The Nightly Show

ITV is going to face an interesting decision with this one.

Reputationally, it's not good for ITV's brand for the station to relegate news like this. A bit like the Tories deciding to take on self-employed people, it just annoys the people you don't generally want to go picking fights with - politicians and journalists.

And on the face of it, it's not setting the heather on fire in terms of a mainstream audience. It appears to be doing a bit better, but not dramatically so.

However ... if it pulls in a younger audience, who are more commercially attractive, is it fulfilling a purpose? And is that enough to survive the adverse publicity from the headline figures?

You also have to factor in if its reputationally good for ITV News to be pulling in 1.8m against 4m on BBC1 at the same time. When ever those ratings had ever been reported, I don't recall any articles saying 'but at least they are airing news at 10pm so its all good'

That argument goes out of the window when there are no ads within it (or even before or after it some nights).

That said would be interesting to see the demos. Suspect even if the age is lower the class would be lower than News at Ten.

If they really wanted to avoid the controversy, they could just swap them around. Graham Norton airs at 10:40 so there's nothing stopping TNS. Although even having asked on this thread twice I still haven't heard any good excuse as to why moving NAT was so unforgivable.

I agree, I know it's a different country but generally, US late night talk shows on the broadcast networks air after local news.

Its the same reason as in 1999, it was believe the grass was greener, it wasn't. Even Micheal Grade makes this point. I said above ITV went out of its way to move the news and highlighted this fact. So if your going to do that its replacement needs to be of decent level.

Because they tried it twice before and it didn't work so it was blatantly obvious it wouldn't work this time either and in doing so they pretty much killed the Nightly Show at birth. It could have had chance to develop in a post-news slot.

Also News at Ten was slowly but surely repairing it'seems reputation and although there is still clear water between the bulletins the ratings were relatively healthy for News at Ten. Now they're back to square one.

The problem is that 10:45 would require people viewers to actively turn back over from BBC One to tune in. The Nightly Show would be sub 1m at 10:45, and News at Ten would still be rating below 2m at 10pm on ITV

Slightly different than in 1999 as in this case they basically had nothing to lose due to the fact that it was all lost already back in 1999

I think it would be a real shame if channel controllers couldn't take the odd gamble because of immediate calls for them to be sacked!

They must have gone into it with their eyes fairly open to the fact that it may bomb and therefore be willing to ride the storm (unless it was repeatedly getting less than the average audience of NAT maybe?). If they can stick with the 8 weeks they may as well - a perfect host could come along, or a particular format starts to work.

And I'll bet that when NAT returns it'll have neither gained or lost viewers. They seem to be stuck on the same ratings, well beaten by the BBC, and nothing is going to change that.

As for the show, I enjoyed the millennials quiz (even if Zippy was having an off night). Last night was pretty much just a chatshow which was a shame. I switched over to the The Late Late Show afterwards and saw James having some fun in the gallery trying to get the show to start, then a feature with Samuel L Jackson. And with all the enthusiasm that doesn't seem to be coming across on TNS. A big gulf between the shows.

At the end of the day ITV is a business trying to stay afloat in a rapidly changing media landscape and, whether you like it or not, they don't have the luxury of being content with losing the news war any longer. Dermot Murnaghan summed it up best: "They're moving the news because they have to not because they want to."

I think they should have nurtured this show on ITV2 at 10pm. That's a very popular channel, and could have grown a loyal audience while they 'messed about' with the format (and the sofas). The media wouldn't have been all over it looking for failure.

If successful, they could have promoted it to the 10pm slot on ITV(1).

However, they're not in a position to do that in reverse as it would look like accepting failure.

After so many previous mangled failures in this slot, I think ITV may have "counted their bridges, and burnt their chickens sufficiently to label TNS a dead duck"

It would have been a very different show if it was on ITV2, surely. No David Walliams and no Martin Clunes anyway.