Johnny Vegas was interviewed in one of the newspapers at the weekend and stated that the BBC are currently in talks for another series of Still Open All Hours.

Dont think I agree with that. In 2014 ratings were up as well AFAIK.

The Mafia didn't get 3.7m like it was stated before, it got 3.9m according to DS.

First 3 days listings for Spike UK revealed:

What channel is Spike on?

On Freeview it's taking 5USA's slot on 31, which in turn moves up to 21. 5* keeps 30.

Thanks for that. Will it be on Sky as well?

Yes but doesn't look like it'll be on cable in time for launch, which is a bit of a blow from a ratings perspective.

Emmerdale is up yoy which is brilliant considering soaps are declining.

Looks better then what is on Freeview now, May rate well if people know about it.

I think it's quite a strong start as well. Especially compared to how 5* (then Five Life) and 5USA (then Five US) launched back in October 2006. Two of the programmes on launch night are airing within a couple of weeks of the States, there are all new programmes showing all over the schedule including fringe slots like 6pm and 11pm (albeit the first two seasons of BB have been on TV before) and it should complement the existing channels in the family well with 5* set to become more female skewing.

A reminder of the first few days of Five Life and Five US:


I remember Five Life in particular struggling massively at launch - but with that schedule it was hardly a surprise with little in the way of new/exclusive content of any real note. Love My Way flopped big time.

You can tell a lot more planning and resources have gone into Spike, and I hope it pays off because there's the makings of a good channel in there that is offering something genuinely different to the majority of channels on Freeview.

Also worth noting that Channel 5 (the main channel) basically shuts down on Spike's launch night by showing a stack of CSI episodes featuring high profile guest stars which means a rerun of the now ended CSI: NY going out at 9pm. Expect absolutely abysmal ratings for them that night. Not sure it makes the usual C5 audience any more likely to tune into Spike either, whereas a simulcast of some description might have helped generate more interest.


Ben Frow, TV festival 2013, ""The days of the double, or triple, CSI is coming to an end."

It looks like a fascinating series, but it is unfortunately based on a wholly false historical premise.

Rather than Britain in 1946 going all out to develop jet engines in order to compete with the Soviet Union in the incipient Cold War, that was actually the year when the Labour Government chose to sell Stalin the entirety of Britain's most advanced jet engine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artem_Mikoyan

A close copy of that engine then turned up in Soviet jet fighters used against RAF and US aircraft over Korea in 1950...

Big news. Look forward to that next year!

Disappointing that SPIKE is airing Breaking Bad every night at 11.

How many of its target audience can commit to that?

Yes I can pvr, of course I can, but 5 hrs a week is too much.

Telly folk don't live in the real world....

But those of us who have already seen Breaking Bad in full would testify that one episode a week would not be enough ! It's one of the more addictive shows on Netflix. You could easily sit and watch three or four in one sitting.

Maybe double bills once a week would have been a better option, easier to keep up with than every weeknight without feeling overly drawn out.

I heard that while the majority of the seasons are brilliant there are parts which are very slow

Steve McQueen "epic" black community six part drama greenlit by BBC- http://www.screendaily.com/news/bbc-...085859.article

3.7m inc +1, according to BARB.

Yay Cops!

(In America Spike is famous for showing it non stop).

Thunderbirds screening today, people like it. Could be a teatime hit?

I like that Spike UK has a more diverse schedule, but Cops is a solid watch to kill half an hour.

I guess it'll be different (newer?) seasons than the ones on CBS Reality.

Whilst The Ark was a bit wtf, (what were they thinking?), it is a little unfair to call for the end of religious nonsense - just because you don't like it. After all, how often do you see religious programming, let alone dramas, on primetime BBC1? Exactly. Not often. And there are still millions of people of faith in the UK, even if they don't practice it. The BBC's job is to cater for all and everything.

Not if its not shown at teatime it cant.

When would a lead-in be compatible, though? They were always going to go in the 9pm slot as ITV don't put new programmes on any later, so what other options would there have been in terms of a lead-in? Corrie or some factual. At least Give A Pet A Home looks like it might be quite light-hearted. The bigger issue is probably launching them at the same time, which never works for comedy shows on either BBC1 or ITV, because it one flops it colours the opinion of the others.

Can't imagine Newzoids doing anything. The appeal of Spitting Image was never the puppets, it was the scripts and the atmosphere, it clearly had opinions about the news and could get properly angry, and was massively disrepectful about everything. The puppets were just a vehicle for the satire as the best way to send up real people. This has clearly been puppets first, script and attitude a poor second. The novelty will wear off after five minutes.


As you may have seen on Twitter the other day, the latest chart was slightly less grim in that there was a new programme on the terrestrial channels in the shape of Raised By Wolves, but the rest was the same with Off Their Rockers, Dad's Army, The Big Bang Theory and umpteen episodes of The Simpsons. There are some mitigating circumstances in that panel shows count as entertainment and don't get it so you don't get shows like Room 101 and WILTY which are clearly comedy shows.


It's not the Graham Norton slot, though, is it, it's at 11pm where I don't think many people expect to see new programmes, Good Friday or no. You've got the Eurovision special putting the news late and then they want to get The Football League Show on at a decent hour as well. No other channel is new at that time.


Ha ha. Have you heard of a programme called Only Fools and Horses?


Note there the extremely high ratings for Breakfast on Saturday morning when it wasn't on BBC1 (the 9am hour was billed as BBC News on the EPG but it was the fourth hour of Breakfast as it usually is on BBC1). As we know the 8am hour on Sunday is always BBC News' highest rating of the week.


I thought it seemed a bit awkward in place of Loose Women, I can't imagine many regular Loose Women viewers are interested, however much they pretend Loose Women is about the news most people probably watch it for the celebrities and the aimless chit-chat. It would have surely made more sense in one of the ever-changing afternoon slots.

The reason they're doing it now of course is because of the election though you'd assume, if they were only doing it for two weeks, they'd be doing it for the last two weeks of the campaign, not the first two, where as you say it not only has to cope with the school holidays but also Good Friday and Easter Monday which seems pretty thankless slots for it. Unless they're showing it now because they're a bit unsure about it so want it in the school holidays when there are fewer viewers about.

Of course, were this the eighties and nineties, we'd have had masses more election coverage by now, including hour-long news bulletins...
http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules...don/1997-04-07

Those hour long Nine O'Clock Newses during the election campaign used to be bloody awful, everyone hated them, and of course in 1997 they carried on for weeks and weeks and weeks. Might have been alright at ten o'clock, but not nine o'clock. I remember Private Eye saying The Grand, the RTD-penned period drama, got a second series because it did so well for the first series, ITV failing to realise it was because its opposition was an hour long news bulletin, and on a Friday night to boot.

There are far fewer PPBs this time round as well, as the excellent ukgeneralelection.com points out - http://ukgeneralelection.com/2015/03...-many-parties/ - it looks like only five parties will get PPBs in England and Wales, with the Greens only getting one. I think that's the smallest number of parties getting them in an election for years, back in 1997 you regularly got two a night, with parties like the Natural Law Party, BNP and Socialist Labour always getting one, and one or two other parties as well.


Well, maybe, but who the hell was Jeremy Kyle when he got given The Jeremy Kyle Show? I only knew him because I had the misfortune to hear "Jezza", as he was known, a couple of times on BRMB when I was a student. Obviously it was the show that was the star, not the man himself, and presumably the idea is it's the same here.

I still find it hard to believe they are only putting the first episode on beyond breakfast time.

The ITV spin machine is in overdrive. It was promoted on This Morning. There was a feature on ITV news today interviewing some of the cast and basically just a 'news' ad for the series. Those irritating advert break mini duff duffs are going on all week. Seems absurd to waste that on something they will only air at 8 am from next week. That may change depending on episode 1s success (or otherwise).