Channel 5 to revive Blind Date

I think it all started to go 'breasts up' when Granada took over LWT, they never really understood light entertainment. 'Yeh' lets try and push Cilla to one side and put some footy on in peak time on a Saturday night, that'll work. Not.

No mention of Duncan Norville's pilot then.

Well that's not misunderstanding Light Entertainment is it? It's misunderstanding appeal of football highlights and to be fair something you could only find the answer out to be testing it. I'd imagine the same people were working on the show when the format changes happened as would be under LWT and it was a typical final series throw of the dice that might have happened under LWT.

People always forget that consistently high rating programmes aren't generally axed. The 90s stuff both here and on the BBC suddenly got quite tired looking and ratings fell. People often have rose tinted specs.

You test it by doing market and audience research beforehand.

How would you go about that research then? What would it consist of? You couldn't just ask people I've they'd watch 'Match of the Day at 7pm. You couldn't just give a few hundred people their own ITV 1 schedule for a limited time to work out the figures would be.

Focus grouping amongst different viewer demographics are a way of 'testing the waters'...

Yes, I understand what a focus group is, but I don't think something like moving the football highlights to 7pm is something you know is going to work for sure without trying it.

They put the football highlights programme in early peak time and it absolutely 'bombed' in the ratings presumably taking advertising income down with it. Properly conducted market research would have strongly indicated to ITV what would happen. Either any market research ITV carried out was either wrong or ignored.

Des was a nice enough bloke.

No - absolutely agree. The only way of truly finding out is to do it.

But it's not an easy thing to test. Unless you give a large group of people the schedule for a few months, which seems impossible. You can't just simply ask people questions about whether they would watch something. It's hard enough to confidently to predict which way people are going to vote for.

It was a very bald move to have The Premiership at 7pm but you were never going to know how it was going to do unless you tried it.

But it's not an easy thing to test. Unless you give a large group of people your schedule for a few months to watch and other broadcasters line ups that will react to that move, which is impossible.

You can't just simply ask people questions about whether they would watch something. It's hard enough to confidently to predict which way people are going to vote for in elections.

It was a very bald move to have The Premiership at 7pm but you were never going to know how it was going to do unless you tried it.

It might have turned out to be a bad move but broadcasters know now not try it again. So it wasn't even a bad move in the sense it answered a question.

She had a long term golden handcuffs deal with ITV (via LWT). That contract (either new or extension) are negotiated when times are happy, and the ratings are high. Future is looking good. You can ask for things to be inserted into the contract knowing that it'll never happen.

Wouldn't mind betting that there probably was a 'number of made and aired shows per year' clause put in it. With a hefty penalty payment from ITV if that wasn't met.

Cilla's two regular workhorses 'Surprise Surprise and Blind Date' slowly loose audience interest and show signs of grinding to a halt, LWT knowing the 'number of shows' contract, scrabble around looking for new formats, and reduce Surprise Surprise down to specials - just to keep its side of the bargain.

With the beancounters taking over the programmers offices in Kent House, they would look at the contract and get her to make any passing format, as it would be cheaper to make those with her fronting it, than to axe the existing programmes and have to cough up for failing to meet the clause in the contract.

Never did quite work out why we never had 'An Audience With Cilla' either. You'd have thought she'd have been a shoe-in for that programme.