Good grief!

I think the Beeb need to start thinking about life after Strictly. Goodness knows what would fill Saturdays from September to Christmas without it!

They do have some other more recognizable celebs doing this series. I think JR ticks the ITV box there.

The latest episode consolidated to a whopping 660k, that's not good enough for a prime time slot.

I think it's a shame as the programme is pretty decent, but it's not doing much better than Wentworth over on 5STAR.

Can we expect Benedict Cumberbatch in the audience to cheer old uni buddy on?

When JR is still in towards the end of the series and Mr Cumberbatch is dragged in to plug Sherlock at Christmas

Note to self - *Must stop being cynical*

Hey don't knock cynicism, it's my modus operandi

I was wondering the same thing. Can you imagine?

500 Questions will be a surprise hit for itv, I think. I suspect it will catch on like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?".

It only has an oddly scheduled Eat Well for Less and Mrs Brown's Boys repeat to contend with tonight.

Yes I mean ITV might even manage over 3m for 500 Questions.

Eat Well For Less? does well wherever its placed.

It's funny how everything's gone quiet on the negotiations re. The Great British Bake-Off. Either the BBC has it for a few more years or we're due an announcement soon that the series starting on Wednesday will be the last until 2018 elsewhere.

Acording to Broadcast, ITv is close to signing a £150million deal to keep TXF and BGT on screen until 2019. Tbh I think ITV should try to reduce the amount they are paying, seeing as TXF has dropped so far.

The titles alone will get viewers watching. I agree the trailers are dire, but that shouldn't affect them to badly. I suspect they will get a good sample audience.

Broadcast ratings for Sunday:

BBC1:
Olympics 2016- 5.4m (29.3%), peak of 6.9m (36.0%) at 7:43pm during Joe Joyce fight.
Fake or Fortune- 3.7m (17.9%)

BBC2:
Dragons Den- 2.9m (13.7%)

BBC3:
Fleabag- 840,000 (4.9%)
Murder in Successville- 390,000 (2.9%)

ITV:
Midsomer Murders (r)- 2.6m (12.5%)

CH4:
Transformers: Dark of the Moon- 1.8m (9.4%)

CH5:
Celebrity Big Brother- 1.6m (7.7%)

Decent night generally for the channels.

TXF is past its prime, but sadly ITV doesn't have the gumption to come up with a better replacement.

BGT is pretty solid for the channel and IMO is a much better show. This is mainly because it doesn't just focus on music acts people will forget in 6 months (or is that weeks now?)

This show-reel for BBC Sitcom Season is jawdropping

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUoyOpxxdME

The re-makes look terrible, although Young Hyacinth might be all right.

Goodnight, Sweetheart not there as it seems to have been a very late addition.

The only one with the original cast and writers in a new episode continuing on from where it ended 17 years ago.

Judging by the threads about it on here the one most people want to to become a full series as well.

BIB - neither ITV nor BBC One seem to be able to come up with anything remotely fresh or different in popular entertainment. It's like the genre stopped evolving about ten years ago.

As for TXF, the hype seems to be all about the show going back to 'what it used to be' … which isn't exactly the solution to ITV's problems - but they spent so long building their schedule round Cowell's shows (and Coronation Street) that they don't really have any other options now.

There's no need for budget or price cuts, ITV would be nowhere without these shows. BGT saves ITV's viewing share for the first half of every year, giving them their only ratings victories from Jan-November. And XF, though 2015 did horrendously, rates higher than 95% of their other output.

ITV needs Simon Cowell and I hope they know this. He has the right to be stern with them.

The figure I have for it lewie is 11.42m (45.5%) inc +1. BARB doesn't help matters as it has it listed as 8.02m for SD, SD+HD and Total. So something clearly wrong there.

Broken down as follows:

Euro 2016: England v Iceland:

Live: 11,016,000
VOSDAL: 387,000
Time-shifted: 14,000

TOTAL: 11,417,000

It really does make them seem terrible,and all over the place,maybe its just the show reel thats bad.

Thank you Roscoe. May have solved this. Just looked on BARB (may have been a case of me adding up wrong) and this was the SD+HD total

ITVSD - 8.017m
ITVHD - 3.371m
ITVSD&HD - 11.39m

So I make that 11.39m/11.42m exc & inc +1. Does that tally up?

Just done the Maths myself and I get the same. So just 29k on +1.

Problem solved.

The Strictly celebs are slagged off here every year yet it never makes a difference to the ratings.

The ongoing saga of Channel 5's poor scheduling continues next week. Monday 29th had the new series of Police Interceptors at 8pm, their new documentary series Gangland at 9pm and the second episode of the third series of Tattoo Disasters at 10pm. Now they've ditched Police Interceptors and Tattoo Disasters, and relegated Gangland to Thursday at 10pm. Why start a new series of Tattoo Disasters tonight at 10pm only to dump it the following week? That show has been messed about enough, with series 1 on Spike and series 2 moving to 5STAR mid way through. All that messing around and what do they put there instead... another Hitler documentary and a showing of Schindler's List!

I agree. TXF is way down on its peak but Cowell's shows are still the biggest ITV has, and pull in the best demographics of any programme on a commercial station, so they are still raking it in on advertising. It's clearly still a massively profitable show.