it's been put up a week early (which has happened in the past) or it's been moved a week earlier to avoid a clash with other David Threlfall drama ITV's Code of a Killer. Airing on the 30th does mean it'll have to start at 8.30pm not 9pm since they either can't or just don't like to push the news back outside of bank holidays.

If this is the case I wonder what they've got lined up for Easter Monday as its replacement, that Michael McIntyre show perhaps, although that's probably set for Good Friday given there's a week gap between Musketeers ending and HIGNFY starting.

Some people do, and it's not essential that everyone loves everything. The point is that some people will be interested in the dancing, some in the climbing, some in the swimming and some in baking or darts etc.

The fact is that the way tv, comedy and music is done has changed. For example, as much as I like the Comic Relief single, and expect it to raise a decent chunk of money, I miss the days when the pop star of the day would team up with some comedians and appear on every show featuring music to perform it in the run-up. The music industry doesn't work like that any more, so the nature of the CR singles has to change.

Comedy is much more professional, so the big name comedians have their diaries filled months in advance, and while it's great that they appear on the Bake Off, or a Vicar of Dibley sketch etc, it's not quite as much fun as seeing them there in person. The introduction of Sport Relief has diluted the impact too.

But for all of the criticism, it keeps raising money, and does better each year, and so long as ratings are respectable, it's a success. Let's face it, loads of people watch bits in advance, and all of the good sketches will be on the BBC website, or YouTube. Loads of us watch tv on catch-up, so people know they don't need to watch the full thing live.

I did wonder. Could be a sign.

Now and again, mainly during school holidays and bank holidays. Late Friday showing is always down though.

The McIntyre programme is called "Michael McIntrye Presents... Easter Night at the Colliseum" so that rules Good Friday out, unless they change the name. Reading about The Ark it sounds more like a pre-watershed bank holiday drama for either Good Friday or Easter Monday.

Emmerdale has been very good for the past few years, and I completely agree that Coronation Street's decline has been dragging Emmerdale down. The first three episodes this week did pretty well, but Thursday's was dragged down by being out of slot and last night's was obviously against Comic Relief.

Emmerdale this week (including +1):

Monday: 6.39m/32.0%
Tuesday: 6.31m/32.5%
Wednesday: 6.35m/33.0%
Thursday: 5.41m/28.3%
Friday: 5.55m/27.7%

of course they won't!!!!

Still no rating for Comic Relief last night. But we do have this.

Liam Hamilton
‏@LiamHamilton16
BBC1 hands evening schedule to #ComicRelief, peak 9.7m. Interesting what progs elsewhere held up best, Barging on ITV 3.5m & #gogglebox 2.9m

Comic Relief - 8.1m (36.4%)

Bear Grylls - 2.6m (inc +1)

Bake Off - 4.4m

Million Pound Drop - 0.6m (inc +1)

Thanks C14E.

That's a great figure for Bake Off: Extra Slice on BBC2. Lowest rated Comic Relief since 1999 I think. I said that I didn't feel any real excitement for this year's one. Good total though.

And why do Channel 4 throw Million Pound Drop under a bus?

And at breakfast....

I'm assuming it was a repeat seeing as Davina McCall was on BBC1 presenting Comic Relief at that time

Million Pound Drop isn't live anymore so it wasn't a repeat.

I thought last night looked quite good on paper but the sketches themselves were too average. The Dibley one was about as good as it could have been - and the best of the night imo. National Treasure was ok but I don't think the script made best use of the celebs who turned up-some of whom had just a few seconds in shot. One year I seem to remember they did a lot of short sketches with a host of different acts/celebs that worked very well, they need to do that again. Bean has always been very clever stuff, but the new sketch didn't do it for me and I was always a bit surprised it managed to get the 18 million ratings it did in its heyday. Dermot will no doubt ache all over, and it was a great effort, but its not quite the same as Walliams swim in the achievement stakes.
Fantastic total, which is what its all about ofcourse, but there is very little done on the day (or very little is actually shown). A succession of big corporates realising multi million pound blocks of donated money is fabulous, but it is rather detached from the public and very little public effort is showcased unfortunately.
8 million over 3 hours is still great these days ofcourse, but like others have said, it reflects a rather lacklustre evening maybe-compared to some past figures.

I disagree about the Dibley one, something felt off about the whole thing, it just didn't feel like Dibley. The cast attached was great but the writing let it down. The national treasure one was probably the best sketch imo, could have been better but at least it made me laugh a few times. I don't think the venue worked either, if you're going to have it at the Palladium then you need to have more done on the stage itself instead of a load of pre-recorded sketches/appeals.

An Extra Slice was by far the best part of the night thought, so I'm glad that still did well.

FINALLY! DS publishes some ratings for Friday. No +1 though. Why do they even bother?

Comic Relief: Face the Funny tops Friday ratings with 8.1 million

Comic Relief's Face the Funny topped Friday's (March 13) ratings, according to overnight figures.

The charity fundraiser averaged 8.1m (36.4%) viewers from 7pm on BBC One, with 2.97m (33%) returning at 10.40pm after the news break.

Over on BBC Two, A Cook Aboard concluded with 780k (3.7%) at 7pm, before Mastermind entertained 1.59m (7.3%) at 8pm.

At 8.30pm Gardeners' World attracted 1.78m (7.5%), and Quelle Catastrophe! France with Robert Peston gathered 1.13m viewers (4.9%) at 9pm.

Jo Brand's The Great Comic Relief Bake Off: An Extra Slice was watched by 4.37m (23.4%) at 10pm.

An average of 3.28 million (14.9%) watched ITV's Barging Round Britain with John Sergeant, as 2.37m (10.3%) tuned in for Bear Grylls: Mission Survive at 9pm.

On Channel 4 The Million Pound Drop brought in 490k (2.1%) at 8pm, while 9pm's Gogglebox entertained 2.41m (10.5%).

NCIS: New Orleansdrew 849k (3.7%) on Channel 5 at 9pm, as NCIS aired to 814k (4.6%) at 10pm.

That Dermot dance thing should of being the main show last night to save studio costs.

A new week and the start of new dramas and comedy across the channels as Ordinary Lies, Gotham and Raised by Wolves hit the screens but how will they rate? This year's Six Nations ends at Twickenham and there will be a scrum of points for England v France. The Billion Dollar Chicken Shop won't quite give a billion points to someone... though 10 will do... and The Truth About graces the schedule promising the same. Neighbours' birthday results in the star reuniting but how many 5ers will be reunited with the players?

Why not have a go on the DSRPG? Whether you're a regular, someone who has played before but has taken a break or a DSRPG virgin everyone is welcome! Just click HERE, left click quote, delete the quote marks and get predicting!

Thank you to everyone who takes part in advance.

I know Bear Grylls had Comic Relief opposite him last night, but his ITV survival celebrity reality show has struggled all season to get 3 million viewers. Also another show of this type featuring Bear is starting on Channel 4 soon, which looks a bit like a rehash of Shipwrecked.

Isn't "Eurovision's Greatest Hits" a 90 minute concert of past eurovision entries scheduled for Good Friday?

Well, that's just really silly, then. My memory of Million Pound Drop from when I used to watch it (before they started the 90-minute long episodes and before they started showing so frequently it became impossible to catch up with) is that being live and the possibility of anything happening was one of the defining format points of the show. Although this is all academic seeing as, with numbers like that, it's probably not long for this world

Well, according to this The Ark is down for 30th March. Of course that could change, but I think it's likely that it was originally set for Easter Monday but was brought forward a week to avoid the other David Threlfall drama. It's a 90 minute drama, so I'm not quite sure where it could go pre-watershed even if it did air over Easter weekend.


I'd forgotten about that, they did say it would air over Easter so Good Friday is the likeliest place for it with The Voice final on the Saturday.

So BBC One's Easter weekend could look like this:

Good Friday - Eurovision concert
Saturday - The Voice final
Easter Sunday - Poldark (as normal)
Easter Monday - Michael McIntyre? (I still think this would be the best place to launch Jonathan Strange, but it's unlikely now.)

I agree. I no longer watch and am unsure about how far in advance they are filmed, but I thought one of the key components was that many of the questions were from the day's/week's news so the contestants had to do their homework and keep up to date with goings on. The live element added some excitement to the show imo.