I meant airing one after the other on the same evening. It's been the same with Takeaway and BGT for a few years now and hasn't been an issue, but I think if they were both on the same night it's be a bit much.

Thanks.

Looks like 2011 was the series which started the downfall
Note how it's auditions were at a high, most likely because the series it followed was the most successful series ever (2010). 2010 was hitting huge highs of 15m+ and climbed throughout the series whereas 2011 did the opposite as I remember it going under 10m at times (I'm sure). Interesting that 2011 was also the last series where the winner actually was successful... and still are.

Lots of silly comments made as per every Sunday

They should axe this, bring back this, should have changed this, shouldn't have changed this etc etc, all of which amounts to every possible action being the exact reason why The X Factor isn't rating as well as it used to.

In reality it's because of format fatigue, it's been on a long time, it has a younger audience which is more fickle than older ones, and the presence of another flagship format on the same night means it's easy to give it a miss and still watch a big show.

None of the scenarios would probably have resulted in anything different.

started 18.32 - 2 minutes late and ended 20.23 - 2 minutes early.

Perhaps not.

But maybe have a look on Twitter. Last night for example Strictly # was filled with young accounts whereas X Factors wasn't. And in fact I saw huge amounts of negative tweets about the show whereas Strictly # was very positive.

I don't watch neither show at the moment. Saw X Factor up until Boot Camp (hate Six Chair challenge) and caught strictly occasionally.

So why does Simon Cowell keep tinkering with it? And why not just call it a day?

I might have another go nearer the time of this year's series. Yes the early 2004 series was huge, I'm not sure if it's the biggest ever consolidated or if 2013 narrowly beat it. It had the biggest ever final though (following the trend of audiences being less bothered about the winners of these shows and the finals not seeing the same surges we used to see).

The Autumn 2014 series was down quite a bit though and was a lesson to ITV not to do 2 series per year. It bounced back in 2005 but 2006 and then 2007 were the lowest ever. I think the 2007 series only had a consolidated average of just over 7 million, with one episode up against Children in Need going below 5 million (I think the overnight was 4.4)! It bounced back a lot in 2008 and 2009 and has been pretty consistent since then.

It became a much younger show when Brucie retired, and also in the celebrity casting in recent years, plus the young modern musical interval acts. Go back to the early days and there was a clear line between Strictly being for oldies and TXF for younger people.

X Factor still skews a lot younger than Strictly and has a larger 16-34 audience than Strictly, although obviously the gap is narrower than in previous years as XF's total audience is lower. According to @overnightstv, #Strictly had over 20,000 tweets and #XFactor had over 50,000 tweets last night.

So far with year to year comparisons, which reality/talent shows are up on 2015 and down?

I think X factor is currently up, as well as Strictly and Big Brother.

Down... Britain's got talent, The Voice.

What about Bake Off so far?

Not to mention that the keyword Honey G had more tweets than the Strictly hashtag! It generates so much chatter every weekend.

Thank you for these, brilliant! Yeah I have that one - 9.58m. Think I got that one from Broadcast.

Bake's Off current overnight average is 10.33m. The entire 2015 series averaged 9.91m.

Sure I never said Strictly had more younger, I meant like you said the gap is narrowing and that's due to the fact people are jumping ship. 5 years back for example, it would be unheard of the fact Strictly had even a tiny portion of younger viewers

BGT was up for the auditions and had its third highest set of auditions ever. It also had its most watched auditions show since 2009.

I don't think Strictly's young audience is any larger than it was 5 years ago, it's about the same. It isn't skewing any younger, the gap has just got smaller because XF is lower. Strictly hasn't gained anything from that, there hasn't been a rise in Strictly's young audience. I think you maybe get people saying they're jumping to Strictly as a dig at XF, but don't actually follow through and start watching it regularly.

I glanced at the ratings table on Wikipedia. Looks like just like X Factor it dropped during the live shows.

I remember the Voice dropping a lot too. Currently Bake Off has increased almost every week and Big Brother increased throughout too.

It ain't been a bad year for the reality spectrum per se. I think 2015 was far worse for TV in general.

Yeah when I was looking for the 2007 figures I was shocked at how low they were.

Here's the official series averages
2002 - 7.58m
2003 - 8.55m
2004 (1) - 11.02m
2004 (2) - 8.66m
2005 - 9.42m
2006 - 8.01m
2007 - 7.34m
* 16 Nov ep had an overnight of 4.4m (17.6%), possible lowest ever rating
2008 - 8.78m
2009 - 9.37m
2010 - 10.34m
2011 - 10.07m (9.64m exc. +1)
2012 - 10.47m (9.98m exc. +1)
2013 - 11.13m (10.65m exc. +1)
2014 - 10.25m (9.77m exc. +1)
2015 - 9.86m (9.39m exc. +1)

I'm still baffled by those 2013 figures. It did very well that year and I can't work out why, and it is still fairly recent as well. But for a show that has been running since 2002, those recent figures are fantastic. As I said the other day, they need to steer clear of Geordie Shore types, that's what spoilt it for me last year. But please no Nigel Farage!

X Factor in 2015 had the rugby World Cup getting in the way, which also affected Strictly too. How does last night's second live show rating compare to the second live show in 2015?

Thanks and with only 2 episodes left I imagine the overall series average will be closer to 11m.

I think audiences associate X Factor with Saturday nights. It is intrinsically a Saturday night show and I think moving it midweek would be a disaster. We've already seen with BGT and even Strictly how audiences are less and less keen to watch these talent shows on weeknights. We don't have the same culture of midweek entertainment shows that they do in other territories (where Saturdays are a wasteland). Dramas (maybe outside of family adventure stuff) would feel odd on Saturdays too and wouldn't work for the same reason.[/quote]

Yet a few pages back CBS were being praised for overhauling their Friday nights and making them a success, which was done by taking a risk or two.

What's more, Britain's most popular "entertainment" programme currently runs on a Wednesday night and BGT has always done well - albeit now to diminishing returns.

I don't see what have ITV got to lose from shaking it up a bit? In the long-gone days of Thames, ITV had a number of successful entertainment formats running during the week and dramas running on Saturdays.

Tuesday night needs a reboot - use The X Factor next year to do that. Would it rate worse on a Tuesday against Holby and a random BBC drama than it currently does on a Saturday? I suspect not and I would imagine it would benefit from the relative weakness of Tuesday nights across the board and likely see a boost.

Saturday nights are a bit of a disaster for ITV at present, but what's often noticeable is how well detective dramas do on ITV3 on a Saturday evening and much more varied types of drama used to be screened on Saturdays in the past. No reason why a 2-hour detective drama couldn't hold up on a Saturday night.

Ironically the 2013 series of IAC was my least fave ever. No idea how it did so well. It was boring and when it wasn't it was just everyone slating Amy. 2012 and 2014 were miles better.

I started watching Strictly in 2013 when I started to get bored of XF (but still continued to watch XF). So this is my fourth series. I love Strictly. It's a much better show than XF is pretty much every way.

Speaking of XF, I wonder how tonight will do. It won't be leading into Victoria tonight which won't help. And with Sunday's normally lower than the Saturday shows, could 5.5m be where it lands which isn't going to be good enough at all. Last years second results show averaged 7.2m. No way will it be anywhere near that IMO.

Thanks for those. Aside from the 2013 spike it has been quite consistent since 2010. I don't understand those 2013 numbers either, it wasn't exactly a vintage series! It launched amazingly that year (13.5m consolidated I think) so it was big from the off, although it lost a bit over the run. Whereas last year was the opposite, the first week or so was down on 2014 but it held up better over the run and the final week was about flat from what I remember. Fewer Geordie Shore types would help, I'm sure they'll have 1 or 2 reality stars but hopefully no more than that. I doubt they'll get Farage now he's back as UKIP leader (!) but he would have been ratings gold.

Pointless Celebrities: 4.52m (29.0%)
* peak: 6.61m (37.8%) right before SCD

from rzt