Well of coure you enjoy it when the thread is a total SCD love-fest, but it puts people off who don't agree with that chain of thought.

And I disagree, I think posts like "no wonder it's doing well/badly, it's amazing/boring" are detrimental as they assume their own opinion to be shared by the whole viewing population.

Just watched X Factor and thought it was good. Panel worked (great to see Sharon back on form), the acts were pretty good and some of the staging was fantastic. They've not got a new set (understandable as they're moving next year) but they seemed to have freshened it up a bit with some different colours and maybe it was just me but I thought they'd made it look bigger. It was a good fun show but I don't hold out much hope for the ratings.

Sounds like they've changed the format of the results show a bit, so we'll see tonight how that goes.

Pot and Kettle

Let's see if my predictions are better than last week:
Strictly - 8.7m (clash will have taken viewers away)
X Factor - 6m (possible big +1 figure and again hurt by the clash)

Voila! Got one of my predictions nearly right (updating...)

From rzt:
SCD: 9.60m (44.8%)

The X Factor: 6.21m (29.1%) inc +1

That's excellent for Strictly.

Amazing for SCD. Good for X Factor but I think tonight's will be higher. I'm guessing 7m for the results.

So without +1 TXF was below 6 million

I agree that was a great result for SCD

TXF under 6 million excluding +1 shows the clash hurt it.

I think 77m may be a little optimistic

X Factor peaked with 7.25m (35.6%) at 21:00

Strictly peaked with 10.58m (48.8%) at 19:50

Currently formatting rzt's breakdown and will post soon.

Anything over 7 million average would be optimisitc

Fabulous once again for Strictly.

77 million in a population of 60 million would be more than optimistic it would be astounding

Pretty much bang-on what I was expecting for XF, up 600k YOY. Word of mouth and shorter clash will see it go up to 6.7m next week.

Fantastic for Strictly. Thought it might pick up a few floating football viewers and it seems to have done. It did even better than I expected.

X Factor about where I thought it would be. Not great but not surprising. At least it held over 6 million with the long clash. The peak looks low but with the clash throwing things off perhaps it isn't too surprising. Next week should be a bit higher. Going into the live shows does seem to have shaved off a bit of momentum though, not for the first time. I wonder if that was the choice of acts or a more general live show dip. I thought the acts were good but you wouldn't know unless you tuned in.

Of course, on the upside it was 600k higher than last year's first live show!

More from rzt:

England v Malta: 4.51m (29.1%)
* peak - 6.55m (35.9%) at 18:40
You've Been Framed: 2.19m (10.4%)

inc +1

If you include cats, you may just get that number

That's appalling for You've Been Framed. I know it was against Strictly but it should still have done better. Strictly was above 10m from 7.20-8.05pm but fell back below it during the clash.

44 % for SCD is on fire, as predicted it won the clash comprehensively. The eX Factor is now dead in the water, only the die hard fans sticking with it. Its indefensible now and the press is having a field day on the cock ups. Drunk or apparently drunk judges, Louis rude to Dermot, issues on contestants where insufficient background checks were made. Cut the judges pay by £100k each and pay for ten researchers on £40k each to actually check into the backgrounds, the issue is the show is milked of all finances by bloated judges pay.

The figure for the football is quite poor - was it not shown in Scotland ?

Real performance show fatigue there for XF. Strictly will have hurt XF and once again dire surrounding shows on ITV, but the publics appetite for spending the non business end of this kind of talent format is being stretched. This is a post audition Voice style rating and the Voice spends a much reduced time doing this process.

Ah well there you go. What way to piss off any lead in. Put a rpt of YBF on before TXF. Numpties.

But I suspect it was the choice of acts that put pay to a low rating for TXF. Had they been less about joke acts and serious singers, it might have been much closer to 7m.

Ad breaks and punditry don't keep viewers.

Considering it's ITV number one show of the autumn - other than I'm A Celebrity and the odd soap episode - I don't think The X Factor is dead in the water yet. Especially considering the demos it pulls in.

The biggest concern for it, though, would he the low peak but maybe it shouldn't be too surprising; the average is fine considering the long clash. The key is to keep the quality of the show as good as last night's though, as seen by Cold Feet, good word of mouth doesn't always mean ratings hold up.

Superb for Strictly; many on the forum have said that might be the best week three show ever and I can't deny that; very entertaining. The football match average would have probably been decent but barely anyone watched the ads after full time which is what ITV would have preferred.

Its a decent peak I guess, and there is a bedrock of support and interest(an 80000 crowd apparently-though the food outlets must have been doing a good trade I reckon), but England aren't attractive enough to pull in much of a casual audience at the moment. A dull win against a small island team isn't going to help the cause.