Excellent for Strictly, the first time it has hit 10m overnight in October since 2011!

Dire for X Factor, I don't know how below 6m can be defended as being good. For all of the changes they have made, yet again, it's not doing the business.

Meet the Parents is a flop, why do they bother?

No show as big as TXF can be defended for being below 6 million. Just awful numbers.

Excellent for Strictly. Series high.

XF is really struggling. Under 6m is very poor.

Richard Osman ‏@richardosman 5m5 minutes ago
Over 10m for #Strictly last night, and Pointless Celebrities peaking higher than X Factor! X Factor just until 6m.

Absolutely. Dreadful numbers/viewing figures/ratings/whatever you want to call them.

I'm not sure what your job is, but you really should be looking to take up a career in politics- any party would happily employ you as a spin doctor.
How you've managed to do down a fantastic Strictly rating, and big up an average night for X Factor is remarkable.

Why does this BBC propagandist post about ratings, he embarrasses himself. I think Pointless would do much better without him.

Great for SCD.

Enjoyed JR last night with Phil Collins.

That MTP rating suggests all that "trending on twitter" stuff is pretty irrelevant when it equates to the numbers who are watching.

They need to get rid of Meet The Parents. That is a horrible number. Not sure what they've got that could replace it though. I imagine The Next Great Magician will be no better in a few weeks as well.

It isn't good for X Factor. It really should be over 6m (although it might have scraped past it with something better than Meet The Parents on before it). It seemed to just lose the momentum going into the live shows this year. 3 weeks ago the judges houses Saturday show aired in the same slot as last night with a similar SCD overlap and averaged 6.8m, which would be decent. I'm not sure if it was the choice of finalists or just live show format fatigue that caused it to drop from there but it isn't good.

You wouldn't complain when an ITV "propagandist" is doing the same with X Factor.

I think that is who Dan likes to think of himself as

Because people were tuning in early for Strictly. Would be interesting to see how low it was at the start in comparison!

Still, with ratings for daytime Pointless down year on year and getting consistently beaten by The Chase I probably shouldn't begrudge Richard having something to crow about.

I don't think the contestants they chose has helped. I know a few weeks ago you said you didn't miss anyone from the earlier stages - but the people I know who watch it (and including myself) a lot of their favourites didn't make it to live shows. And they said if their favorite isn't in the live shows then they've no interest to continue watching which I agree with. Not seen last nights show yet and like the last few weeks it'll probably be good but there's very few people I care about. That's the problem IMO.

Err, didnt he create Pointless? Without him the show wouldn't exist.

Unless you look at the demos. But 'total numbers' rule this thread.

He did indeed.

Why do they bother as opposed to doing what?

Remember the demographics info posted a few days ago.

Jonathan Ross seems unusually high, isn't it a million more than he's been getting recently?

Absolutely fantastic viewers there for Strictly there, well deserved.

X Factor where we have come to expect it. A poor and dismal rating , little viewer engagement in the show. Lots of complaints bring the Nicole show, and the poor acts.

An embarrassment for X-Factor. Its cheerleaders should call it a day.

Haha, you know Dan's run out of excuses when he can't even mention the rating!

Shows how weak and fragile X Factor now is.

I now have an image in my head of Simon Cowell dressed as a high school cheerleader.

It's just wrong

X Factor looks to be 0.18m higher than last week, so either very slightly up or basically exactly the same depending on your view.

It'll be interesting to see how 10 pages of arguments and baiting other posters can be generated from this, presumably repeating all last week's posts a few more times.

I think that's a fair comment. I think the show did well in getting people invested in contestants like James, Caitlyn, Christian (those are the 3 that spring to mind as they all had well received auditions in episode 1) and then threw that away at judges houses. Whilst I have my reservations about how any of those would have done at the live shows (particularly Christian who was largely awful) those were the contestants who had strong narratives and built up popularity with the public, whereas people just don't care about the likes of Ryan and Freddie (definitely not the latter given he was voted out) and whilst Saara is more talented than any of the overs that got sent home, people just haven't warmed to her. It does feel like there was an odd mismatch between the contestants that were built up in the early stages and those that were put through to the live shows. For instance, whilst none of them were really to my tastes, it was stupid to not have one of James, Samantha or Rebecca (those 3 overs who became really good friends after their group performance at bootcamp) in the live shows as they'd spent time getting people invested in that story. Also having 2 joke acts didn't help. I think the live shows so far have been good, but if people don't care about the acts then it won't work.

I guess the one thing is that if it is the choice of acts that caused the ratings to drop, then those viewers could potentially be won back again for the early stages next year more easily than if they switched off for other reasons. But they've got a long run to this year's final yet, with Halloween/Bonfire Night yet to come!

This is where you start looking weird; the rating for X Factor is not 'dismal'. 4m would be dismal.