Perhaps, although it seems a better fit for the earlier slot.

I had hoped The Chase might get a Christmas Day outing in an afternoon/early evening slot but it seems the Xmas special of that is airing on Friday 18th in the usual 5pm slot as a part of the Text Santa day.

Hopefully tomorrow will shed a bit more light.

How about this schedule:


Keeping the odd 25-minute ITV News (it's actually a handy length for my purposes), but using it after the Queen, not before. That plus Our Cilla (old-skewing stuff) against BBC One film. ITV's film starts as Brave ends and BBC One is doing news. It's not good for ITV that Midwife gets a headstart on Corrie, but I'm not sure how best to avoid it (and ITV didn't avoid a headstart last year). The 75-minute runtimes on BBC One complicate matters.

Our Cilla is a bit early really. Of course if it does play out in the afternoon then there would be no need for ITV to start Downton earlier than 9pm. It's just that BBC One has an extra 15 minutes of padding at the moment (due to the bogus runtime for Brave) so I don't see how BBC One gets to EastEnders as late as 9pm unless they pad the teatime news out from 10 to 25 minutes.

I think having ITV News at 3.10 will just cause viewrs to switch over automatcally to BBC1. The Cilla tribute should be kept at 10.30pm. Its not going to do well in the late datetime slot.

Is there a Happy Feet 2? This film must have passed me by.

What would you put at 3:10 on ITV then? It's not worth clashing films in my opinion.

If Downton stays at 8:30, I don't think EastEnders can follow it there without something being dropped, as Score said (presumably Stick Man). There is 15 minutes of give in the BBC One schedule, but not 30. Will be interesting to see what shifts, if anything.


There is indeed. It came out four years ago and hasn't been on channels 1-5 yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Feet_Two

Well we've seen what happenes when ITv try to appeal to the older viewrs after The Queen. The Queen's Garden last year 1.4m.

I would do (not that ITV will)

3.10pm The Nations Favourite Christmas Song (or this in the morning while people are getting Christmas Dinner ready) or Despicable Me
5.10pm The Chase Christmas Special
6pm Emmerdale
7pm ITV News
7.15pm Coronation Street
8.15pm Downton Abbey
10.15pm Our Cilla
11.15pm ITV News

Boxing Day


5pm ITV News
5.15pm Catchphrase Christmas Special
6pm Paul O' Grady For The Love of Dogs
7pm Peter & Wendy
9pm Benidorm

I think the BBC's best chance of beating or denting Downton is not to schedule EE against it. Another schedule could be:

5:15 DW
6:15 EE
6:45 SCD
8:00 EE
8:30 CTMW
9:45 MBB
10:15 CT Nan
10:45 MM

Minute Mart 1, I like the split EastEnders, but is Call the Midwife strong enough against the last-ever Downton? I take the point that EE probably isn't either (although it did outrate Downton by 2.0m exc +1 overnight in 2014). Midwife finishing at a quarter to ten feels too late to me.

Do we have any figures for GMB since Monday when it was 610,000 for Piers' first day, not impressive when you might expect viewers tuning in out of curiosity (or perhaps they did and tuned out again).

I read that as "I'm giving bashing ITV News a rest to return to bashing GMB. Deep down I know the ratings won't have suddenly surged overnight, but I want figures anyway to rip the shit out of".

If ITV do have Happy Feet 2, I don't think given it lost money at the box office its the best film to put at 3.10pm. I'm pretty sure despite being on quite a few times, Despicable Me would do better.

I notice there is a third film set for a 2017 relsease. So if ITV can hold onto the rights, they'll have premiere's eventually of Despicable Me 2, Minions and Me 3.

Good idea.

3:00 The Queen
3:10 Happy Feet 2
5:20 ITV News
5:45 The Chase Christmas Special
6:45 Emmerdale
7:45 Coronation Street
8:45 Downton Abbey
10:45 ITV News
11:00 Our Cilla

Other than Our Cilla being on a bit late, that's not too bad for a schedule I think? I'd have Our Cilla on another day and repeat it at 11 perhaps.

I do love this time of year, don't you? Its great fun doing these fantasy schedules

Just looking back to previous year, ITV have had Toy Story on Christmas Day in 2012 before and also Disney's Aladdin in the early morning. It would be good if they could utiluse more of these titles to build their schedule around instead of LE that's likely to give BBC1 a big advantage.

Xmas Day on the 2 main channels will be same old same old and no amount of fantasy schedules will change this. Too predictable and probably a ratings turn off as well.

Me too! Then they get all confirmed and it's predictable and boring.

Your considered and thoughtful reply is much appreciated. The lengthy article in The Guardian about GMB is far more illuminating.

I suppose it might be, but why are the words "stuck" and "record" swirling around in my head when it comes to ITV News and GMB?

Yes your right, it is a bit late for CTMW and if EE went out at 8pm it would clash with CS and don't the two channels have a gentleman's agreement not to clash on Christmas Day? not that itv are behaving like gentlemen.

Overnights.tv ‏@overnightstv 8m8 minutes ago
#ImACeleb came out on top again in the 9pm slot, with 8.2m/36.9% (ITV Total)

Overnights.tv ‏@overnightstv 8m8 minutes ago
#Detectorists still going for gold with excellent 454.7k/2.5% at 10pm on BBC4

Half a million down year-on-year for IAC, but basically the same share at around 37% inc +1.
2014: http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ratings...n-on-thursday/


Or swap the late news and Cilla?

Another thing is that Happy Feet fit into a 2-hour slot at 3:10 on Christmas Day 2011, and Happy Feet Two is six minutes shorter. In reality therefore that slot would probably be 115 minutes, and I still doubt ITV News would be 25 minutes, more likely 10. So that's an extra 30 minutes to play with. How about:

3:00 - The Queen
3:10 - FILM PREMIERE: Happy Feet Two (2011)
5:05 - ITV News
5:15 - New You've Been Framed! at Christmas
5:45 - Our Cilla
6:45 - Emmerdale
7:45 - Coronation Street
8:45 - Downton Abbey
10:45 - ITV News

I've found some.

Some ratings.

BBC Breakfast and Good Morning Britain from 23/11/2015

Monday: 1.55m, 610k
Tuesday: 1.55m, 630k
Wednesday: 1.54m, 610k
Thursday: 1.59m, 630k

There's an audience for Good Morning Britain but it's not BBC Breakfast's.

It has been said sometimes that the 6am hour really doesn't help GMB. Do you know what the figures would be if 7am - 8.30am only. I suspect not that much difference.

GMB starts at 7am at Christmas, well they did last year.

Yes, it starts at 07:00 this year from 21-24 December and 29-31, off air 25 & 28, back to normal on New Year's Day, according to Digiguide.

But of course ratings during this period won't be typical. From memory Breakfast peaks over 2m in the 8am hour, while GMB is also higher than average then.

The 6am hour doesn't help BBC Breakfast or Good Morning Britain looking at it.

Looking at Wednesday 25th November:

Between 6.00-7.00am Good Morning Britain had 323k, BBC Breakfast had 838k

Between 7.00-8.30am Good Morning Britain had 800k and BBC Breakfast had 1.81m.

From 8.30-9.15am BBC Breakfast had 1.95m and Lorraine had 840k. It's only because the last quarter hour of Lorraine didn't face BBC Breakfast that Lorraine rises to 870k for the 8.30-9.30am slot.

You don't really appreciate how well BBC Breakfast does across three and a quarter hours.