Zing!
Anything over 6m is good, especially over that length of time and against such tough competition. I'm surprised it was getting 9m before.

As have I!

I regard the start of TOS as a reminder it's time to go down the pub confident in the knowledge you won't miss anything remotely interesting

Which actually wasn't nasty or vicious at all. The drama came from someone calmly challenging the double dealing of another and watching him squirm in silence. Of course C4 later plied people with booze, cast people for their bad attitude and it led to fist fights, the police being called... and, perhaps not surprisingly, falling ratings. The market for relentlessly negative and confrontational TV isn't that big, clearly...

The feel good factor has always been the key to IAC's success (like the Bake Off). Last year with that awful Lady C character the show dangerously lost its way and rightly the producers don't want a repeat of it this year.

For a moment I though this was a new proverb I'd never heard before and then I realized it was a typo.


BIB Yes, very much so. Unless it can be proved that the perceived poor quality of the main show and its fallen ratings are damaging its money making ability, there's no incentive/need for the BBC to improve it. And as the charity broke its own personal best, it's not easy to prove it.

Second paragraph - it's all relative. CIN drops quite a bit from last year (but overall it faced tougher competition this year) whereas X Factor is pretty level. Its big drops have been in previous years.

The amount of times my phone autocorrect good and show to gold and shoe...
Yesterday it autocorrected Rinder to Grinder which was a tad unfortunate. Needless to say I won't let my wife know that my phone seeks the word 'grinder' ....

Some stats about episode 1 of Planet Earth 2, taken from this week's Broadcast.

An overnight of 9.29m increased over seven days by 2.97m to 12.26m.

Within that 12.26m, there were 2.3m 16-34 years old watching (a 42% share) and 791,000 under 16s (37% share). Particularly impressive shares for the young audiences against X Factor. It would be interesting to see how many from these age groups watched both programmes and how that 2.97m is made up with the various audience groups (but those stats will not be forthcoming. We can only speculate.)

Yes as money raised goes up and is impressive then there can't be criticism of CIN on particular when Text Santa failed.

One point CIN did better than Friday slot averages, and had strong competition with IAC and Corrie, - now so far for the majority of the time XF didn't have strong competition, the small overlap with SCD can be cancelled out with ITV1 and catch up, and most of it was up against the lottery.

Now Planet Earth gave it stronger competition, Michael McIntyre will also be strong tonight,

XF has fallen from the start of the live shows, not as much as past year drops, but continues a downward slide, when we are told the new " old" panel would stop the rot.

Funny Tony " Baldrick" Robinson was on It takes two, he said fir years he watched XF, now realised its contrived rubbish, in disgust turned over and really got into SCD as a wonderful show. This is occurring over and over again, he is one of many.

Fantastic.

For Drama yes.
For Comedy, yes.

But not for big hitters.

SCD,
BGT.
GBBO.
IAC
Planet Earth.

All big hitters, all over ten million, all with decent consolidation.

X Factor, can no longer keep up in the marathon, it's 60% of the big hitters, it's downgraded from its former glory to an also ran adequate show. But it's budget and cost is higher than the big hitters.

Disappointing for Children in Need (I find it a bit sad that a programme like I'm A Celebrity beat it) but I guess the record money raised is what really matters.

Didn't have Tony Robinson down as an X Factor viewer to be honest. I'm surprised he ever watched it!

I love how you've turned today's chats about CiN in to being all about XF.

Your ADP weekend starts right here.

Typical of other 70 year old viewers?

He's not in really XFactor's target demo is he? But he fits in with the majority of SCD viewers who are 55+.

So CiN falls to a very low figure by it's own standards. 6.3m is a disappointing number in itself but the competition was much stronger this year. IAC did fine - only down 0.2m y-o-y whilst every other episode so far has actually been up. It's current overnight ratings average is 8.8m. At the same stage last year it was 8.4m. I also wonder if Corrie took more viewers off CiN than normal after some good episodes and a decent cliffhanger at 8pm.

With regards to this years IAC cast and everyone saying it's all too nice. I personally think it's a refreshing change from last year after Lady C pretty much took over every episode. I don't think it's been boring whatsoever. I think it's had a nice vibe about it. Very much feel good TV and it's been very funny and entertaining this week so for me I didn't think it needed any extra camp mates - and speaking of the two new ones, I've not really taken to them yet.

As for tonight. IAC is on at 9.25pm. That must be the earliest start for a Saturday night episode in week 1 for a very long time surely?! In the past due to a much longer XF, the start time has normally been between 9.45-9.50pm.

Also if anyone has, or can get the excluding +1 numbers so far for IAC that would be really good. Thanks.

Will you be watching it tonight as usual?

Exactly, only he could debate whether CIN rated good or bad based on a comparison with TXF.

At the end of the day, this is the ratings thread and it looks like CIN rated the worst ever, so if that isn't worthy of discussion I don't know what is.

Apart from Rochelle Humes, who has been involved with CIN since 2014, on the back of her appearances as a contestant in both Strictly and Celebrity Bake-Off, all the presenters, including Rochelle's hubby, are or have been BBC regulars.

I was thinking more Phil & Holly, the Loose Women, or the cast of Corrie.

Rinder is on ITV but is not a face that immediately comes to mind when you think of the channel.

Not that I have any great desire to see these people but it would give a bit more variety to the evening.

Here's some 'live' viewing for Sunday 6th November 2016:

Strictly Come Dancing: The Results: 8.62m
Planet Earth II: 7.96m
The X Factor Results: 5.52m (inc +1)

This is purely who watched the episodes live and excludes VOSDAL. A lot of us speculated at the time that a lot of time-shift viewing was going on, on that night and looking at this we were probably right!

And if anyone is interested the consolidated share for PEII episode 1 was 40.9%.

I also want to see the exc. +1 figures. The best bet should hopefully be next week's Broadcast. I would ask rzt, but I think his access is limited unfortunately.

If you have anymore interesting ratings stats Roscoe please post Those live figures are fascinating! Last week's Planet Earth could well timeshift to 13m, already the rating of the year for me.

Tonight I reckon:
Strictly - 10.5m (Blackpool boost)
X Factor - 6.2m (think it will be back up)
I'm A Celebrity - 8.2m (last year's first Saturday show had 7.4m inc. +1 so should be up on that)

Well what is there to say? It has been discussed a bit.

The CIN telethon is a once a year thing and they still smashed their previous record so people aren't going to be going on and on and on and prophesising doom of the back of a low by previous standards but still OK rating.

Apparently (I don't know if it's true) last night was the first time it's faced IAC in a few years. With ratings generally trending downward it's probably no surprise to see it not hold up as well against IAC as it might've done a few years ago when ratings in general were higher than they are now. IAC is one of the few shows bucking the trend.

SCD, Bake Off, BGT, IAC, all these programmes defy the "general downward trend", so why can't CIN? If all these shows can do it, why isn't CIN holding people's interest?

Why can XF, a twice-weekly show not a one-off event, hold at 6.4m+ against 10m+ opposition, but CIN didn't manage that against a 7.2m show? The BBC need to have a long, hard think.

Final Score has been curtailed to allow coverage of tennis featuring Andy Murray to air on BBC One.

They should probably be back on track by news time but could edit down the Children in Need repeat if so required.

No, really, they don't. The TV programme has never been what it's all about. For many years it didn't even exist with the additional entertainment squeezed in around normal scheduling. What CIN has done is to consistently increase public consciousness of the charity with more activities spread across the year and ever increasing efforts on the day. One of the reasons for the drop in audience the past two years could well be the increase in the number of live events on the night with people out raising money rather than sitting comatose in front of the box. You don't get record totals out of thin air and I'm sure BBC will be more than happy to lose a few bums on seats if it means year on year increase in actual pennies collected of this magnitude.