Yeah! I'm so pleased to see Dibley going out on such a high.

Can I ask people who follow ratings more than me - is that a good figure for the Sarah Jane Adventures or not? It seems pretty good for the afternoon to me, but maybe not on a holiday. I'd be really interested.

Pretty good for a children's programme, but a flop generally - it was easily beaten yesterday by both Deal or No Deal and an umpteenth reshowing of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Poor scheduling by the BBC I think.

Does anybody have a list of teh ratings in the format that cylon6 normally posts

We're not allowed any more i'm afraid, the guy who posts them on OG has asked us not to do it - Sorry

Sorry decline 10.7m and beating all the other soaps last night dosen't look like a show in decline to me. Plus 3 million watching the omnibus, its still incredibly popular.

Its a one off for the death of a major character and even at that the peak wasnt that high.

Still BBC 1 is addicted to its soaps to generate ratings with Eastenders, Doctors, Neighbours x 2, Holby City, Casualty and now Holby Blue coming along.

What the heck's Holby Blue?

But - Christmas period aside - it now routinely pulls an audience of less than 10m viewers, and this is in the depths of winter. Over recent weeks, it has been getting 7-8m viewers for some episodes, and these aren't even in the face of much competition from ITV1. Coronation St has now opened up a convincing lead, and still pulls >10m viewers for most if not all of its weekly episodes, sometimes 11-12m.

Unless the BBC can arrest the decline and make EastEnders a programme people want to watch again, I would be surprised if it has reached 10m viewers on more than a handful of occasions by the end of this year. And it will no doubt be trounced by 1 hr Emmerdales again this year. And probably sink to new ratings depths over the summer.

Whenever I see it, it is a bleak, humourless, miserable show. It is more realistic than Coro St, but at least that has some gritty northern humour and likeable characters, and I can see why people choose to spend half an hour a night with that.

I believe it is set in a police station in Holby. :yawn:

All show's ratings are declining. EE's ratings have declined slightly more than Corrie's because of a higher proportion of younger viewers - Corrie's older audience watch far more TV.

And when you take into all showings of both shows, the omnibuses and BBC3/ITV2 repeats, EE is still the most popular soap, and the most popular continuing programme in the UK.

If this was based upon a 6 month average I might believe you, but seeing that you base it off Christmas week figures when one show has a massive story climax I'm not so sure you are right.

CS will always win out because of the humour. Its basically half drama half comedy and the only good comedy ITV regularly broadcasts.

Add up all the showings at any time of the year and EE will be out on top. It's the omnibus that makes the difference - you might say this gives it an unfair advantage, but ITV2 has a Corrie omnibus and ITV1 did have one but was dropped because of poor ratings. The BBC3 repeat of EE always does better than the ITV2 repeat of Corrie as well.

I can't see anything else beat Vicar of Dibley for most watched show this year, and I'll be very surprised if anything does.

I would be more convinced if you did the math to prove this. On average CS main showing is 1.5m ahead of EE. The BBC3 repeat gets about 600k versus 200k for ITV2. ITV2 also repeats next morning though at 9.25am with another 0.2m watching. The BBC1 Omnibus gets around 1m-1.5m versus ITV2 Omnibus of 0.3m usually. At best it is neck & neck, but to say that EE is a clear winner is just misinformed.

I suppose it's no longer Christmas, but as we have tonight the two Christmas specials I was most looking forward to (This Life+10 and Thick of It), I've made some predictions:

[NB: I've just noticed that ITV1 has doubled Emmerdale to an hour, presumably to repair some of the recent damage...]

BBC1:

7.30 Eastenders 6.4m
8.00 Holby City 6.8m
9.00 Just the Two of Us 5.3m

BBC2:

9.00 This Life+10 2.7m

ITV1:

7.00 Emmerdale 8m
8.00 Fortune 3.7m
9.00 Denis Norden 5.1m

BBC4:

10.30 The Thick of It: 850,000

To give its new show at 8pm a strong lead in.

They'd have been better off not running the trailers - the shots of Jeffrey Archer alone should be enough to ensure a sizeable audience for Holby City.

I wonder if we have found ITV1's first pulled show of the year?

Well I think it looks quite interesting. I suspect it will do as well as Trinny and Susanna did, which did well considering Holby City usually dominates that slot.

Those predictions look plausible, although I think Dennis Norden will beat Just the Two of Us, and Fortune may get around 4 million.

Maybe he appeals to the type of viewers ITV are looking to attract ie. ABC1 people with money. ITV should be more interested in the demographic composition of the audience than the total numbers anyway.

When did i say it was the clear winner? Firstly i would say that CS is rarely 1.5m ahead of EE on first showing, more like 1 million, but varies a lot. Yesterday EE beat Corrie, as it has done for the majority of Christmas - except Wedensday 27th. And secondly i dont think the EE omnibus is ever as low as 1 million, this Sunday it was 2.9m, which is above average but i don't think it gets below 1.5 million.

So an average episode of Corrie
10m + 0.2 + 0.2 + 0.3 = 10.8m
EE
9m + 0.5m + 2m = 11.5m

I agree. What was it this year, 3 hours of Emmer-enders Street?

If Corrie or EastEnders dont beat it before April then it will be the most watched show this year, as corrie normal get its highest rated episode in Feb or March and for the last 2 of 3 years EastEnders has had its first episode of the year to be its highest rated episode.

You talking about Xmas Day? If so it was 3 hours last year too and the year before and the one before that too.

So its nothing new.

True, but it wasn't always thus - within recent memory, we got regular 30 mins episodes of each, and as recently as the 80s, if Christmas Day fell on a day a particular soap didn't transmit, it didn't get shown (eg, Christmas Day a Tuesday - no Corrie, etc)