I agree. Tipping Point is building up the night starting at 6pm, only for MTP to piss away viewers again.

Strictly a fair competition? Where the joke act Ed Balls gets 8's off the judges? Where the joke act gets the same scores as talent like Greg? Strictly are just as desperate if not more to hold on to the novelty for headlines and controversy and their manipulation is crystal clear. TPTB at Strictly control 50% of the outcome.

Don't people just tune into what they want to watch? There are many programmes across all networks that don't rate well but that's just the way things are. Not sure you can say it's unfair or "unjust". That just sounds like someone throwing their toys out of the pram.

And no, even if it was a BBC programme, I wouldn't go as far as to say a low rating is "unjust". You can't exactly hold a gun to someone's head and make them watch something just because you want them to.

The Chase is getting around 3m on Sundays and was last year. I honestly think at this point they'd be better off doing:

3.45 Meet The Parents
4.45 Regional News
5.00 ITV News
5.15 Harry Potter Season
8.00 X Factor

I think Potter would be a decent improvement on what they've got there now (it's done 3.5-4m against the Strictly final a few times now) at pretty minimal cost. Burn Meet The Parents off in the afternoon and save the Celeb Tipping Point episodes for the New Year. Then re-consider how to tackle Strictly for next year.

Did ITV run ads during Tipping Point? As I know usually the 6PM hour is ad free?

Plus how did Jonathan Ross do? Another sub quality lineup again I see.

At least Meet The Parents has a young female audience which advertisers will want to target. The Chase won't have anywhere near the same amount of younger viewers. Talking financially, there probably isn't much difference between the money ITV make on each program.

How many more years is ITV contracted to show TXF ? I wonder if they have an escape clause.

We hear that argument time and time again, and even though you are right, ITV are peeing away viewers because of it, from GMB to MTP.

ftv's contribution to the thread over the last few weeks have consisted of:

Saturday: "Does ITV have an XF escape clause ?"
Sunday: "XF beaten by Countryfile "

He's like a broken record!

Why do you post exactly the same comment each week?

Meet the Parents was chucked under a bus really, not sure what the logic was unless ITV decided it was a dud before scheduling. So little chance to establish itself.

He has time on his side and has been a valued poster over the years.

With the greatest of respect, your hardly an unblemished piece of vinyl yourself.

Sadly Paul O'Grady will never host a big entertainment programme.His health is not up to it.

2.87m (17.6%).

Up to and including 2019. XF will still be more than paying its way for them I imagine - that young audience is always attractive. Now if it got down to the low 4's or high 3's, they'd have a problem. It's far from ideal, clearly, but look at the rest of their schedule! In a way this is a price to pay for getting hyped to such huge ratings in years gone by - if they'd settled more for a Strictly type rating all the time, they might be faring better now.

Thanks, mmm not too bad in the scheme of things...

Still another dead duck that needs to go though IMO.

Its not the judges keeping Ed in week after week, its the public.

And at 6:50pm people turned over for Strictly. Hardly fair comparing facing SCD to Pointless. Since Strictly is now starting at 6:55, which shows that the BBC is purposely maintaining the clash (all's fair in love and war), the 6pm show on ITV should now be MTP and let TP face off against SCD.

As Markynotts and others have said, MTP is oddly good. I prefer it to Blind Date which remember used to be accused of having scripted answers, wannabe celebrities (including Cowell) as contestants and all sorts of TV fakery. It's probably dirt cheap to make too.
Magician will go the same way though it'll at least get close to 3m thanks to the slightly better slot.

As for XF - best show of the series so far and I include the auditions. If it keeps it up then it should get back to 6m and more importantly should have far better vibe around it for next year.

It seem I enjoyed SCD more than many but then I don't care who stays or who has gone.

I'd say Harry Potter still needs time to recover from ITV and the Power of Overkill. Maybe don't air them again until next year as a lead in to The X Factor? Saying that I'm not sure if they even have the rights for them at the moment.


This is my big problem with OFCOM regulations - by stating that commercial networks should air a certain number of minutes of ads across primetime they're just encouargaing broadcasters to put all their eggs in one basket and overfill the big show. If OFCOM changed it to 15 minutes per hour maximum instead it'd force the channels to look at the bigger picture.

Speaking of POG I wonder how his dogs show would do on Saturdays before Strictly?

Probably Cheryl then -somebody kept bringing up the press stories during the judging. He was American Idol standard.

That made me chuckle, what a brilliant comment.

**
Ed Balls is keeping Strictly in the tabloids at the moment. I saw he was on the front page of one of the Sunday papers! With Strictly, are people voting for who they like or who is the best at dancing? I suspect it's the first option.

Cowell was never on Blind Date I think you mean Amanda Holden (easy mistake I know)

Gee, what a surprise to see you stick up for him.
You seem to post strikingly similar posts every Saturday, not quite ftv-level but not far off, talking about "live show fatigue" and comparing the XF ratings to the Voice. No, The Voice got 4.5m (and even a bit less) for its live shows.