ITV1 Prime Time schedule - needs revamping?

It's no secret ITV1's primetime schedule is heavily dominated by Corrie, Emmerdale and The Bill, with drama usually at 9pm.

I've said for a long time the schedule needs a greater variety of programming - and the most obvious thing missing from ITV1 is pre-watershed comedy.

The primetime schedule proposed here hardly cuts back on these hits - the biggest casualty is the Sunday episode of Emmerdale. Corrie goes five nights a week, with the Monday double episodes only used when football is on a Tuesday. Thursdays edition of The Bill moves to Sunday, with Heartbeat / The Royal on an hour earlier.

Following my post on the repetitive nature of Tonight with Trevor McDonald, I've also cut this back to one episode a week, but regular specials would air on Tuesday nights - either at 8pm if no football, or 10pm after the football.

And regional programmes are screened in hour-long blocks on Sundays at 6pm and Thursdays at 11pm. An extra hour of programmes airs Monday at 11pm in Scotland, Wales and NI - while the Tuesday 8pm / 10pm slots could also be used at some points during the year.

Overall these changes free up an extra couple of hours a week of primetime. Along with this I'd also commission longer runs of returning programmes. With ITV1 dumping failing first series if unsuccessful, six to eight episodes is about right for a first series. However, after that I think there should be at least 13 episodes per series.

PRIMETIME SCHEDULE:


ALTERNATIVE SCHEDULE DUE TO CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL:


(NOTE: I've had to change hosts, so if these don't show up please reply!)

Your ideal schedule consists of Corrie on monday to friday and a reapeat of A Touch of Frost???

EDIT : Also Mr Bean? when was the last time they made one of them about 1997 or something?

And why put Corrie up against Eastenders? they'd hardly want to loose a few million of its viewers

i think the current schedule is fine, and Corrie should not be shown 5 nights in a row, infact they should drop the Monday double and just have 1 ep. Also by having Corrie on Tues/Thurs that reduces the amount of regional progs in peak time.

The rest of your schedule is more or less as it is now anyway.

It's not my ideal schedule - it's based on the schedule ITV1 currently has and how it can be improved. I can't stand Frost myself - but ITV1 repeat it regularly and the viewers still watch it!

As for regional programmes - they are still in primetime (6pm is primetime - especially at the weekend), but scheduled in a less competitive slot where they could possibly find viewers.

Well they might show half a second of the skyline again or even accidentally show the ident!

Lorraine Heggessey would love your schedule. Her first move would be to put Eastenders on at 8pm Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, knocking out the advantage that Coronation Street gives to the rest of the ITV1 schedule. ITV spent ages working out how to recover on Mondays and Fridays from Eastenders being scheduled after Coronation Street, your proposal would set them back even further than they were before.

She'd probably also schedule Antiques Roadshow against your Sunday evening regional programmes, which would probably push AR right back up the audience lists to where it was before Emmerdale displaced it. That, together with the absence of Coronation Street, would seriously weaken ITV1's Sunday night schedule - usually one of its most successful.

And the person who takes complaints from Coronation Street viewers would be seriously p*******d off with you, because they'd be complaining like hell that it keeps shifting around the schedule the way it did when ITV1 used to show CL Football on a Wednesday. It's no coincidence that ITV1 shows the Tuesday CL games rather than the Wednesday games.

I also don't think that The Bill would really fit well into ITV1's Sunday night schedule - although it's debatable. Saturdays at about 9pm might work, but that wouldn't tie in very well with a midweek 8pm slot as its partner.

But the regional slots on Tues/Thurs give an alternative as they already show soaps in every other slot weekdays between 7-8pm. And lots of people like Corrie on a Sunday night. I think it should stay as it is. I do agree with dropping the Emmerdale Sunday episode though.

What's TBA?

It's a new reality show, Totally Blonde Airheads, that ITV has high hopes for.

No I think the structure of ITV's prime time schedule is working quite well at the moment. Following all the changes of the last 5 years what with the news moving etc it's finally settling down.

One change I would make though is put an hour long Emmerdale on Tuesday at 7 replacing the sunday episode which would be replaced by a quiz. The Tuesday regional programme would move to Sunday at 6.15