ITV Ratings and Schedule Crisis

Two of ITV1's main drama offerings have been moved from peak time from next week, afier ratings for them collapsed.

Family - supposedly ITV's answer to The Sopranos has lost loads of viewers over the past few weeks and has been moved from Monday at 9 to Wednesday at 11.30

Strong Medicine has suffered a similar fate, it has been moved from Thursday at 9 to Sunday at 11.20

Given the amount of money it cost to commission these programmes, it seems ridiculous that they are being written off in grave yard slots. Seriously brings into question the suitability of the scheduled slots, as well as the sense of the commission in the first place.

Seems the whole schedule is in meltdown - ratings dropping all the time, advertisers up in arms.

Wonder how this will be handled post merger.

the schedule is completely in ruins at the mo !!!!! smtv finishes on 20 December and i wonder why ! I was readin in t paper that the new saturday mornin show will be presented by Michelle from liberty x, and Jonothan 'Robbie's mate' Wilkes. Wot do ya think of that?

But didn't I hear a whisper from somewhere that the only reason they've cleared the 9pm Monday peak slot was to make room for "Chairman Idol", where Ant, Dec and a panel of E List celebrities hunt for the new chairman of ITV plc from the millions of hopefuls who the shareholders are convinced will do a better job than the previous candidate?

wot the hell wud Ant and Dec b doin wiv 'e' list celebs again ? theyre betta than that !!!!! and does anyone think im a celeb wud b betta if ant and dec were actually in the jungle rather than presentin it ? lol

Could you repharase that?

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Nick was joking.

Meanwhile, "Ant and Dec mad Faye", perhaps you should consider the following points:

1. We already have more than enough braindead cretins on this forum without you adding to the melée.

2. If you are one of these people whose sole raison d'être is to live, breathe, and talk about nothing but Ant and Dec, again we have plenty of people like you with similar fetishes (for Sky, BBC NEWS, weather presenters etc), and additional candidates are neither required nor welcomed.

3. Please make an effort to spell words correctly; 'txt spk' is universally hated anywhere except in SMS messages. If you are unable to spell words such as 'betta', 'wiv' and 'wud' correctly, then I think it's time for you to play your own game of Russian Roulette - with six loaded chambers, just to be sure.

Welcome to TV Forum.

There are many others like Ant and dec mad Faye here in the UK. However, the situation is not hopeless for her and other sufferers. Professional help is available, all I ask is that you make a donation of whatever you feel you can afford so that together we make a difference.

Thank you

I can confirm that the probability factor is in the high decimal places of 99%, Sir.

I don't understand why both ITV and BBC shunt things like this. I know it's a ratings world, but surely a lot more effort put into
a) making sure the series is of good quality,
b) lots of publicity, and
c) giving ratings time to grow
would work. There are plenty of 'classic' series which wouldn't have survived 5 minutes if they hadn't been allowed time to pick up an audience (although I do appreciate that that was easier in the days of 5 or fewer channels)

I turtley agree with you.

Only problem with that idea is that it would take until after Christmas to get the millions of applicants down to 50

I really hate the way ITV has gone downhill in the last couple of years. They shunt everything around, take things off randomly and don;t give anything a chance to settle in.

They seem to expect that a brand new show will *INSTANTLY* get massive ratings even if they don't promote it and then if it doesn't do flawlessly it gets yanked. That is not the way TV works in this country.

Promotion consists of a person watching, then telling their mates about the show. It should be left to gain ratings not just pulled. Fawlty Towers only got popular on the repeats - imagine if that got yanked by the beeb mid series.

This is even more true with soaps - River City on BBC Scotland started dreadful but has grown to be a normalish soap. If it was on ITV it would be pulled instantly without masive ratins on day 1.

As much as JM would have you believe Crossroads was not the only reason for me deleteing ITV from my TV - it's because I never actually watch anything - partly due to the garbage they put out 80% of the time and then the other 20% gets pulled before I hear about it.