Er, yes. What I was trying to suggest is that there is a difference between Shiver and Potato, which were existing ITV departments that have been spun off (Shiver is the old Yorkshire TV factual department, for example, and is still very much integrated into ITV) and companies like Big Talk which were existing companies which ITV bought and are operated at arm's length. If you see what I mean, Big Talk isn't just the ITV drama department with a label on it. It was a company that existed before ITV were involved.


Well, they did do a revival of Whose Line Is It Anyway on the BBC, but it wasn't called that, it was called Fast and Loose...
http://www.ukgameshows.com/ukgs/Fast_and_Loose

It was from the same production team as Whose Line, and was exactly the same format, but for whatever reason they decided they never wanted to mention that (even the press release said it was "from the creators of Mock The Week"). But it was identical. It was also not very good.


I have always had a problem with Alf Garnett, I know the whole point of the series is that Alf is an idiot, but I always think he wins far too much. As one of the reviews of the revival the other week pointed out, Tony Booth's character is supposed to be the opposite of him, challenging his views, but he's an insufferable loudmouth as well, so you hate him too. And I just find the whole thing - whether Till Death or In Sickness And In Health - revolves so much around arguing and shouting and features so many repellent characters that it just becomes a total chore to watch. I know what Johnny Speight was trying to do and I admire him for doing it, but that doesn't mean I have to like the programme.


Indeed, The Bill was of course a conventional 9pm drama before being revamped as a twice weekly year-round 8pm series. When they had the big revamp in 1998, when it went back to hour long episodes, it was all over the place for a bit, though, including a number of episodes at 9pm. Actually there was a period in 1999 where quite regularly on Tuesdays you had an hour long Emmerdale at 8pm and The Bill at 9pm.


Great stuff here, of course that was the Only Fools repeat run that was considered to have been the making of the programme, as you can see it was neck and neck with the new sitcom on ITV. The kids show ratings are interesting, at that point BBC1 had far, far more repeats in the summer - more or less Newsround and Play School were the only new shows - while ITV had new content all year round, and the same was true in primetime as well, as you can see.


Well, you could argue that you already have that show, and it's The Graham Norton Show, where all the guests are on together and interact and you get lots of interesting encounters. Indeed it's always a big disappointment on Norton when the guests are interviewed separately, or just with people from their own film, to the extent that I would argue if that's the only way they want to be interviewed, they shouldn't be invited on.

Anyway, I've said here before what I think the problem with Ross' show, both on ITV and the Beeb. He just can't be bothered with half of the guests. If there's a guest he's genuinely interested in it can be quite a good interview, if he's not he just absolutely goes through the motions, asks boring questions and spends more time asking them about the other guest than themselves. I don't know why they persist with this format. It would a million times better if they only had one guest he actually cared about.

Agree with all of that. You do wonder how GFI would be doing if it was called You Bet and had a host less unpopular.

I know you are, but you're still limiting it and saying to the audience "there's no need to bother with the rest of our output, you probably won't be interested in it".


Well, I know this is the commercial reality, but you still can't afford to write off huge swathes of the schedule, because you're just inviting the audience to look somewhere else. Which may be fair enough, but how do you get them back in the autumn? How do they know The X Factor's back if they haven't seen any trailers for it? And what if they've gone somewhere else in the summer and found something they like and stick with it in the autumn?


I don't think there's very much difference between the BBC1 and ITV audience at all, more or less the entire population happily watch both. I don't see why New Tricks wouldn't work on ITV, it's exactly the kind of programme that appeals to the heartland ITV audience and for many years it was the kind of programme they were extremely happy to make and have in their schedules, a la London's Burning. Up until about ten years ago if New Tricks would have suited any channel, it would have been ITV.

I don't understand what you're suggesting about ITV not having a schedule foundation when if anything the big problem is that the schedule is too restricted, not helped of course by the preponderance of soaps pre-watershed. That means stuff gets shoved in unsuitable slots because there's no room for it anywhere else. Jekyll and Hyde is a brilliant example, it might have worked better in an 8pm slot where it would have been out of the way of the youngest viewer and got a better lead-in than having to self-start at 7pm. But there weren't any 8pm slots so it was inelegantly crammed in.


One point seems to contradict the other here. Why do people who regularly use TV guides need to have such heavily stripped and stranded schedules? They use TV guides.

I still watch loads of live telly and I am referring here to my mum who also watches lots of live telly. She has a PVR (but doesn't trust it very much) and does watch stuff she's recorded (she only just managed to finish off the last series of Ripper Street just before the new one started), but she also makes a regular date with the soaps and uses the TV guide every night. She does what I think a lot of people do, which is watch Corrie and Emmerdale out of habit, but then when that's done and dusted, will refer to the TV guide for the rest of the evening, and take her pick from that.

She knows when Corrie and Emmerdale are on, and she knows Strictly and Casualty is on Saturday and so on, but she won't remember anything else. She won't know when the last series of a drama was on and expect it on the same night. She won't be confused if the next series of Broadchurch isn't on a Monday. She'll be more likely to ask me which one it is and if I can remember if she actually watched it.

And my mum's not stupid, by the way, she can do a million things at once. But she's got better things to do than remember when telly shows are on.


Well, this is a bit of a cheap shot, I'm afraid, but it's a bit of a shame you're suggesting Trevor McDonald programmes as the way to sort out a night when on Thursday a McDonald documentary was beaten by Question Time on the Labour Party leadership debate. Also as well I think it's a total waste to skew female on Tuesday, which Long Lost Family is, when it's BBC1's most female-skewing night of the week thanks to Holby.


I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm poo-pooing all your ideas, and sorry if this is boring everyone else, but I'm afraid my general point is that you can't expect long-term planning and strategy from the television industry given that so often it's just winging it.

I mean, look at Sky Living, first it was going to be a female-focused brand that wasn't just going to be a channel but other things too, then they changed their mind and it wasn't even going to be aimed at women at all, then they put a load of original British programming on it, then they dropped it all and decided it was only going to be imports. And that's from a company that spends millions on marketing and research.

Expecting coherent long term planning from TV channels is unrealistic. Most of the time they're making it up as they go along and hoping nobody notices.

There's nothing on those lists that I'd want to watch but they are killer schedules for itv. If I was itv I'd surround the two soaps with Xmas films. Or other classic films.

No one is denying that. You were complaining about the comparison of the shows and it was started by Simon and Louis. They don't do it now of course, they know the pecking order on a weekend now as I am sure you do even though you it's not to your liking

I would say "yes", except if that happened something would have to give and I'm not sure which of the usual suspects BBC1 would be willing to drop.

CTM might go now that there is no Downton on ITV, although Christmas Day is a Sunday this year which, of course, is a traditional CTM day. They could move Dr Who to Christmas Eve as that is a Saturday this year, the traditional Dr Who day, plus the last series didn't do so well in the ratings so maybe not so worthy of a Christmas Day slot. (I know he head one last year but there was no competitive Bake Off last year.)

I wasn't complaining, was merely stating what's being done.

Regarding that it's "not to my liking" - please check back to see some of my comments about XF, and you will see that I'm highly critical of both Strictly and XF, and vice versa if praise is due.

Not everyone is just pro Strictly or pro XF you know, even though alot of members are on here,

Yes it would be similar to Norton but the set would put a twist on it. The talk shows in America almost all still follow the Carson format so similarity isn't a problem.

What would be interesting is if the chats were allowed to get more serious. Norton always keep his show funny but you could go to deeper topics. If you have people from The Magnificent Seven on, you could raise the Black Lives issue. Could be very interesting TV and certainlu unusual. Kind of mixing Leno with Oprah.

The show isn't live so the editor should be able to make it work.

I'm not sure which is the top show out of those two. Yes SCD is clearly the more popular show but I'm not convinced it is the more valuable programme.

If they were both on commercial channels, I'm not sure which would generate the most money. From what I gather SCD doesn't rate especially well with the under 40s.

This is all very different to GBBO which has excellent ratings with all ages. As does BGT.

I agree that itv were pretty nasty to SCD at times. It was quite unpleasant. I can't blame the BBC for wanting to return the pleasantries.
In recent years BBC1 has been able to give itv a bit of a kicking. Helped by some incompetence form itv.

So you don't think its petty on both sides? Would you agree then with an eye for an eye then?

And please everyone, this is supposed to be ligt hearted banter, please don't get all serious on me.

I think the BBC need to drop Doctor Who from Christmas Day, I'm a fan of the show, but it's underperforming. Boxing Day would be better.

I think ITV need to go all out and put on a big blockbuster to take on the BBC favourites.

Something like this:

3:50 - Buckingham Palace at Christmas
4:20 - FILM The Lego Movie
5:50 - News
6:00 - Emmerdale
7:00 - Coronation Street
8:00 - FILM Jurassic World
10:30 - Ant and Dec's All Star Christmas Party
11:30 - News

Just watched the replay from XF on ITV, and they went straight into Doc Martin, not ads, no trailers, no crap.

That's how it should be done. Just needed to cut out the ident.

The comments are petty. I'm referring to the scheduling more than the comments.

BBC1 has pushed TXF to a later start time thanks partly to only shaving 5 minutes of an episode after each elimination. That's fine. No different to itv weaponising Emmerdale. ITV were brutal to Eldorado when it launched. That's the game.

But like I said before, SCD isn't quite the dominant show the overnights suggest.

Surely itv would want to use a mega movie in the run up to xmas when the advertisers want it? The other problem is Jurassic is years away from terrestrial TV.

Thanks for the reminder though, I need to download it as we've not caught it yet.

CTM is not an ideal Christmas Day show. It would fit far better on Boxing Day or Xmas Eve. It never bothered me as I recorded it but a bit thrown away where it was.

It's been out almost a year and half though. I'm certain ITV could get it for the right price. ITV have definitely got the money, they need to start investing some of it.

Anything can be bought for the right price.

Well we already know there is a MBB on Christmas Day

Strictly starts at 6.30ish because there are less viewers watching before 6.30pm on a Saturday than after it. Nothing wrong with a 10/15 minute overlap compared to a full clash like you used to get with Noel's House Party and Blind Date.

People forget that in the early days Strictly and X Factor used to clash regularly. And performance and results shows for both were on the same night.

If Strictly looks to finish by 8.15pm and ITV start X Factor around 8.15pm both would be fine. And Strictly is dominant in its timeslot.

You could still make money off Strictly if it was on commercial TV as it gets 900,000+ 16-34s on a good day. Not as big as X Factor but bigger than most other shows on ITV. Then there are other demos that ads could be targeted for. Then it's actual 'live' audience, that's people watching it live rather than throughout the evening up to 2am, is substantial too.

I'm thinking they will put Bake Off on Christmas Day - it would make sense to me as it is the highest rated show at the moment, so surely they would want it on the big day. And I do think they will split EastEnders again this year. I think the BBC One line up will look very different this year, I think they will be tempted to change it up as it has been very predictable the last few years.

I'll be interested to see how ITV responds - they could put the Birds of a Feather special on Christmas Day, if the BBC is looking too top heavy with reality and drama.

Well the BBC has some strong shows on Christmas Day, and ITV need to make sure they can rate well and not cost too much. Therefore if I was ITV, I would be looking to ge hold of the righs to Frozen as a film to play on Christmas evening. This will pull in families as BBC1 take the older audience.

But this is unrealistic, so Despicable Me 2 (and Toy Story 3 if they can get it) would be better than last years Cameraman to the Queen (which did 1.06m)

3.00pm The Queen
3.10pm Despicable Me 2
5.10pm ITV News
5.30pm Emmerdale
6.30pm Coronation Street
7pm POG Dogs
8pm Coronation Street
8.30pm Grantchester
10pm Vicious

Boxing Day (Coronation Street leading into Blankety Blank leading into BOAF)

As much as I love CTM, I wouldn't mind it Christmas Eve or Boxing Day. Spreads things out in my view.

Can we have a Christmas without the old bag doing a speech?

Channel 4 have rights to the more recent Universal Studios films.

BIB: Great schedule - for anyone who is an ITV-hating BBC fanboy.


Yes, you can. Just use your remote control to switch your television off or over to one of the very many channels that never show the speech.

2009 arguably Strictly's worst year on several levels. Not a great cast list, looked a bit threadbare in production, and the BBC made a huge in error combining the main show and the results bringing it back from Sunday and basically gifting the slot to XF. Figures dipped during the show because the audience wasn't happy with sitting through filler waiting for the voting process. Simon Cowell iirc had been moaning about the prospect of XF being hit by clashes, but he stopped pretty quickly when it was realised just what a hash the Beeb had made everything that season.
XF made history over the next few years but SCD did rally and 2010 was its best year too iirc.

The X Factor episode thread has 50 posts less than last Sunday's episode but around 20 more than yesterday's. Based on that it should hold up around yesterday's figure though will probably be slightly down as it has increased opposition.