14 million viewers

The Christmas Day ratings thread saw me have a quick look back at the last few years on BARB's website, and, discounting any one-off live events such as the Olympics/football/royal stuff, no regular scheduled programme has achieved a rating of 14 million viewers since December of 2010. Over four years ago, and yet three(!) different programmes all achieved it that month - Strictly, X Factor and Corrie. To be fair it was bloody cold that month so perhaps that's why everyone stayed indoors.

For those interested, nothing using the same guidelines has reached 18 million since May 2009 (Britain's Got Talent Susan Boyle final), 19 million since February 2003 (Coronation Street's Richard Hillman massacre) and 20 million since December 2001 (Only Fools and Horses). It's perhaps understandable to predict that the days of those latter figures might be long gone. But fourteen million? As recently as 1998 the entire top ten of the year was above that.

When - and what - will be the next massive ratings winning hit, if it does ever happen again? Or should we just hope for England to get as far as the semi-finals again in our lifetimes?

Won't happen again for three reasons:

1) Plethora of channels mean viewers are spread out more. Addition of numerous catchup channels like +1, +24 and 4Seven

2) Rise in VOD services mean no programme needs to be watched "at the time". Extension of iPlayer availability from 1 week to 1 month.

3) Rise in use of PVRs and other related technologies, all of which have become more prevalent in the past 4 years. Sky+HD is now the default BSkyB box, TiVO is now the default Virgin box. Sky Anytime is now (since 2012) a true Anytime service. Connected TVs are now at acceptable high street prices, and STBs like NowTV, Roku and WDTV are increasingly popular.

In terms of this years TV offerings, I can only think of the bake off final as bringing in large viewing figures and I think that was around 12 million peaking at 13 million.

Bake Off probably shows it could happen again and will take us by surprise too. It didn't last long but five years ago when Britain's Got Talent and The X Factor saw their ratings reach the 16-18m they did that was at a time when we didn't think we'd see such figures again and indeed hadn't for a few years.

But that's Overnights. The actual consolidated ratings were more than 13.5 million.

Overnights are going to get less and less as they don't include PVRs, On Demand etc. We're seeing some huge jumps once the consolidated figures are released.

A big sport could also do it, like England in a world cup final....

However big ticket live events, England matches, Royal Weddings, 'State' Funerals etc are watched live, and predominately only on one channel, either because it's BBC 1 , or because it's only available on a single channel.

It's the last USP '20th Century' TV has left, and I can't see it being replaced any time soon.

It's been like that since the 1953 Coronation, and will almost certainly still be true when HM <cough> bows out.

Here come the obligatory devil's advocate rebuttals:

Royal events (hatching, matching and dispatching) will almost certainly be simulcast on all the news channels, several of which are available on basic TV packages.

England matches at World Cups etc. will be seen by a lot of people in pubs and are simulcast online, on phones and tablets etc.

And what was the last big ticket live event? I'd have to go back as far as Live8.

I would watch out for Live30...

There was a small event in 2012 that obviously passed you by. And one a year or so earlier which was fairly insignificant.