Well I *personally* would rather watch Saturday Night Takeaway and X Factor than all of the shows you've listed above. Yes, they can probably do better, but so can the BBC with their constant rehashes of old shows (see: Strictly Come Dancing; Doctor Who) or blatent copies of ITV (see: Johnny and Denise's Passport to Paradise; Fame Academy). What's betting that Dick and Dom are given a Saturday night show soon as a blatent copy of Takeaway?
Well I *personally* would rather watch Saturday Night Takeaway and X Factor than all of the shows you've listed above. Yes, they can probably do better, but so can the BBC with their constant rehashes of old shows (see: Strictly Come Dancing; Doctor Who) or blatent copies of ITV (see: Johnny and Denise's Passport to Paradise; Fame Academy). What's betting that Dick and Dom are given a Saturday night show soon as a blatent copy of Takeaway?
Rehashes of old shows seemed to work if BBC1 are pulling in more viewers? And of course ITV have
never
copied an BBC format in the past now have they?
Getting rid of You Bet!, especially via the back door, was a huge mistake IMHO.
I couldn't agree with you more Simon. You Bet was brilliant, especially with Matthew Kelly. I watched an old episode on challenge today from 1994, and it was great. I remember Saturday nights watching You Bet, and they were brilliant nights. I think that it should be brought back.
Are they repeating Series 8 (1995), as my copy of Ep 3 is incomplete.
Let's not forget, Saturday nights on ITV1 are hit and miss - when they have X Factor and Saturday Night Takeaway on (like they will again in Autumn) they beat the crap out of all the other channels. It's just a shame they can't keep up the quality all year round.
Not neccesarily with X Factor which was beaten by SCD by 1 million, although was more popular among the younger audience than SCD. Although I think ITV are very, very lucky to have Ant and Dec, it finally managed to beat Doctor Who on its last episode, and if it hadn't ended when it did, it would have carried on beating Doctor Who and we wouldn't have all this rubbish about how succesful it was. But then again, ITV cannot rely on A and D for everything.
Actually, final ratings showed that Doctor Who did actually manage to beat Ant & Dec's final episode. Doctor Who got 7.63 million, and Ant & Dec got 7.37.
If you don't believe me, check out the Barb.co.uk ratings for the week ending 17th April!
ITV has become more low-brow because its core audience has shifted.
Now for a few facts, some logic and generalised conclusions:
A relationship exists between level of education and income: in general, the greater the level of education, the greater the income. Another relationship exists between level of income and the likelihood of having multichannel television: the greater the net income of an individual, the greater the likelihood of an individual having multichannel television.
So the more educated a particular person is, the more money that person is likely to have and the more likely that person is to have digital television.
Currently, most moderately affluent families (and above) have digital television. This leaves ITV 1 with a core audience which lacks sufficient income to afford digital television. Since income is usually related to intelligence, people with the lowest intelligence are now ITV's core audience. So, ITV's management probably reached the conclusion that ITV would make most money by gaining the loyalty of viewers who lack multichannel television. This means targeting the socio-economic group currently unable to afford digital television. Because most of the people in this group are poorly educated, programming must be suitably altered to appeal to this demographic.
That is why many people from more educated demographics are now frustrated by the programming currently broadcast on ITV 1.
The reason "ITV Saturday nights turned crap" is due to the fact that the original poster is comparing a range of autumn/winter programmes over a period of a number of years versus the summer schedule of one year.
Plus if most of those shows were still on air now people would complain that they were all tired and ITV should try new ideas
A relationship exists between level of education and income: in general, the greater the level of education, the greater the income. Another relationship exists between level of income and the likelihood of having multichannel television: the greater the net income of an individual, the greater the likelihood of an individual having multichannel television.
Are you sure this is the case though? Where does the concept of a "chav dish" come into all of this.
Many more affluent, "middle-class" families eschew the notion of watching TV all night altogether. Conversely, most of the "lower intelligence" set get hold of multichannel if they can -- a lot of these have lots of money (plumbers, builders etc). I don't think there is a particularly strong relationship between education and earnings, and certainly there is very little relationship between education (taking all forms of education including the trades into account) and a tendency to crave intellectual fulfilment from the TV.
So I don't think this generalisation works. ITV need to be going for the ABC1s as much as the C2DEs if they want to maximise advertising revenue.
Getting rid of You Bet!, especially via the back door, was a huge mistake IMHO. OK, things weren't the same when Matthew Kelly left but LWT didn''t have the courtesy to inform us the show had been ditched once it ended.
Well they brought in Darren Day, and then in the second series changed the music, that really was curtains for You Bet, BTW is Blind Date still in production?
Many more affluent, "middle-class" families eschew the notion of watching TV all night altogether. Conversely, most of the "lower intelligence" set get hold of multichannel if they can -- a lot of these have lots of money (plumbers, builders etc). I don't think there is a particularly strong relationship between education and earnings, and certainly there is very little relationship between education (taking all forms of education including the trades into account) and a tendency to crave intellectual fulfilment from the TV.
I agree entirely. I was just attempting to correlate the recent dumbing-down of ITV's programming with the reality that the poorest and least educated are unable to afford multichannel television. I certainly wasn't attempting to explain the socio-economic distribution of multi-channel television. That would require much more than a paragraph!
