DMN where have you been? David Walliams is doing it. How did you miss that?

I think Mrs Brown's Boys is too late and Bake Off is too early. I expect changes. ITV looks decent overall.

ITV should stay with that schedule for Christmas Day. Actually looks quite decent.

McIntyre seems to be the highlight for me there, though I would perhaps like it in a more central time of the schedule- maybe 8pm. MM may not be that far off EE ratings-wise, we'll see.

Amazing Spider Man 2 seems the highlight of the ITV line-up for me. Don't care for BOAF or Through the Keyhole.

Boxing Day:

BBC1
18:30 Revolting Rhymes
19:00 Christmas Bake Off
20:00 EastEnders
20:30 Still Open All Hours
21:00 Witness For The Prosecution
22:00 Outnumbered

ITV
18:00 Paul O'Grady: For The Love of Dogs
19:00 Emmerdale
19:30 Coronation Street
20:00 YBF!
20:30 Coronation Street
21:00 Grantchester

BBC1 also has:

Last Tango in Halifax - Mon 19th & Tue 20th @ 21:00
Revolting Rhymes Pt 2 - Tue 27th @ 19:00
Walliams and Friend - Tue 27th @ 22:00
Jonathan Creek - Wed 28th @ 21:00
To Walk Invisible - Thu 29th @ 21:00
Captain America: The Winter Soldier - Fri 30th @ 20:30

Most of ITV is still TBA. They're giving up against the Strictly final though - repeats of Lord of The Rings: Fellowship (16:15-19:30) and The Hobbit Pt 1 (19:30-22:45).

C5 hasn't bothered much this year. Apart from the Lip Sync Battle Christmas Special which is new for this year, the rest is just their usual stuff programming wise. Their film selection would be hard to beat though:


(not an exhaustive list, there's a dozen or so more but that'll do for the copy + pasting!)

Yep, but some people will have you believe soaps are in "terminal decline"

I agree. That is a strong list with some films that by law have to be shown at Christmas - otherwise, it isn't Christmas!

Haha very true!

I can see the Bake Off scheduling on Christmas Day sticking.

Bake Off skews younger than most BBC One shows, yet still brings in an older audience. Frozen will no doubt skew very young which makes Bake Off the perfect fit for afterwards.

To be honest the slot on Christmas Day nowadays is largely irrelevant - whether you're on at 17:00 or 21:00. If the audience wants to watch you, they'll come and find you.

Or other days, it matters more but no one is likely to be moving far on Christmas Day.

At last! ITV have their hands on some Disney titkes. I really like that schedule on ITV, is 100 time better than last year. Though I would move The Lion KIng to 3.10pm to start alongside Frozen.

Blankety Blank I think coud do really well on Christmas Day. Something fun to watch. Though I would put it against ctm.

I'm surprised they have Steptoe And Son as that's usually on ITV3

ITV's Christmas Eve looks better than BBC1 there, bar YBF. Get The Chase in there at 5pm and on Boxing Day and that will provide a solid 4m+.

No sign of Harry Potter still?

I think Sky still have it.

At least ITV doesn't have another one of those Queen documentary after the speech again.

It all just seems so poor. BBC One looks strong, even though it's not for me.

From a personal standpoint that BBC1 schedule offers me nothing but it looks a solid line-up.
The itv schedule is better in that I intend to watch Blankety Blank and Maigret but it doesn't matter what day they're on. I can't see why itv would want them on Xmas Day when won't reach their full potential but it's admirable that they are trying to compete.

I guess both channels are going to show lots of Disney and other animation films. I'm sure these are popular as most people don't have sky Cinema. There must be 200 Disney movies available to download on there.

Emmerdale at 5:30 doesn't seem right I think that will be moved.

I see, you've basically got 5 different sky+ boxes in various rooms which can connect to mobile devices so that they become the TV screens. They're certainly pushing UHD hard with all of the 'rewatch Spectre' trailers.

Anyone have any BBC Two schedules?

Wow they're bleak. I wonder if they expect people to be out and about more on Boxing Day.

How on Earth can LOTR be on in mid-afternoon? Imagine the amount of deleted scenes. The Hobbit takes a good while to get going so maybe they're going to keep the main battle scenes after 9pm. LOTR is 3 hours long without adverts. The Hobbit is 170 minutes.

On the topic of very poor quality newspaper stories...

Viewers who watched last night will know that there was a very minor technical error at the end of I'm a Celeb last night which most people forgot about two seconds later.

Not the tabloids who have all run overblown news stories about it, this is an example...

http://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-...Dec-live-gaffe

I love that C5 put classic family films on, preferably the old musicals. I would also like classic westerns. The likes of C5 and ITV3 often end up with more appealing programming on Xmas Day than the big two channels.

Edit..
And also classics like Sinbad, Argonauts and Charlton Heston/Peter Ustinov films. And obviously Bond and Agatha Christie films. That's Xmas!

Does ITV3 have another Carry On day lined up? I hope so .

They mustn't have the rights still. Otherwise I'm sure they'd be deployed.

They do seem to have splashed out on a couple of movie packages though with the Disney animations and Lord of The Rings which they've never aired before.

Looking at those schedules both actually seem to have made a (relatively in ITV's case) decent fist of the main days.

BBC1's Christmas Day lineup is solid. Frozen into Bake Off feels like a pretty good move and should mean a huge afternoon for them. EastEnders and Mrs Brown feel a bit late though and there's a lack of comedy. Tracey Ullman is an odd choice but I can see why they wouldn't want to waste completely new content that late and it might get it a bit of exposure ahead of the next series.

The Lion King is a decent offering from ITV. It's only aired once before on terrestrial and C4 aired it randomly in the middle of Summer where nobody watched it. A pity it has found itself against Frozen though which will really limit its audience. I like the idea of putting Blankety Blank between the soaps but ideally it'll avoid Strictly. Maigret won't get a great number (it'll be like when they used to show Poirot there) but should be solid enough and is a decent effort. They don't need two news bulletins and Maigret ends relatively early so there's some wiggle room. They've got an hour long TBA at 10.30pm too - no idea what that'll be.

Christmas Eve looks OK for BBC1, a good early evening but I'm not sure the Shirley Bassey show will do all that well at 9pm. ITV making a decent effort but Spider-Man into Birds feels a bit mismatched. The competition for Birds won't be that heavy though so should do OK. The first Amazing Spider-Man premiere got 3.5m last Summer, I guess they'll look for something similar here.

A strong Boxing Day from BBC1. Looks like wall to wall hits. Outnumbered actually feels a bit wasted at 10pm but I'm sure it'll do fine. It was flagging in its last series but the novelty value after being away for a while should help here. Love of Dogs should do quite well at teatime on ITV but a pity to see YBF in a primetime slot, even if it is just filler against EE between the two Corries. A good slot for Grantchester but not easy competition. Will be an interesting head to head there, but definitely a much better Boxing Day from ITV than last year's disaster!

Of course, it'll probably all change several times before next Tuesday, but good to see how things are shaping up so far.

An hour of Blankety Blank?!

Talk about dragging it out.

Won't be watching it though. There's something really creepy about David Walliams.