I hate these spoiling tactics by ITV.

Throwing their toys out of the pram because Doctor Who did well and they didn't want it to is just plain childish.

So presumably you're unaware that the BBC has tried doing the same thing many times before?

Up until relatively recently, ITV was required to publish its schedule a couple of days before the BBC. The Beeb used to take advantage of this to adjust its own schedule at the last minute to try and gain a competitive advantage.

As with so many other things, the BBC cannot claim any moral high ground here.

The BBC isn't, people are simply and understandably irked not only by ITV's scheduling choices recently but by its current disregard for its viewers. Ok, CW failing aside, Phantom Menace can be justified by it being Revenge of the Sith week but no matter what you think of the movie, cutting it open to insert the news simply to ensure it goes up against Doctor Who is just petty scheduling. Mind you, there's nothing they can do about the appalling Hit Me Baby One More Time final going up against Eurovision...did no one check the schedules at ITV house before they went ahead?

But wouldn't you agree that, in the interests of accuracy and fairness, those who are ignorant of the BBC's own attempts at "petty scheduling" should have the reality pointed out to them?


"Justified"?

ITV doesn't have to justify showing Phantom Menace, or indeed any other film. It's in competition against the BBC, so of course it will try and schedule tactically - just as the BBC does against ITV.

Ordinarily I would agree with you GWR but the original schedule was "Celebrity Wrestling". Having pulled it for poor ratings then whatever replaced it would indeed need justification, in my humble old, especially since it has been replaced with something designed to pull viewers from Doctor Who which was single-handedly responsible (in programming not good taste terms) for killing CW. I still agree that had ITV cared overly much for viewers over needling the BBC in this instance they would have scheduled something that provided variety.

For what it's worth, most of the time there is collaboration between schedulers of ITV and BBC to try and avoid major clashes except for big events over which they have no control and the Christmas line-ups which have traditionally been a much-enjoyed slug-fest between ITV and BBC.

Both channels want high ratings obviously but the difference is that with the BBC their ratings "justify" £120" odd a year for viewers to receive their TV, Radio and Net services whereas ITV is very much sponsor/advertisement beholden who, believe it or not, are far more unforgiving over poor performance than the viewers are.

ITV's scheduling tactics are getting more and more questionable:

Eastenders v Emmerdale big story - whenever they can
'Celebrity Love Island' v Big Brother
Star Wars Episode I v Doctor Who

They seem to pitch a show from a similar genre up against another to aim to split the audience. This works in no-one's interests: whilst they may hope to drastically reduce the rivals' ratings (ie Eastenders) because of the audience split, their own show suffers in the ratings. It also hurts the viewers most.

TBH, it suggests a lack of confidence in their own programming. If they could come up with something original, that people would want to watch, and pitch it against a show with a different genre on another channel, that's perfectly fine. But deliberately trying to split the audience is a bad tactic for TV companies and viewers alike, IMHO.

Don't know if this has been mentioned but in regard to scheduling on Monday 30th May they are moving Coronation Street from its 7.30PM slot to 8.30PM till 9.30PM. Instead Emmerdale will be replacing it at 7.30PM and Emmerdale family album at 7.00PM.

There is obviously no need to do this, but what they are doing is cutting people off from watching New Tricks on BBC1 at 9PM and any other programmes starting at 9PM for an hour.

And what follows Coronation Street at 9.30PM? Yep, Celebrity Love Island!

Well, that's a sensible attempt for ITV to make as they have to save the investment on Celebrity Love Island, though I think it's too late. Big Brother will be running by then.

New Tricks starts at 9.30pm after a new hour long Traffic Cops.

The ITV News is now on at 7.40pm after Star Wars has finished.

Except the 1st installment of CLI haemorraged over 50% of the Corrie audience for Monday night meaning that 11 million viewers dropped to just over 5 million...it remains yet another attempt to use Corrie as the only weapon in the ITV arsenal though and I don't know about anyone else but just recently there have been signs that panto is creeping into Weatherfield in a very "Brookside" sort of way which would be disastrous in my humble old...comedy/drama is rare enough on TV these days without scheduling desperation forcing a great show to begin to unravel...

IMO Dr whos ratings will remain largerly unchanged. Star wars will get four million if it is lucky

I'm not sure how you draw that conclusion. For that to be true, the 4 million or so viewers who stopped watching when Takeaway finished its run would have gone over to BBC-1, but they didn't - DW's rating didn't leap by 4 million.

CW died because it was crap, not because of anything that DW did. It would have bombed irrespective of what was showing on BBC-1 at the same time.


Uh-uh. Sorry John, I used to work for ITV, and I can categorically state that most of the time, there is *no* collaboration - quite the opposite in fact. Both ITV and the BBC are always very cagey about releasing schedule details a second earlier than they need to, to try and reduce the possibility of last-minute spoiling by one or the other.

The playing field is more level now, but when I joined ITV in the late 90s, it was a sore point that (for some administrative reason that I forget), ITV was forced to go public with its schedule a few days before the BBC needed to... this gave the BBC the advantage of being able to do some last-minute fine-tuning to its own schedule knowing what its major competitor was doing.

And of course, let's not forget both ITV and the BBC deliberately delaying the start times of programmes by anything up to five minutes to ensure that they ended late, with the intention of causing people to miss the start of key programmes on the other channel and making them think "I've missed the start, there's no point watching the rest..."

In all my time at ITV, the closest thing I remember to any kind of collaboration was over the clash between Doctor Zhivago and whatever the BBC was planning to show in the same slot. That's all.

Why are the BBC now moving their schedules, its getting ridiculous!

Just to put my 2p's worth in there are a larger percentage of people who would have watched Celebrity Wrestling if Doctor Who had not been on. Some people just like no brain TV on a saturday. I expect I would have watched bits of it myself. The people who watched ant and dec would not have just switched over to Doctor Who although some would have. That audience share has just gone off into other channels.

IMHO if Doctor Who was not on I think CW would easily have achieved another 2 million viewers simply because of the type of show it is. Although a lot of people may have just "had it on" without watching it.

The FA Cup goes into extra time and buggers ITV's plans for scheduling...if it goes to penalties...oh how we laughed

Sorry roman, I don't know why I quoted you in my FA post above, just distracted by football I guess - I agree btw, DW did kill CW in part but the "Ant & Dec" audience disappeared elsewhere

I see ITV have obviously crumbled at public opinion, there is no longer news dsuring PM.


Now lets see if we can get them to drop the two crazy frog ads each and every ad break!

I have had worse things done to me

Ooh err... So does the FA Cup over run mean that even though ITV tried to affect things with PM, BBC struck back with ET?

This is the worst news for ITV's scheduling of the Phantom Menace. If a large percentage of its potential audience misses the start watching Extra Time (and penalties?) of the FA Cup Final they're not going to get all of them back when the football finally ends.

Wow that was a great FA cup final, now to turn over to the film...... oh. Its been on for 30 mins already, Might as well not bother

Cj

Is it still on either side of the news? Sky tv guide says otherwise.

was going to post will Dr WHo be delayed by FA Cup Extra time ? - Answer no.

regarding schedules, there must be some co-operation between all 4 channels BBC, ITV1, Ch4 and Five as they nearly always have a common time line at some point on a Saturday Night
ie Fives' CSI usually starts when Casualty ends, and this varied before Dr Who came along and stamped a 7pm start
(only changed this week for EuroVision)

look back to April and CSI started at 9:10 or 9:25, but always when Casualty ended. And often the others were in line too.

Anyone know if the "overnights" show whether PM did worse than CW? That would be quite ironic IMO!

K