Originally Posted by SG87:
“The launch show had 800k so it's the highest ever rating by a fair bit. A lot of that will be because Breakfast was cancelled and GMB will have been an easier watch to some viewers. It's a shame they didn't foresee that the ratings would be up so much, because this mornings programme with Ben and Kate was terrible so yet again they won't retain any viewers. It's a completely different show when Piers and Susanna aren't on.”
This has always been how Good Morning Britain is going to pull in an audience, when there is major breaking news of interest to a huge audience - not things like by-elections, major human interest stories - and there's a bigger audience about, and Good Morning Britain can attract an audience that doesn't normally watch breakfast TV and wouldn't watch Breakfast because they think it's boring. As you say, their presentation was probably much more appealing to that audience.
Then if it's any good of course, there is the chance they can showcase themselves to this wider audience and some more people might stick with it. Breakfast itself benefitted from the Gulf War in 2003, ratings shot up during that and they stayed high when the war was over.
Originally Posted by mlt11:
“But the News channel is irrelevant to the decision.
What it boils down to is that the BBC's most important content goes on BBC1. BBC1 is not an entertainment channel - it's the flagship channel and the most important content across all genres goes on BBC1 for that reason.
Trump's election is arguably the 3rd biggest news story of the year (behind only Brexit and May becoming PM). The BBC's news coverage of it is at the very pinnacle of what the BBC does - and as such it has to go on BBC1.”
This is exactly right. The whole point of BBC1 is that it's the flagship channel. If there's a major, major story breaking and BBC1 are showing Flog It repeats, it looks totally wrong. It gives off all the wrong signals. And like the 8pm bulletin, the point is it brings news to people who don't deliberately look for news.
I'm going to mention again too the bit in Roger Mosey's book where he talks about when Saddam Hussein was captured, and Lorraine Heggessey decided to show rolling news on BBC1. Mosey said it wasn't confirmed yet so they may want to hold on but Heggessey said that regardless, it was more interesting than the fillers and repeats they were going to show, so it was going on now.
Originally Posted by Baz_James:
“Well there is that but the question still remains why they're doing fresh material on what's supposed to be a greatest hits album!”
Originally Posted by centauri72:
“It's funded and structured as a Sky exclusive (like Sky Atlantic) and the thinking, originally, was that while Sky Atlantic would be the exclusive UK home of new (ie starting post 2014) HBO and Showtime series, ITV Encore would be the place where ITV would try to launch a UK equivalent of HBO. They are a long way short of that as yet, of course, but that's why UK exclusive drama was always envisaged as being part of the channel (and, like Atlantic shows, its content is much more watched on Sky's VOD services rather than linear transmission, and they are fine with that). Encore and Atlantic are the key components of Sky's response to Netflix.”
Indeed, though of course much like, as we see, people ask why they're showing new things on ITV Encore, people ask why they're showing British shows on Sky Atlantic. I don't think either name does any of them favours. Frankly I wonder if ITV Encore even needs the name ITV in it, if the aim is to lure people who wouldn't watch ITV.
As you say, neither channel is anywhere near being anything like HBO, and I think what's also damaging ITV Encore is the hugely unsuitable stuff like Peak Practice and Heartbeat they show during the day. I think that kind of stuff damages the brand - it's ITV3 programming - and they would be better off not broadcasting during the day rather than showing that.
I do question the point of creating a British HBO, mind, Sky certainly tried it before when they were going to put other shows on Sky Premier but then chickened out. In any case, the success of HBO in America is not just down to the shows but because of the sport they show - which obviously is other channels here - and because people wanted to work for them because of the freedoms they had away from the network, most obviously the ability to swear. Obviously, in Britain you can do that on BBC1. I've still yet to see anything on either channel that couldn't be done on BBC1 or ITV.
