Channel 5 to revive Blind Date

I don't understand that, the most popular light entertainment programme on ITV at the turn of the century was definitely Stars In Their Eyes, which was a Granada production. And LWT made plenty of rubbish as well, the main problem with Saturday nights is that too many LWT formats were declining - Gladiators, Barrymore, Blind Date - and they weren't coming up with anything new. Granada had nothing to do with it, there were still plenty of people at LWT with vast LE experience after the takeover.

Around the turn of the century there were issues with light entertainment on all channels, there didn't seem to be many new formats about and it had no credibility at all.



As Des Lynam points out in his autobiography, ITV showing The Premiership at 7pm was a combination of a number of factors. For a start, they didn't really intend to buy the rights in the first place - they thought it was too big a commitment, it was too hard to schedule and they really wanted live football. But the Beeb got the rights to England and the FA Cup so that would have left them with no worthwhile football at all, so they decided at the last minute to go for it. Such was the huge size of their bid it needed to be in a very prominent slot. The original plan was to show it at 6pm where it would have been less exposed but it turned out contractually they couldn't do it then. So it was 7pm or nothing, really.

We can look back now and say it was a daft idea but at the time, with the existing shows declining and the audience for football seemingly growing, there was some kind of logic to it. There's a Media Guardian piece you can still find on the website from early 2001 when the advertisers are all quite positive about it. I know it collapsed but at least they were trying something different, and sometimes these risks pay off and sometimes they don't. It certainly wasn't a fatal blow as almost immediately after they dropped it at 7pm they had Pop Idol which was a huge hit.



That would probably be the case, yes, they were certainly in the market for new vehicles for Cilla. But they were always very careful never to suggest any of her programmes were being axed or it was anything to do with her. Moment of Truth didn't seem a very suitable format for Cilla, but it was never sold as her fault.

Slowly but surely they edged all the LWT people out, I guess Marcus Plantin survived when he went to the Network centre. Only one other survived as far as I know.

Well, me and all my colleagues thought putting out footy at peak time on Saturday was an absolutely crackers, bonkers idea. Turns out we were right. We got some very interesting new kit to play with which was very nice.

And people say Carlton were the bad ones( there were - just it turns out there were worse one was among them along)

There are two urban myths about Blind Date from around that era.

One is that it was dropped in favour of the football. However the series returned at the exact same time of year as it had for years. It's likely that had the football worked at peak time, the show would have gone out in roughly the same slot, give or take an hour. It may have even kept its slot with the football working around it. There is a story that Cilla refused to shoot the series without the assurance she'd have the 7pm slot. I'm not sure how in touch with reality that is.

Secondly, the ratings remained buoyant until the final series, when all the gimmicks were introduced, which is when it started to tank. It's often said ratings were collapsing prior to this.

Wasn't the Cilla vs Football thing touched upon on in her Life Stories episode?

You were correct but you may have turned out to be wrong.

People might have thought the same about putting Countryfile on Sunday nights. It just proves sometimes these risks will pay off others not.

Countryfile is nothing like what it used to be like, it's morphed into something else.

Well I'm clearly not trying to make a point about Countryfile.

My point was there changed it a bit, but ITV never tinkered with the footy to better suit its slot.

Well, they did, Des says in meetings they kept on saying "We don't watch Match of the Day with adverts" so there was a load more human interest in it, lots of fawning over David Beckham and the like, and they'd leave the big game to the end to keep people watching, all that.

Turns out, it could never have worked in that slot probably because too many people didn't want to watch football full stop. But they did try. I mean, people certainly do watch football on a Saturday night, the big England matches and the tournaments. But they don't care about highlights of Middlesbrough 0 Southampton 0.

Even when it was shifted to a later tx slot Des insisted it still went out live. There was plenty of opportunity to pre-record it but Des wanted to keep the live feel. A good decision I personally think.

Where was The Premiership made? Guessing at LWT? Although football at the time was credited to Carlton Central where the department was based I believe On the Ball may have come from Brum and The Goal Rush came from Southampton?

I appreciate the irony of this turning into a thread about ITV football.