Remember what happened when UKTV G2 (now Dave and FTA, but then pay and little watched) simulcast World Cup games in 2006?

http://www.barb.co.uk/whats-new/287

Of the 12m watching England v Paraguay on a Saturday afternoon, just 24,000 or 0.2% were watching via UKTV G2.

The great thing about sport is I do believe on FTA viewers will follow it wherever. Remember how big BBC Three became during the 2012 Olympics. Obviously that was a very special one for us, but it hit 5.7% share in the weekly ratings, a channel not even normally 24hrs, about five times what they normally get. And that was showing secondary events as opposed to the main ones. So if the Olympics can have that effect on BBC Three, you can bet your bottom dollar they would utterly transform the ratings of ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Even with adverts.

That's not to say a non-BBC Olympics could ever reproduce the highs experienced on the BBC, of course it couldn't. Just that I've long believed sport viewers are more open-minded than most, and it would hold up better than most things would if they moved channels. Most viewers won't want to miss out on it, whether Auntie is covering it or not.

Interesting points, but sports that have largely abandoned FTA like cricket and boxing have seen their popularity really diminish as not everyone wants or can afford Sky Sport and BT Sport. I do think golf will take a major hit after next year and the ECL and EL could see their ratings fall big time from August, although the last two seasons didn't exactly deliver stellar ratings for ITV and the EL is a bit of a long drawn out tin cup.

Plebs makes it's first appearance on ITV tonight at 10.40pm. I wonder if ITV are trying it out on the main channel with a view to showing the third series there rather than ITV2.

The Olympics have (also) been broadcast on Eurosport in the UK for as long as I can remember. Hasn't the deal always been with the EBU and then EBU and BBC? The BBC statement makes me think they are confident of sharing UK FTA rights with Eurosport.

Millions are incapable of navigating away from their trusted big 4/5 channels.

Even if FTA, they wouldn't hunt down the Eurosport FTA freeview channel, they just won't watch.

Granted we are talking from 2022 here, 7 years off.

Its all about money and greed.

Better programmes with new ideas from new people, Instead of Ben Flow.

You wish !!!

BARB have finally updated.

Some consolidated figures:
Black Work (21 June) - 7.48m/8.06m (+1.67m/+1.85m)
Humans (21 June) - 4.45m/5.11m (+1.78m/+2.04m)

EDIT: Beaten to it.

Very strong audiences for both dramas there.

Too right, I hope people after the FIFA scandal realise that football is just set up to make money now for Sky and the FA. Also I think the overkill with the sport is starting to hurt, as the ECL was as low as 2 million on ITV for an all foreign match and even matches featuring English teams rarely went above 4 million. Come fourth and you are a champion, wouldn't get you a gold at the olympics.

This is bad news for the BBC and bad news for TV in general. It is a must that the BBC a should have full exclusive rights to the Olympics and be able to use those rights in every way they want.

Showing some events on another FTA channel miles down the EPG will mean viewers won't watch. The BBC having to do deals debating which events to show and which to not will just deminish the whole event.

And a special mention for Clangers on Cbeebies. 967k!

It is disappointing. Top Gear has some real dedicated followers but the rest of viewers couldn't care less about it. The whole sacking thing was overhyped.

Clarkson was like Marmite, you either loved or hated him and this explains why BBC One and ITV always offered strong alternatives to Top Gear. It was also opposed by Heartbeat, once considered invincible, as even though the show was in its twilight years when it faced Top Gear, ITV knew 5 million viewers would never go near something involving Clarkson ( particularly the older traditonal ITV audience).

An ITV drama getting 8m in June is fantastic. Also excellent for Humans.

I agree. I caught all the episodes, except for last nights on iplayer. I know people complained that the first episode was 'slow', but for me at least, I'm glad I stuck with because by the end I was really pulling for Jonathan character. I don't know how the book ends, but the series certainly seemed to be left in a way that could have allowed for a follow-up series. Sadly with the ratings, there's not a hell's chance of that.


This is such an absurd comment. It obviously did not appeal to you (or millions of others), which is absolutely fine. And while I'm not even sure what qualifies as 'toff crap' (I'm guessing you mean period drama), I would contend that great swathes of the country do in fact enjoy these types of programmes.

Another strong rating for Black Work last night. It's a really good drama and Sheridan Smith puts in a fine performance. She is very popular amongst the casual audience at the moment.

Disappointing for Top Gear, but I think more people will be curious about the reboot to the show.

It would be nice to see Humans not drop any further. It's still timeshifting well, but it would be nice to see a big drama hit for the channel in overnight figures.

Shed of the Year dropped on last week. I thought this would be a grower and one of those unexplained monster sized hits, like Bake Off has becomes for the BBC.

Some other consolidated ratings worthy of mention -
Game of Thrones (2.27M) - best rating since the opening episode
Japan's Enchanted Islands (3.14M) - some great counter programming from BBC2
Woman's World Cup (1.89M) - not bad for a 10pm midweek game

Overnight: 484k from 17:30 to 17:45
Consolidated: 967k from 17:34 to 17:45

Some of the increase from the overnight will have been a tape-checking adjustment, but it probably had some decent pure timeshift too. We'll see on Thursday if it makes Broadcast's top 30 timeshifters' chart.

And another 1.39m for the Saturday repeat, 10th in the week for BBC Two! (Potentially the "omnibus effect" at work there, although it has been overnighting around that level.)

Well I am glad the Wimbledon highlight programme isn't on at 20:00 this year

Tsk! It's "Wimbledon 2Day". I swear they came up with that on W1A.

Moving The Olympics from the BBC would be like MTV getting the rights to BGT, ratings would slump and sports like judo and taekwondo, which rely on the games for exposure( as they are almost never shown at other times on terrestrial), would probably suffer. I do hope some kind of compromise is made, as The Olympics are a hugely popular event and the last ones delivered the sort of ratings only the death of a monarch, or England winning the world cup, would get.