Thursday 17th April 2008
The BBC is certainly making Graham Norton work for his money – the host of current BBC1 Saturday night talent contest I’d Do Anything was back on BBC2 last night for a new 12-part run of his own chat show. The Graham Norton Show averaged 1.6m (7.8%) in the Thursday 10pm slot last year, but this new series has been thrust into the very heart of peaktime with a 9pm start time. Norton had Hollywood heavyweights Kevin Bacon and Tony Curtis as guests to start the new series, bringing in 1.7m (7.6%) to give a TI™ score of only 75.1. The Graham Norton Show lost out to BBC1’s slot winner New Tricks, which attracted 4.7m (20.9%) between 21:00 and 22:00, despite being a repeat.

Wednesday 16th April 2008
Wednesday night television is now owned by Sir Alan Sugar. This is the conclusion you might reach looking at the current figures for The Apprentice, going out on BBC1 at 9pm on Wednesday evenings. Since the format crossed the pond, and was produced by Talkback Thames with Sir Alan in the driving seat, it has gone from strength to strength. Its first run on BBC2 in 2005 averaged 2.4m viewers. This climbed to 4.3m viewers for Series 2, but the programme really started to grow into its potential when it switched to BBC1 for Series 3 in 2007. On average, 5.6m tuned in to see the potential candidates melt down as they tried to carry out seemingly straightforward tasks. Seven million watched the final. That figure has already been achieved with the latest series: last night’s episode, the fourth, achieved a 7m audience and a 30.3% share, giving an excellent TI™ of 153.4.

Monday 14th April 2008 BBC1’s stalwart crime drama Waking the Dead returned for a seventh series last night, with the first of 12 new episodes dominating viewing in the 09:00 – 10:00pm slot with an audience of 6.8m (27.4%). This gave an above-average TI™ score of 123. The appearance of Waking the Dead was bad news for the final episode of Kudos’ thriller series The Fixer over on ITV1, which dropped to 3.3m (13.4%) in the same slot (the lowest audience of its six-part run). This brought the series average to 4.5m.



For a more detailed summary of the week’s television, please visit http://www.attentional.com/blog.php