Oh - my mistake! :0

I was muddling up Homefront with Home Fires. Oops! Yes, Homefront was indeed a stinker - it seems that Kieran Roberts' Manchester drama department can't come up with the goods at all.

But I think Breathless was announced as an official November commission …

http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press...ama-breathless

Fast Friends was commissioned with incredible haste, I think about three months after they bought the format it was on the telly, much to Les and the producer's displeasure as they were thrown straight into it without much time to think about it. I think it was a bit of a contractual obligation to Les.

I remember watching the final series of Blankety Blank, it was one of those shows, like The Roxy, where I watched it every week after I got a telly in my bedroom so I have fond memories of it (no staying up late to watch rude things for me, the best thing about having my own TV was watching light entertainment). But it was declining quite a bit, certainly watching Les banter with the likes of Gary Davies was a bit of a step down from the golden age of Tel and Kenny Everett.


Yes, but of course the reason London had two ITV stations was to create competition in the system and stop one company dominating things to a huge extent, which on the face of it was good for the viewer. It meant ITV did have quality programming throughout the week, at least, because there would always be big drama and entertainment on weeknights. And as we've mentioned before, they would faithfully share out film premieres between the two, so Bond films would alternate between weekdays and weekends.


Well, yes, and I think the suggestions that certain nights are devoted to certain genres are a bit daft. It means you're commissioning stuff for the sake of it and to fill slots rather than considering what works best. And it makes schedules incredibly boring. There was a great example from ITV themselves in 2001 when they decided to make Monday the home of young-skewing comedy and drama, it lasted five weeks before they started worrying the ratings were dropping and started sticking Alright on the Night and Millionaire back there again.

Maybe Mondays are a good night for dramas, but that's because of the individual dramas, not because they become any better on a Monday. A flop drama will flop in any slot. And people don't turn into them because it's a Monday, nobody can remember what day anything is on, or when it was on last time round. People tune in because they like that particular programme. That's even more true now in the days of box sets and iPlayer when they could be watching it at any time.

A good slot can make the difference but it's not a question of blithely putting everything in one slot without any consideration of whether it's right for that slot or, indeed, what the other channels are doing. By this theory, because Wednesday was BBC1's weakest night a few years back, it would be just stuffed with cheap factual forever. Look what BBC1 are getting on Wednesdays now.

It's easy to come up with ideas for new schedules but the vast majority of scheduling involves avoiding what other channels are doing and working around sporting events and other things, so you can't have things set in stone. In addition, budgets mean that you do have to have several nights where you have to cobble together enough stuff to get you from teatime to bedtime without spending too much money. It's not for want of trying but you can't have blockbusters every night, there isn't the cash for it. Some nights are going to be weaker than others. And there has to be some kind of subjectivity to scheduling, otherwise it may as well be a railway timetable. Saying "If this is a drama it can only go in slots X, Y or Z" is trying to turn TV scheduling into an exact science, rather than actually considering what's best for the individual programme. If it was that easy to create a killer schedule, why aren't they doing it already?

Yeah I totally agree, the new cast really were starting to gel well together and I definitely could of seen it going on certainly another couple of series. I really do miss it, nice light TV drama with a great cast.

I think DCI Banks being in its fifth series would make it easier for ITV to justify axing it, Our Girl is a goner after this series as well I would think.

Of course. Stupid me.

Those politics made sense back then but it's all itv now.... Hence my Corro/Emmerdale crossover. Or for that matter, EE/Casualty/Holby crossover. Imagine the ratings boost.

BBC bosses were left deflated this morning after Great British Bake Off ratings sank by nearly a million viewers.

Last night's episode featuring contestants baking bread left viewers stale with comments on social media asking if GBBO was nearing its sell-by date.

A BBC insider said that there was concern that the programme would go the way of the once popular X Factor will viewers deserting it in droves .....

Can't Pay? We'll Take It Away!: 1.7m (8.6%)
Paralympics 2016: Opening Ceremony (9pm-2am): 1.2m (12.2%)
The Last Leg: Welcome to Rio: 800k (3.7%)

including +1

Ha! I'd forgotten about the Fast Friends address book. I watched every edition of the series, though.

The BBC split the final series of Blankety Blank into two chunks. They showed about six editions on Thursdays at 8pm in September/October 1989 where it didn't rate well. I expect it was up against The Bill. It resumed after a series of The Les Dawson Show, and by January 1990, BB was on Mondays at 8pm where it rated as low as 4.5m. Not sure what was on ITV at the same time, but BB was sandwiched between a weak American sitcom which had been scrapped after a handful of episodes, and a wishy-washy offering from the Natural History department.

Well Our Girl in that slot certainly puts Our Zoo in context in the same slot.

No chance of a series 3 if the somewhat superior figures for Our Zoo were not enough in the post Bake Off slot.

No doubt we will see another attempt next year with someone surely spotting the common denominator here.

So someone must already be creating Our Foster - a show about young children being fostered out by an army doctor whose zoo keeper husband is cheating on her.

DCI Banks I watched first episode and couldn't remember what happened when I turned on last night. Lol. Probably says more about me but it's just become plodding. I've downloaded now and will keep series to watch sometime in next couple of months - maybe. Just got round to watching Brief Encounters before it disappeared from planner at midnight last night!

You're right about Breathless. It was a real disaster too.

Homefront was awful and deservedly tanked. Home Fires did OK to be fair to it, it just never quite caught fire. They could probably have justified a third series of it if they wanted to.

Can you direct me to a link on this please? What paper? Google couldn't find it.

Strike It Lucky

Thanks, Ray. That was massive in the ratings for a few years, if I recall correctly.

Can't Pay is still a solid hit but I do think 5 need to be careful not to overexpose it.

I've seen a promo for The Level on ITV's YouTube page and I'm curious where that will that will air? I think Fridays after Joanna Lumley's Japan but Tuesday wouldn't surprise me.

BBC One has a lot of new shows and I wonder how they'll slot it, I assume Mondays will be factual if The Fall replaces Ripper Street in October so I'm guessing WDYTYA will go there, Thursdays and Tuesdays I imagine will air The Missing, Ordinary Lies as well as any new dramas, Wednesdays will be The Apprentice and Fridays I assume comedy

Spoof write-up by me above to paradoy some of the Xfactor articles of recent times.

That's the sort of rubbish that GBBO will face for having the temerity to dominate the ratings. The newspapers and certain websites are a long way from turning yet. Strictly will probably get it first.

Of course they aren't fronted by Cowbell so won't get it so much.

And Our Zoo was facing Scott & Bailey too. So it did better than it was given credit for.

We have not watched DCI Banks live since they started splitting a story in half and showing them a week apart.

All that does is make us (and I bet others) record them and watch them as one 90 minute story at some future point - in our case might be weeks or months from now as we only watched last years episodes this Summer when there was not much on.

At least Silent Witness have sense to do this on consecutive days. It just does not work for this kind of show to put the two halves a week apart.

I seem to recall reading that Stephen Tompkinson said that he shares that opinion,

I think ITV Drama suffers because if you are with Sky and miss a show it will be repeated on ITV Encore less than 2 months after it has originally aired.
Things like Marcella, Jericho and Grantchester I have waited for to be added to Sky boxsets as it has no adverts.
BBC Drama isn't shown on the Drama channel until at least 2-3 years after it's original showing. I think this will change soon though as W channel is starting to show things more recent. Also the only BBC boxsets available for free are from BBC3.

It did indeed as the AI figures prove. Those who watched loved it. They had just scheduled it wrongly and did not get enough to watch in the place they put it.

The decisions over what to put following Bake Off have been very odd in the past three years. Not hard to see why two have failed there and one has succeeded.

The scheduling there made Doctor Foster a huge hit and helped it to win well deserved awards.

The same scheduling killed Our Zoo as it was just not a good fit.

For different reasons neither is Our Girl.

Good, it's about time BBC shows got the same press scrutiny as their rivals are always having to withstand.

10.06m (44%) on 19 August

Our Zoo should always have been Sunday nights at 8pm. Our Girl and Doctor Foster are decent 9pm drama's but would work better on a Tuesday I think.

Think the weather affected ratings, everything seemed quite low last night. The share higher this year suggests less people were watching tv overall

I can guess!