Remember times when flop shows on itv would get removed or moved into early time slots.
Celebrity wrestling was soon put into a Sunday morning slot after the return of Dr who on bbc gave it a knock down.
Why now with shows such as cooking with the stars and the void shows that have been badly underperforming dosent itv take action by changing time slots for many years now underperforming shows are just left to flop etc.
Is this down to revenue being spread out so no need to worry if a few shows flop as ad revenue on main itv not effected by any flop shows?
Honestly think cooking with the stars could have been a hit show if was screened at 8pm maybe with an hour long Emmerdale with it's launch lead in.
Saturday nights the void just been terrible so why not move the schedule around screening the flop show earlier ?
Seems tv channels not bothered or worries about any flop shows as continue to play out , in the past low ratings would have lead to changes asap
Well Cooking with The Stars is partly funded by M&S I believe, so probably one obstacle to that one.
I think it probably comes down to cost, the expense of ditching shows halfway through and relegating them to graveyard slots must be higher than letting them play out. Maybe just myself, but I dont think people flick through the EPG so much anymore and so are less likely to watch Alright on the Night, Midsomer Murders or whatever they would put in its place
Also what is the threshold when all 5 channels struggling to break 2m in the 9pm hour is becoming an increasing occurance? It's not like 20-25 years ago when less than 10m meant you were out.
Of course too they put more weight on the on demand and catch up figures now than the overnights. And the worse the ratings are the more they'll focus on demos.
Well what happened in the past isn't the same as what would happen today.
In years gone by where you could only view new programmes by watching the gogglebox, the audience was relatively captive. If you didn't watch one channel of crap you could watch the other channel of crap (or something of minority interest on the other two networks) or watch nothing at all. Both BBC One and ITV had had crapness on Saturday nights at varying points, it's a rose-tinted spectacle thing to believe otherwise.
These days you have hundreds of TV channels, their respective catch-up services, other services like Netflix and Amazon that offer more content between them all than anybody can realistically watch, so if there is something crap on the TV you can find something. So the broadcasters may be content with a crap rating than no rating at all. Very little outside of major sports events attracts massive viewing figures these days, even the likes of Corrie does well to attract 6m these days.
These days parachuting in an unadvertised filler (such as a repeat of Midsomer Murders on ITV or maybe Death in Paradise on BBC One) would do little better than the show that is underperforming
Neil Jones post_id=34299 time= user_id=961 Wrote:Very little outside of major sports events attracts massive viewing figures these days, even the likes of Corrie does well to attract 6m these days.
For me that comes from over saturation, whilst it brings in 5-6million 5-6 times a week, the casual viewer won’t be able to commit to 2.5-3 hours of a soap, and that’s just one soap.
The days of being able to put out a well made drama and achieving decent overnight ratings unfortunately seems to be a thing of the past, there is far too much competition from streaming services and other channels, and far too many shows. I’ve always been a fan of tv, but find myself struggling to keep up to date with the latest trends in tv and brilliant series (admittedly part of that is the flexibility of streaming services, as without a scheduled time slot I often forget about them, and I don’t have the patience to binge a series unfortunately).
I assume that has been said ITV are happy that some people are watching; I’m sure that there is still a threshold, but it’s dramatically decreased from what it was. The Void for example is no different from the likes of Ninja Warrior, Don’t Try This At Home or Man O Man, they’re not setting the world alight, but they are easy viewing and entertaining programmes during the summer months, the problem is that everybody has a lot more choice these days when at home, add to that many wanting to go out and enjoy themselves and see friends and family of an evening that they haven’t been able to for 15 months.
It’ll be interesting to see how the linear landscape transforms over the next few years and how you can grab an audience who can find a programme about any subject that they want to at the touch of a button to entertain them… or they may just be scrolling through TikTok for hours on end!
Programmes aren't cheap to make so it's not worth a channel removing an underperformer from the schedules and then be left with a gap at very short notice. If it's done really badly then they do move it to a quieter time but it's easier just to suck it up for a couple of weeks.
Not to mention it's summer, the threshold for success is much lower.
It's worth noting that historically some shows had a relatively poor first outing of their initial series, but later went on to become hits/classics. I dare say in the past decade schedulers have sometimes been too quick to pull series or move them, rather than give the programme a proper chance to grow and evolve.
Keith post_id=34345 time= user_id=1115 Wrote:It's worth noting that historically some shows had a relatively poor first outing of their initial series, but later went on to become hits/classics. I dare say in the past decade schedulers have sometimes been too quick to pull series or move them, rather than give the programme a proper chance to grow and evolve.
Realistically the first series of most gameshows with a few exceptions tend to be a bit crap compared to what happened to them later. Bullseye is the classic example here, the first series looking (compared to the later series) a bit underbaked. Other shows pretty much nailed it from the off, with only a few minor tweaks (Weakest Link for example).
Sitcoms (and to a large extent panel shows) tend to live and die by the writing and the chemistry of the cast as well as the ratings.. We all know My Family ran for what felt like forever but the quality of its writing was a major bugbear with the leading cast. Fawlty Towers only ran for 12 episodes and it was critically panned at the time as being unfunny and droll, but even in 2021, it still made appearances in a peak time slot on the main channel. Same with Dad's Army, which (as was documented in the We're Doomed Dad's Army Story) David Croft had to fight to get aired at all in the first place.
But of course this is the BBC, and it matters less to them whether something bombs or not as they still get the income regardless of whether 20m or 20 people are watching. More incentive on ITV to dump stuff that doesn't attract.
I do agree that The Void should be swapped with Rolling In It, but there’s no point moving it to an afternoon slot considering that anything else they put in that slot isn’t going to do much better than it and it won’t get the same interest from advertisers that The Void gets.
The last time I remember ITV pulling a show was in Spring 2018, with Change Your Tune. The first two episodes aired on Sunday at 7pm, but when it severely underperformed both critically and ratings-wise, it was dropped for a week and then came back the next week at 3pm.
Memory plays tricks on a lot of people harking back to what they believe what where the better days of TV in their opinion, but being realistic, there was a lot of dross on the four main TV channels even back in 1991, before the hey days of multi channel viewing.
In fact, now in 2021, I find myself very rarely watching linear TV at all on most nights, and I use YouTube as my TV station - which can make people think the old days were better.
When you have YouTube on, and you have archive shows from Noel's House Party to Big Break to old Parkinson talk shows etc, you get the feeling it was a better world, but forgetting the fact that these programmes were not available every day to watch, and when you want to watch them, as they are now on YouTube.
For example, if we go back 30 years to this date in 1991, which was a Friday, and their prime time offering on the four channels looks okay but still not great television - BBC One offered Wogan, Little and Large, Paul Daniels Magic Show, News, Madigan (US detective series) and Omnibus at the Proms as their core peak time viewing whilst ITV was lacklustre with Very Big Very Soon, Coronation St, Survival, This Man ... This Woman, News at Ten - not exactly great Friday night viewing was it?
Rolling In It was a bit strange in how ITV left Series 1 on the shelf over a year before deciding to broadcast it, perhaps even then only because they were short of content due to Covid 19, yet it turned out they had nothing to worry about as it has become a well received show!
Wouldn't be anywhere near as good without Mulhern's discrete finger rolling
JK1985 post_id=34460 time= user_id=1347 Wrote:Memory plays tricks on a lot of people harking back to what they believe what where the better days of TV in their opinion, but being realistic, there was a lot of dross on the four main TV channels even back in 1991, before the hey days of multi channel viewing.
In fact, now in 2021, I find myself very rarely watching linear TV at all on most nights, and I use YouTube as my TV station - which can make people think the old days were better.
When you have YouTube on, and you have archive shows from Noel's House Party to Big Break to old Parkinson talk shows etc, you get the feeling it was a better world, but forgetting the fact that these programmes were not available every day to watch, and when you want to watch them, as they are now on YouTube.
For example, if we go back 30 years to this date in 1991, which was a Friday, and their prime time offering on the four channels looks okay but still not great television - BBC One offered Wogan, Little and Large, Paul Daniels Magic Show, News, Madigan (US detective series) and Omnibus at the Proms as their core peak time viewing whilst ITV was lacklustre with Very Big Very Soon, Coronation St, Survival, This Man ... This Woman, News at Ten - not exactly great Friday night viewing was it?
Rose tinted spectacles and all that but those look fairly strong and varied line up to me. A couple of series may have been forgotten to time but that at least suggests they were trying something new. ITV could (and have) do alot worse than reviving the Survival brand - it was a staple of the schedule for many years.
Going back to the original question though and I think another reason now we don't see as many shows being rescheduled is that channels just commission less content. The BBC and ITV probably know exactly the slot a show will air in nowadays when it's commissioned when previously they would over commission and then schedule shows in as appropriate, but have plenty sat on the shelf if something didn't fire such as the likes of Big Break and Family Fortunes on Saturday nights which could come in and out of the schedules as required and the stock filler that is Alright on the Night and Aunties Bloomers, along with other fairly reliable ratings bankers (the two hour detective shows for example) which could be dropped in the schedule at relatively short notice. Nowadays you get the impression they commission exactly for the slots they have and not much more, so a pulled show is more problematic to replace with new content.
That said although the BBC and ITV don't do it that much C4 still do it quite frequently, but most of their primetime schedule is so unremarkable it's barely noticed but there has been quite a few 9pm shows in recent years that have been pushed back to 10pm or 11pm whilst one did become "All 4 exclusive". More recently on E4 Batgirl started out at 9pm and ended up in a midnight slot, something increasingly common with imported US drama on E4, and Full Bloom - basically The Great American Flower Off, got bumped from Mondays at 9pm on More4 to a Saturday afternoon slot.
Johnr post_id=34464 time= user_id=1319 Wrote:Rolling In It was a bit strange in how ITV left Series 1 on the shelf over a year before deciding to broadcast it, perhaps even then only because they were short of content due to Covid 19, yet it turned out they had nothing to worry about as it has become a well received show!
Wouldn't be anywhere near as good without Mulhern's discrete finger rolling
a multitude of examples like this too. The pilot of Are You Being Served- gathering dust on a shelf and not deemed much good by BBC bosses- was famously thrown on air when a terrorist attack at the 1972 Munich Olympics meant the schedules were suddenly empty.
The show was still running up to and after the 1984 USA Olympics!
Brekkie post_id=34476 time= user_id=976 Wrote:Rose tinted spectacles and all that but those look fairly strong and varied line up to me. for many years.
What hasn't been mentioned is that most of them were repeats, what with it being the middle of August, and Little and Large had actually already been axed. It probably is rose-tinted spectacles because a lot of BBC light entertainment in the early nineties really was crap, made for the sake of it with low standards. Even as a ten year old I could tell the last series of Little and Large had had a massive budget cut and nobody's heart was in it.