Not hugely surprising considering it's been bounced around the schedules a bit and C4 now seem to favour The Last Leg but Alan Carr's Chatty Man has been axed, with competing for guests being the given reason.
Well, for the best, because it has been running for a long time and it was running out of steam. I don't think the quality of guests should be an issue, though, really, because you would think that the show should be skewing younger than the other two because it's on Channel Four - that was especially the case when they showed it directly opposite Graham Norton. That seemed a bizarre idea but C4 could have argued that it was aimed at a substantially different audience. However, the guest list if anything seemed to skew older than Norton's, so there was no point.
A show doesn't always need the biggest guests, anyway, but the right guests. They don't need big guests just for the sake of them being big, as long as the show is funny and entertaining it doesn't matter who's on it. I like Alan but it's worthwhile giving him a new show because Chatty Man was a tired old format. My mum likes him a lot, she'll probably prefer this show.
You could certainly argue that there should be enough guests to go round on all shows because all the chat shows should be significantly different enough to have their own identities and their own wish lists, and each individual guest would have an obvious best home - twenty years ago you wouldn't have the same guests on Des O'Connor Tonight and Clive Anderson Talks Back for example because the two shows were different and in the market for different people. If a C4 chat show is competing for guests with a BBC1 chat show, clearly the C4 show is not distinctive enough.
Although both programmes are produced by ITV, technically they own the production companies rather than directly producing the shows as an ITV production.
Even though ITV own SO Productions, I would have thought that Graham and his team have a considerable amount of input into how the show is run and the guests they have. Likewise for Rossy and his Hot Sauce group.
My only worry is that The Graham Norton Show is starting to become lots of big names from Hollywood and slightly losing its kitsch charm. However, the ratings must be still up so it obviously isn't doing the show any harm.
They've always had big names from Hollywood on Graham's show, certainly since it moved to BBC1. It's the mix of guests that works though, and what I don't particularly enjoy is when all the guests are film stars and they're mostly from the same film - because to my mind, the best bit about Graham's show is the combinations of guests where they bring together people who don't usually mix. That's always great fun. The one I always mention is the line-up of Jennifer Lopez, Freddie Flintoff and David Mitchell. That was a great combination, something you wouldn't see anywhere else, it was hugely entertaining and everyone had a great time. It made J-Lo seem more human and likeable. You've also got shows like Lady Gaga and June Brown, and Will I Am and Miriam Margolyes.
The perfect combination is a big Hollywood star and someone uniquely British they'll never have met before. I always say it but I really would love Brucie to go on it, health permitting, with some Hollywood star. For that reason I also don't like it when guests are interviewed on their own, to the extent I feel that if they demand to do that, they shouldn't be allowed on the show because that's not the format.
It's worth pointing out as well that though So TV is an ITV Studios it's not ITV calling the shots. So is a company that existed many years before it was taken over by ITV (although actually its roots are in Anglia TV, the first few series of So Graham Norton were produced by United) and they are still an independent company. Often in these cases it's a question of being part of a wider company to benefit from things like distribution and back office functions, all the things that are easy to do as part of a larger organisation rather than doing it yourself, with very little to do with actual creative functions.