Maybe because it's the final?

Yes, I agree. And remember this is still a show that can top the night before SCD/IAC come along.


Well the Saturday final recorded a big drop last year, so there shouldn't have been a default expectation of the show rising last night.

I love X Factor but they've made such a mess of this series. Expressed my criticism to the one of the shows producers, Mark Sidaway, and was blocked by him on Twitter. It's like they don't listen to any of the shows fans. Espeically Simon, who is so out of touch with what the British public like. It's basically impossible to turn this ratings slide around.

The X Factor is now deemed a fixed, staged show throughout it's course and they haven't done much about it. Something else I've noticed this year is that they seem to be wanting this series to do bad, bad final 12, OTT judges who will like literally everything presented to them, Halloween theme 'randomly' picked for Halloween Weekend, the other 800 fix rumours, Honey G, Bratavio etc. That whole chicken thing on it's most viewed episode of the series turned viewers off and rightfully so.

Last night was rather dreadful. Awful duets, awful singing. Saara is the only who interested me. I predict it'll be the worst rated final tonight, if it's below 7 million it's officially done.

So 10minutes before TXF starts, its under 2m. 10minutes before SCD starts its already at 7m.

Lead in's do help, and ITV is doing nothing to help TXF. Its having to start off from a lower base, thus decreasing the average. Now that its a weaker show, it needs all the help it can get.

They can't do that because they have to film the results show as well. Strictly is almost as late as it can possibly be at the moment.

BIB- which explains why one of his shows gets way over 12m every year and even his other show got over 10 this year.


Partially down to a scandal-hungry press I'm afraid. Not much they can do about that.


So basically, you personally didn't like some of the acts or the judges' comments. You don't speak for all TV viewers. I didn't like all the choices in the final 12 this year either, but who knows what the public thought. Live shows have a format problem which isn't even X Factor's fault - I doubt different finalists would have boosted numbers as much as some believe.


Again, subjective. I loved it and thought it was exceptionally well-produced.

Osi beings fun and credibility to the show. The episode is clearly filmed in midweek but it doesn't matter as it's not an in-depth show.

It'll also cost buttons as Osi and Bell are possibly getting some money from the NFL to do it. The NFL gets former players to do TV as part of their media training development program. It's why former players do the odd day on sky, it's part of their training.

Having said that, they're probably doing it for a small BBC wage and clearly are having lots of fun along the way. It's so much more relaxed than MOTD.

X Factor was getting a lower lead-in on Sundays from Jekyll and Hyde last year and was higher. The live shows are the main problem.

If it gets 6.7m tonight, very likely since PE2 gets 10m, it won't be done. It'll still return.
Many disliked Honey G and Ed Balls but the public kept voting for them. The judges and the public both wanted to dump Saara - now she's about to win it.

BTW - last night was really the semi final, tonight is the real Final.

Er ... clearly not as it includes highlights of Thursday's game (unless the Beeb's invested in a top of the range futurescope!) It has been shown on Friday's occasionally so I imagine that's when it's recorded. The Tuesday version which includes all the weekend's and Monday's game is presumably recorded on the day.

It would be a good idea IF ITV started commissioing some bigger and better shows. Think outside the box. All they seem to be doing now is commissioning midling shows that sorround TXF and BGT and are obvious flops.

Its a challenge to come up with new LE shows, but there is very little effort in finding one. However I do like the sound of Big Heads and Little Big Shots, particuarly the former.

I'm still confused as to why ITV have 'apparently' given the green light to a 2nd series of Go For It. Another bland Mulhern shows that is doing very little to deserve a 2nd series.

Before ITV schedule TXF at 7pm, we need to see a few big commissions that look like they could capture an audience on a Saturday night, and won't flop, whilst TXF is struggling at 7pm. But I think we're a long way off from that.

If they were clever, they would have used TXF when it was big to boost new shows.But they didn't, and they are still not doing it with BGT - gifting the post BGT slot to Play To The Whistle.

But it was a stronger show last year. Each year it get weaker and the lead in's do not help.

X Factor can get 8-10m for the early rounds but doesn't get that consistently through a series anymore once the live shows start. It's well made but the live shows continue to be problematic ratings wise.

Looked to me that it was clearly recorded on around Tuesday and then they edit in TNF highlights. I'm only going off yesterday's edition.

Might not overkill with TXF be turning people away as well, which did the same for BB when it was on Channel 4. Surely one two hour show at the weekend instead of two is enough. In a different genre, the same is happening to football, which seems to be on way too much on Sky and BT, ratings are down 19 per cent, and recent sex abuse and corruption scandals haven't helped.

Dear God! That is a dreadful rating for part 1 of the XF final. Down 0.4m on last year and it's worst rating of the series so far.

ITV have a serious problem on their hands here. I can't recall a show in the last 10 years to start like it did and fall from such a height to this. Once it's all over they'll be a show about it on Channel 5 - The Rise and Fall of The X Factor.


Yes it is odd isn't it. I wonder why after weeks of 10m+ overnights the semi-final has faltered in the last few years. Don't get me wrong, it's still a terrific rating but it doesn't once again, tie in with how the series has rated.

Semi Final ratings (performance show):

2016: 10.0m
2015: 9.7m
2014: 9.8m
2013: 9.9m


It's hardly just one rating though is it. It's the rating for THE FINAL - and the lowest of the series so far. 5.5m is an embarrassing number for it and if ITV do have it for another 3-years, imagine how low it will be by 2019. Under 4m maybe?!

Yesterday's edition included, well featured actually, highlights of Chiefs/Raiders which occurred Friday morning UK time.
Last edited by Baz_James : 11-12-2016 at 15:09

Presented by Ant & Dec?

You do love to argue/debate, I'll grant you that.
Unless my memory is playing up on me, yesterday's show featured no analysis of the TNF game. The boys discussed a 6 day old game instead because they probably filmed those discussions long before TNF. All they did was show TNF highlights and have Chapman do an audio bringing the show up to date.

Also, the Chiefs/Raiders game wasn't played yesterday/Saturday, it was played on Thursday night - or Friday between 1:30 and 4:40AM UK time. I know this because I stayed up and watched the game live.
I then rewatched it on Friday afternoon and then, on Saturday AM, watched the condensed version of the game so that I can recheck the notes that I had made breaking down the game.
Hell I've rewound and rewatched certain plays 50+ times. My wife is truly blessed.

Now you know why I've no time to watch British television programmes.

Well tbh we don't know how accurate TV ratings really are. It's a survey of, what, 5000 people? They may be miles off for all we know (but maybe not).

Aah you've already corrected yourself on that, fair play.

I bet we'll see a scandal in a few years of allegations of rating data manipulation. How easy would it be to bribe someone at BARB to inflate or deflate figures?

Of course, if you look in the Radio Times or on Genome for Boxing Day 1984 - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules...don/1984-12-26 - you'll note that the planned BBC1 schedule is different, with the news at 10.45 and Miss Marple and Dave Allen on fifteen minutes earlier. But as you can see it was changed - there's a clip on YouTube of them running through the schedule and saying it's "different to that in the Radio Times" - and clearly that was so they could hit the 9.15 junction with ITV and not start Miss Marple in the middle of Minder, which was a huge show at the time. But given that Dallas beat Minder, they might have been better off sticking with the original schedule and passing on that huge audience to Marple.


1984 was quite a big Christmas for ITV, one of those occasional ones where they pump it up a bit to worry BBC1 a bit - given this was Michael Grade's first Christmas on BBC1 perhaps they wanted to rough him up a bit. So you had Raiders of the Lost Ark on Christmas Day and then that starry Boxing Day. It's a bit like 1999 when they stuffed Christmas Day with loads of Millionaire and Frost.

Despite the decline of Mike Yarwood Thames were still very good to him, they kept on giving him good slots and recommissioning his shows. I always think the odd thing about Mike Yarwood is that when Morecambe and Wise left, he was clearly sitting pretty at the Beeb and was now undisputed top dog, and then decided to go as well and play second fiddle to Morecambe and Wise again.

Obviously, the theory is always that Eric and Ern were wrong to go to Thames and it was a disaster, but as we saw the other week their ratings were still big, and they had a lovely time there. I've got an IBA Yearbook from the early eighties where they talk about how they'd been personally lured over by Thames' Philip Jones and Jones was their favourite person they'd ever worked with because he was such a lovely man. And I've got a load of early eighties TV Times and they are all over them, regularly on the cover and getting loads of coverage. I know the shows weren't as good, but they had a great time there. And made loads of money, I don't think they regretted it one bit, and Thames didn't regret signing them either. Same as Des Lynam on ITV, he was rubbish on there but he didn't care, he got loads of money and they let him do what he wanted.


Miss Marple was actually on three Christmas Days, in 1986, 1987 and 1989. It's interesting that we all say Call The Midwife is unsuitable for Christmas Day for being too long and involved, and Marple was even longer and seemingly more unsuitable for Christmas Day. Richard Curtis said in the Radio Times he wrote Bernard And The Genie for Christmas 1991 because his family watched A Caribbean Mystery on Christmas Day 1989 where two people were shot dead and one was forcibly injected with heroin and by the end of it they were totally miserable, so he decided to write something cheerful for Christmas instead.


I think the biggest surprise for the audience about these Deal Or No Deal specials to see it off will be that Deal Or No Deal is actually still going, I'm sure most people would have assumed it had finished years ago. The specials do sound quite good fun, though, the one on a plane sounds particularly entertaining. It's a classic Noel thing, though, pointlessly pushing the envelope and doing things for the sake of it. On his old Up The Post Office Tower shows he always used to keep on emphasising how they were doing things For The First Time On British Television.

As for the new shows, I find it odd how C4 seem so keen to keep this relationship with Noel going. He's had over a decade on the channel, which is good going for anyone on any channel, and you would have thought that what this show ending, and him constantly appearing in the papers shooting his mouth off about this and that and getting into arguments with people, you would assume that would be enough. But no, they're giving him loads of new formats. Heaven knows why.


I wouldn't read so much into that, they advertised for contestants in every episode of Tarby's Full Swing in the nineties and that never came back. This one was clearly a leftover episode from the series.

They used to do that loads in the past, shove out any leftover episodes of series over Christmas as a "special". I've probably said this before but I vividly remember ITV showing a leftover episode of Take Your Pick on Christmas Eve 1992, and it started with Des saying "Hi, just popped in to tell you about the Christmas special of Des O'Connor Tonight", and then after he'd plugged that, he said "Here's an episode of Take Your Pick we didn't have time to show you earlier", presumably in case anyone was wondering why it didn't have any references to Christmas in it.


I'm not sure ITV are going to be so bothered about the rating for this, it's the same as the period immediately before Downton when they showed Poirot on Christmas Day for two years running, which by the end was a drama that was mostly made for export and repeats, so the actual ratings for the first UK showing weren't very important. It's the same as...


As mentioned, "series" of Midsomer Murders don't really exist, they show them wherever and whenever they want. There have certainly been examples in the past of an episode from one "series" before they'd shown all the episodes from the previous one, and many of them have been shown ages after they've been filmed, or shown in Britain after they'd been shown abroad.



Funnily enough I was looking at this on iPlayer the other day, despite having no interest in the sport, because I absolutely love the pictures they use to illustrate it. It was this one that did it for me - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084jkth. Just those pictures illustrate what a brilliant time they're clearly having making it. I'm sure a lot of the credit must got to Mark Chapman who is an excellent presenter, on the Beeb's football coverage he is always extremely engaging and amusing, and so obviously has the respect of the pundits.



Well, I'm sorry, but I think this is such a pointless discussion. If you just go through the list of guests on any show and go "heard of them, haven't heard of them, like them, don't like them", it means nothing. It's basically "I've not heard of, or don't personally like, these people, therefore it must be rubbish".

The success of a chat show or any panel show is nothing to do with the level of fame, or otherwise, of the guests. If they're really famous and say absolutely nothing of interest, so what? It's not worth them being there. Judge them on the contribution they make to the show, not on their name. I found Grayson Perry's appearance very worthwhile, he said lots of interesting things and in general it is quite interesting to have someone like that on a primetime chat show. And it's especially important on Norton where it's all about the blend of guests, where they all get on together and spark off each other. I thought this week's guests did that especially well, it was a well-chosen and interesting line-up. The worst episodes of Norton have been when they've had very famous guests and they've contributed bugger all.

Plus also, what's a good guest on one show isn't necessarily a good guest for another. It's like when Des O'Connor Tonight and Clive Anderson Talks Back were running at the same time, what would be a good guest for the former wouldn't necessarily be good for the latter because they were different shows with different audience.

In addition, I find the "I've not heard of these people" argument so infuriating. Don't revel in your ignorance, look them up. It's particularly annoying as they're the same people who complain about the same old people appearing on TV over and over again, and the second any show tried to use new talent, or go for someone different, they go "I've never heard of these people, this is rubbish". Drives me up the wall.

The main problem with British television in recent years is overkill and keeping shows going past their sell by date. Where once we had the soaps on three times a week, now it's four to six, which surely isn't doing anything for ratings or quality. Also we have expensive clapped out shows like BB, which is really ailing now, kept going because Channel 4 has some kind of nostalgic attachment to it.

You could shake hands with the number of viewers "Walliams And Friend" gets... x. (barb)