ITN still produces it though. Many people still call it the ITN News. I think the Lunctime News is skewed towards a stay at home mum audience, rather than being bias as such.

I watch BBC, ITN and Sky, and for the international perspective, I watch CNN and France 24 on Freesat too. It's good to get different angles to big news stories. I prefer the BBC but don't think it's the Holy Grail it once was.

AR did well too tbf. Tbh, I would have expected Poldark to be doing better.

Jesus, the ratings thread cold war has turned very hot

Tbh I don't think bringing back Louis wasn't the right decision. He is a complete waste of space. He is Cowell's puppet. Every live show he uses the same quotes he's used every single year (as does Cowell as well). I think viewers are bored of him, and do they who audition really aspire to be one of Louis' acts? I certainly wouldn't.

I think they should keep the 6 chair challenge, but get rid of the audience. Sometimes you can't even hear the singers with a baying mob behind shouting and screaming. The section where Louis chose his was the most contrived nonsense I've ever seen in my life. A complete shambles. But it was all done to make drama. But it does the show no good at all, especially in the long term.

Judges Houses was also complete nonsense. They picked those who would create drama, got rid of some good singers, and cjose some complete waste of spaces (Ottavio and Honey G). This in inturn pissed of many viewers, who clearly decided, what was the point in continuing to watch if they are going to pick rubbish acts, and then pretend they have potential over the better acts.

Probably more people than would want Nick Grimshaw (though he did seem intelligent at times).

He's part of XF's iconic brand, which doesn't need to be fiddled with. Notice how, in the years they stay true to the brand (2013, 2014 & now) the ratings decline less. It's iconic TV and viewers recognise this.

Sad statement for a sad, broken show.

If ratings are declining it isn't iconic TV by the way.

So you're telling me the 200k decline in 2013 demonstrated the show is "broken"? And I don't think you have the dictionary definition of iconic TV.

It's still pulling 8, 9, 10 million, it's certainly not "broken".
If you think XF is broken I wonder what you make of the soaps, The Voice (23% decline in one year!), Gogglebox, all of which are notably declining....

The soaps are getting better overnights than XFactor these days so I think they're doing fine.

Some amazingly massive skews there. The fact that Who Dares Wins is almost half watched by over 65s is of note.

I wonder what the oldest and youngest skewing shows are on BBC1/ITV?

Anyone know the skews for the main soaps?

The last couple of consolidated ratings haven't troubled the 8m mark, so you are overestimating it by some margin.

Nice way of completely dodging the content of my post. X Factor gets better ratings than most things too, though in your mind it's an utter flop. The soaps are declining (and have been for a lot longer than XF), by your logic they must broken too.

It's perfectly valid to use numbers from across the series.

It was such a disaster that Simon changed three of the judges.

That was his big mistake.

For me there are big moments in each series when you can look back and ask "why did they do that?" I said right from the off that turning the first live show of 2011 into a judges vote was a big error, especially as it resulted in the loss of the, at the time, favourite who had stunned everyone at Judges Houses. Tie in the exploits of Frankie Cocozza at Boot Camp and the overall negative vibe and it was a disaster.

2012 had the Rylan v Carolynne sing off where Richard Holloway was seen speaking to Louis; whilst many suspected there was a big hand controlling things behind this scenes this felt like 'proof' to them. The number of 'niche', if talented, acts they put through probably didn't help either. If you think that 2012 had James, Jaheme, Ella and Union J as the top four it doesn't seem like a bad series but... everything felt off.

2013 was a holding pattern series - don't push anything too far, just wait for Simon and Cheryl to ride back to bring the glory days back. And ironically it held it's own, even though the talent was very poor. I remember seeing the rating for the show after it aired against the Doctor Who anniversary episode and thinking "it's got a chance here."

I don't know what they were doing with the categories in 2014. I don't think the series was a bad one per se but why give their great white hope to Louis, who clearly didn't agree with the thought process behind them from the off, and shove the joke act towards Simon. He lost a lot of credibility at that point, when he was backing a karaoke singer over more commercial acts.

If I went into the issues with 2015 this post would take up about five pages.

They seemed to learn their lessons this year; I don't even think their live shows picks were bad - in 2010 nearly a quarter of the acts were 'jokes' (Niccolo, Diva Fever, Wagner... Storm was shoved down that alley as well) and they did the same thing in 2014 as they did this year - put two joke acts through, see which one worked in rehearsals and disposed of the other in week one. Though Louis didn't even want Bratavio and sent them home - Simon bullied him in bringing them back only to slate the decision (again, credibility?) at a later point.

I don't think the final 12 were bad picks; thinking about it I wouldn't look forward to hoping that James remember's the words or Caitlyn Adeleing her way through the weeks. They have a good mix. BUT the editing of the show was a mess; they needed to give more exposure to those who they did put through and ensure that Samantha, Ryan and Saara all had chairs after the 6CC rather than being brought back as 'wildcards'. They've added surprise after twist and it gets dull. They need to just... play it with a straight bat and see how far it gets them.

I really like 6 Chairs though I do wonder if it'd work better without the crowd. Rather like auditions do.
Yeah there were some picked at JH that I hated (I really liked the American guy) but that happens every year. Plenty of people have won who I've disliked and they've all failed as solo artists. The ones I liked (Leona, Burke, Arthur) all did well.

Yes people say they want XF to be warmer and closer to SCD but ratings were high when the judges argued and you had controversies and acidity.
There are too many standing O's now and too much praise. I gave up on the Voice because it was too vanilla.

There are a multitude of reasons for the decline and some have little to do with XF. Music TV isn't in great health here or America and XF/Idol/Voice are no more immune to it as TOTP was.

I don't watch it. Biased in what way?

Hey guys how did The Big Bang Theory do in the ratings on Wednesday 19th at 8.30pm

It was a new episode on a new slot

Please let me know


Thanks

Courtesy of RayT ----

1 E4 - 08:30 PM The Big Bang Theory 1.044m 4.2%

Emmerdale 16-34s (13%) 65+ (40%)
Coronation Street 16-34s (15%) 65+ (37%)
Eastenders 16-34s (22%) 65+ (29%)
Hollyoaks 16-34s (45%) 65+ (8%)

Apprentice time shifts really well

I thought HIGNFY time shifted better than it did

Hear hear. Even the early days of Freeview, the 30 or so channels available had a fairly diverse range of programming (More4 took late night US comedy in prime time and some high-quality documentaries, ABC1 had scripted US shows which had never been shown in the UK, E4 seemed to have a much bigger range of scripted imports than now). There were channels dedicated to genres (history, music, sports news) that aren't served in the same way today, at least FTA.

Broadcast TV has more competition than ever for people's attention, it will slowly die out if it doesn't give new generations a reason to watch. I fear it's failing.

(Sorry, not really ratings related, but that post struck a chord).

A little snippet from a Broadcast article on Sky's original content.


I'm really happy that my viewing habits are used to aid commissioning, rather than relying on around 2,000 homes (who apparently need to watch a certain amount of 'normal tv' to be selected).

I believe ITV and C4 also get access to data as part of their carriage agreements.

Cheers for those. They all roughly tie in with what I thought. Corrie doesn't skew as old as you'd think. Emmerdale is a bit older but a lot of 9pm drama on BBC1/ITV skews older than that. EastEnders is obviously the youngest of the big 3 as you'd expect.

Very interesting. Thanks for these. Not surprised EastEnders skews the youngest of the big 3, it has been that way pretty much since it started. It's the low ratings in the older demos that hurts EastEnders. I like that Hollyoaks has some older viewers.

Autumnwatch: 2.98m (13.9%)