Good job the BBC have lost the rights to The Open then!

Or it'd be like the 90s where you'd get "Tennis and Golf" (or as it tended to be "Cricket and Racing") flitting between the two all day.

The authorities must have been talking.Wimbledon moves back a week as does the golf and for the first time in years the Lords Test will not class with the golf.Presumably the is because of Sky's raid on the open.However cricket tests will clash with Wimbledon.

I notice the 3.5m EastEnders overnight against England's defeat to Iceland managed to get up to 4.68m in the officials, so a fair bit higher than the all time low official of 4.11m.
It wasn't unheard of to have three or four sports in the title. Sometimes these weekday broadcasts had a bigger number of sports than Grandstand did at the weekends.

More developments regarding Wentworth, that might tickle you all if nothing else.

Now the show's official UK social media accounts are saying it will return back to C5 on Monday 25th July.

Seriously, who on earth signs off this kind of thing? And why would anyone think this was a good idea in the first place? To recap, the plan appears to be...

Episode 3: Tonight 10pm, Channel 5
Episode 4: Tomorrow 10pm, 5Star
Episode 5: Next Tuesday 10pm, 5Star
Episode 6: Monday 25th TBC, Channel 5

If the ratings were bad before, they're about to get a whole lot worse. Got to laugh at the sheer absurdity of it.

Presumably Ep6 won't be airing at 10pm, but who the hell knows at this point.

Nothing yet in the schedules, but I would expect BBC One's early evening schedule on Wednesday to be changed fairly significantly after today's news.

I reckon that's a decent enough rating for the Wimbledon Final. Not matching the highs of when Murray has been in previous finals - but that peak is excellent.

Does anyone have a breakdown?


BBC1 trounced ITV as expected. A good rating for the final. If it had gone to penalties, I'd sure it would have gone a bit higher.



The rating I have for it is: 11.42m (45.5%) inc +1

That's from 18:59:30-22:31:34


That is absurd. What are Channel 5 thinking?!

Here are the figures broken down for that EE episode:

Live: 2,567
VOSDAL: 1,096
Time-shifted: 1,019

= 4,682

Probably more Sky have been talking

Tomorrow's Racing Post front page. Leading trainer Mark Johnston's message to ITV:
* Drop betting talk on coverage of horse racing;
* Learn the lessons from Top Gear's failed relaunch which kept too much the same.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CnG7GA-WgAA19AL.jpg

Is he right?

I agree with him about Top Gear, but betting is surely too fundamental to horse racing as a sport to simply ignore it. There are other ways they can make the sport more attractive to viewers without doing anything as drastic as that.

Thank you, Roscoe.

I haven't been looking at the 28 day figures recently, but if they're the same as they were a while ago, it might creep up to about 4.8m.

Is he suggesting they don't mention the horses' odds before the race?!

Essentially yes! Putting aside the importance of betting turnover to the success of horse racing as a product for a moment, how absurd would it look? Especially when, as is the case now, all the ad breaks will be filled with promotions for bookmakers trying to drum up custom for the races about to be shown.

I can't see ITV going down that route, to be honest. Johnston is never short of a controversial opinion or two, and I doubt this idea of his would have much support at all. But at least from racing's point-of-view there is a bit of a debate taking place in the media about how the coverage should evolve to get ratings moving in the right direction again, and I'm sure ITV will welcome any suggestions.

The big positive is Ed Chamberlin has left a very good job at Sky Sports and taken a bit of a career risk because he loves the sport and wants to help take the coverage to the next level. He's a popular presenter, impossible not to like I would argue, who appeals to all types of viewer and knows a thing or two about innovative presentation of sport having worked on Monday Night Football. But the team around him need to make the right calls about the direction in which they go, and it'll be fascinating to see what they do decide to change.

I think the main thing is it needs to be more accessible. Betting odds and what's favourite is easy for anyone to understand, so there's absolutely no need to drop that. But does Joe Public care about the pedigrees of winning horses? I think not. Do the race replays have to be quite so in depth? No, they do not. The coverage should be more fluid and less geared towards anoraks, that's what Racing UK is for.

What?! Moving it back to Channel 5 in a couple of weeks makes no sense at all. Moving it from Channel 5 to 5STAR was fair enough but moving it back again seems an odd decison and will confuse people.

Have to laugh at the people losing it on social media though, like moving a TV programme from one channel to another is the most outrageous thing that's ever happened and the worst thing they have ever done, so over the top it's hilarious. Given that 5STAR is available on all the same UK TV platforms as Channel 5 what's the problem?

I don't think you can cover racing without mentioning the betting. Where would it end? Not being allowed to mention the favourite?

It is not as if the presenters are suggesting viewers pawn the wife's jewellery, and bung the proceeds on 2.25 at Aintree.

I watch a lot of snooker coverage, and they mention the tournament odds on that several times a day, complete with a list of every player in the tournament. They mention title odds on football coverage, too, so it would be daft not to mention betting during racing coverage.

Didn't see it posted and no surprise really, but ITV2 have announced Love Island will be back next summer.

http://www.tellymix.co.uk/reality-tv...ies-three.html

According to Caroline in the final last night they had over a million votes which seems impressive when X Factor and BGT have had 1.5-2 or so million for some live shows. And they allow more votes per person (5 on XF/BGT v 3 on LI).

TV3 were actually beaten into Third place in Ireland.

Match average:
RTÉ -782,100 (+ a further 94,100 streams).
BBC -149,000.
TV3 -116,000.

No figure for ITV/UTV in Ireland but it would have been extremely low.

In the early days of televised racing (1940s and 50s) the BBC did not give any betting information but later bowed to public pressure.

Johnson's just been puritanical.ITV have not invested 30 odd million to purify thoroughbred horseracing.They have done so because of the advertising revenue generated by the decision to allow Bookmaker Betting advertising.So betting will remain integral to the coverage

Next Week section of the new TV times for the week of 23-29th July Has Robot Wars and Mrs Browns Boys Starting/being on

Oh dear something went wrong there.

So Robot Wars will clash with the Olympics, good/bad idea?

Love Island: the Live Final: 1.21m (6.2%) excluding +1

Very good and probably 1.4m including.

BBC1
EastEnders: 6.19m (30.6%)
BBC News (10pm): 4.85m (28.5%)
The One Show: 3.78m (21.1%)

BBC2
University Challenge: 2.35m (11.6%)
Only Connect: 1.87m (9.0%)
Exodus: Our Journey to Europe: 0.92m (4.5%)

BBC4
Trainspotting Live: 0.64m (3.1%)
War at Sea: Scotland's Story (Repeat): 0.47m (2.3%)
Easter Island: Mysteries of a Lost World (Repeat): 0.23m (2.3%)

C4 (exc. +1)
999: What's Your Emergency?: 1.76m (8.6%)
Superfoods: the Real Story: 1.18m (5.7%)
Dispatches: Racist Britain: 0.97m (4.8%)

C5 (exc. +1)
Big Brother: 1.08m (5.2%)
Police Interceptors Unleashed (Repeat): 0.65m (3.2%)
Wentworth Prison: 0.51m (3.2%)

BB did well up against the Love Island final. Hoping to see an increase tonight now LI is over.

Looks to be at around 1.2m, however this week is being perceived extremely negatively. I don't think I can bear to watch this ridiculous week which has ruined the whole series for me.

Getting rid of 4-5 people with no public vote is the worst thing they have ever done.