The Paul O'Grady Show - axed

Yet I read an interview with their head of daytime a week ago looking for 'great 5pm shows'. Still a grey area then.

Or maybe paul done this himself? to help kill of the show, and maybe he getting bored with it, thus he can get out of it and try something new!

Because, as Goldenballs and the C4 5pm chatshows have proven, you can't go all year with the same 2 or 3 shows without it getting stale. As it stands ITV only have Goldenballs and Britain's Best Dish recurring, but Divided performed very well for them, and apparently they're looking into commissioning either The Fuse or The Chase which both rated well.

Divided, The Fuse and The Chase where never seen in scotland

It's worth remembering that the original slot they had was 8PM and 5PM, so they had the best of both worlds.

I heard an interview with Richard while the show was on where he mentioned that people were asking him 'why aren't you on TV any more?' - for many they just disappeared off the screen (which of course was their original plan before UKTV came their way!). I think they mis-underestimated or were mis-sold the channel, one of Richard's lines when they made the move was that 'digital is the future, in a few years everyone will have to have digital'... which is true but Watch wasn't on Freeview

Remember though chat shows (with decent guests anyway) are inevitably quite expensive. If Paul goes anywhere else, I'm sure it'll be on a weekly rather than daily basis, and he'd probably get as much cash for it and much more time off too.

Thank God - particularly that Austin Healy one - I'd much rather have The Hour.

Turns out that Dickinsons real deals is also more poupler up here!

It depends... if you get lots of decent guests that are there to plug something it's quite cheap. Look at the standard of guests that The One Show gets for example

I think Stevek2 has a valid point about greed, when it comes to personal wages-- some high-earners appear to lose perspective. If you were to have your wage cut from £300,000 to £210,000-- would it affect your quality of life or abilities to pay basic bills? I think not. £210,000 is still an extremely generous wage, and you can live a very comfortable life on that. However if I were earning £15,000 and had my pay cut by 30%, now I think that would be a cause for complaint

I do take your point the effect on his production company and all that entails. Given Paul's interview in the Daily Mirror a few months ago, I would think his reason to swtich channels could be down to something else (other than salary).

A-listers are generally not - they mostly do it for free.

Possibly, it depends on how much they rely on that ncome. If I earned £300,000 a year and had been regularly for a few years, I'd be living in a house with a mortgage that more befits a £300k salary. A paycut of (almost) a third is still a cut of (almost) a third no matter how much you earn*

The big difference is that someone like a freelance TV presenter when asked 'will you do the same work but for a third less money' can walk and has either other irons in the fire or a rival company waiting to take them on. Most of us would have to go for the pay cut or go for unemployment (or if you've got a good union, fight it!).


*Not that a £90k paycut would save the TV company much anyway