"Tonight" and "Panorama"

I;am just wondering what the ratings are for Panorama since it moved to a 1/2 hour format?

I just think it more hard hitting that the "tonight" version but in this day an age, is it better to have a move tone down version so more people are interested i watching? although most of us will problay want

World in action, that other ITV one and the 50mins Panorama back instead?

World in Action was far better than Tonight.

No no and no again. There's no excuse ever for dumbing down for the sake of ratings. There's a hundred Sky channels stuffed to bursting with crap for the great unwashed to watch, but very little higher-brow programming left.

IIRC TV Eye was the populist current affairs show that replaced This Week for about 10 years - so I think its only a couple of more years before WIA comes back after the very dire Tonight show!!!!

Or is it just cloud cuckoo land to think it could ever come back under ITV plc

Tonight.. I think has improved recently. However I have never watched Panorama .

I never got the point of why World In Action got the axe, the only good thing about Tonight With Trevor McDonald was that it was an hour long compared to WiA's half hour length, and ISTR it was given the 10.00pm slot not too long after News At Ten got the boot.

But it was shifted to 8.00pm on a Monday and Friday not too long after. In terms of ratings Tonight is kicking Panorama's arsé, probably because it's sandwiched inbetween Coronation Street.

Panorama has averaged 3.3 million in the 8.30 slot so far

About 5.3 million watched Tonight on the same nights. How long has Tonight been going now? It must be getting on for 10 years?

It is reaching the same length of time as what TV Eye did. It's about time ITV did bring back WiA - even if its to compliment Tonight.

I would use the 10pm slots on Monday for WiA and 10pm slot on Friday for Tonight whilst freeing up the 8pm slots for gameshows or any other light-entertainment series which is currently missing from the weekday schedule. These new current affair slots would then ties in nicely to lead into the news - but would this increase viewing figure - possibly?

It must be nearly 10 years. I remember in the late 1990s it was shown for a while in a 10pm slot. DIdnt last long though, its been on at 8pm for ages now.

I still think World in Action was much better.

I think that ITVplc is too far down the "dumbed down" route now (much as I hate using that clichéd expression). I don't even think that the second-coming of Michael Grade will be enough to sort things out.

Even if the " World In Action " name returned, I doubt that it's standards of journalism would. It would just be the new "Friday title" for Tonight , or something.

A bit like BBC One at the moment. Real Story , and the new style Panorama are basically the same style of programme now - i.e. both are the BBC's answer to Tonight . Same crap, different names (and presenters).

Any resurrection of WiA would probably be in name only. It would be fabulous if something that is journalistically (etc) up to WiA 's standards, even if it doesn't bear that title, came back to ITV. But, I think we'll all have to dream on...

Tonight began around April 1999 - a month after News at Ten ended.

It initially ran for an hour with three or four stories covered, then was reduced to 45 minutes as a filler after the football before moving to it's current 8pm slot and concentrating on one story per show, probably around January 2001 when News at Ten returned.

Isn't it Tonight that helped to give ITV a higher share of current affairs coverage than BBC One ?

It's does take a populist approach and not a month seems to go by without that money making bloke being on advising to switch credit card, but 5m viewers against Eastenders is very good these days.

The Anne Widdecombe vs The Hoodies programmes I thought were enjoyable the other week.