X Factor not quite the ratings juggernaut it once was

Last night, the X Factor returned, with all the pomp that ITV could muster.

Although, to be fair to ITV, when you're marketing something that now features Nick Grimshaw and Olly Murs as part of the mix, you're going to be struggling a bit to begin with.

Even so, a drop of 20% of viewers compared with last year's launch isn't great.

ITV are muttering about how maybe everyone was out because it was Bank Holiday (or maybe the thought that it's still August and this is going to drag on until Christmas put everyone off?).

And it still managed over seven million, which is considered good for the nearly identical Britain's Got Talent.

And it's not like ITV's got an idea to replace it with - Celebrity Sheepdogs or whatever that thing was isn't going to be anchoring a Saturday night any time soon.

So, on it will limp. Maybe they'll bring Steve Brookstein back as a twist.

Google is just taking the piss here, isn't it?

Children to permanently work around age ratings, government announces

The entirely pyrrhic move of making pop videos display age ratings (or, rather, some pop videos on a couple of platforms) has achieved whatever low bar of success it was aiming for, and will now have its pointless life extended permanently, the government has announced.

So far, the BBFC has rated a massive 132 videos from the estimated 10 million plus music videos (about one third of videos on YouTube are music videos of one type or another; Quora estimates there's more than 80 million videos on the service).

I'm assuming the idea is that you're so unlikely to find an age rating on a video that you'd forget the way your workaround the requirement to prove your age by the next time you come across one.

The equally vapid labelling will apply to Vevo as well.

Radio One will be saved by, er, rebranding 60 Seconds on BBC Three

Radio One is suffering something of a decline in listening - in part because Chris Moyles' departure took a chunk of audience who weren't core, but still counted; in part because young people have their phones and Twitter Music and cassette tapes and have no need to listen to radio at all.

Time for a fightback. MediaGuardian's got the plans:

The BBC's director general, Tony Hall, has also indicated he wants to see more collaboration between the station and its similarly youth-oriented TV sibling, BBC3, including the rebranding of BBC3's news as a TV extension of Newsbeat.

"Hey, kids, put down your Spotify playlists, because this radio station has a news bulletin the same as the one that interrupts American Dad marathons."

Here's what Hall said when in front of the Commons media select committee:

"One of the areas I want to develop is how BBC3 and Radio 1 can work much more together, with Radio 1 concentrating much more on music and BBC3 on other genres," Hall said. "We have a news service on BBC3. We don't call it anything, yet we have Newsbeat on Radio 1. Why not take Newsbeat and run that across the two? The controllers of BBC3 [Zai Bennett] and Radio 1 have more work to do to see how together these two channels, stations, can [find] a younger audience."

Pssst, Tony... your news service on BBC Three is called "Sixty Seconds". It's been called that since before there was a BBC Three. Still, twelve years isn't much time for that name to stick, is it?

The other big plan is for a Radio One channel on iPlayer. This idea - that digitally, a Radio One TV service would be possible - is even older than Sixty Seconds; it was part of the original proposals for BBC Digital services back in the early 1980s. Still, baby steps, eh?

Rajars: Grim figures

The new bunch of Rajar figures out today are showing there's been a drop in the Radio One breakfast show audience.

That, presumably, the network was expecting with the departure of Chris Moyles. The size of the drop, though, might come as something of a shock - a million have gone elsewhere.

In effect, the audience has reverted back to where it was before Moyles took over, as MediaGuardian explains:

The 28-year-old presenter, who took over from Moyles last September, shipped 900,000 listeners compared to the final three months of 2012 and was nearly a million down on Moyles' last quarterly audience of 6.7 million.

It is the lowest audience for the Radio 1 breakfast show since it was presented by Sara Cox in 2003. Cox had 5.5 million listeners in her last three months in the job before she was replaced by Moyles, who fashioned himself as the "saviour of Radio 1".

Radio One are making noises about how their focus is on the demographic, not the absolute numbers. Which is true - they're under orders to make their audience younger, and presumably this helps - but it still can't feel great to lose so many, so quickly.

X Factor scrapes into the next round

According to TV Scoops, the X Factor's return performed a bit like the average X Factor winner - did alright, can hold its head up, but doesn't really look to have much of a stellar future ahead of it:

'The X Factor' 2012 launched with an average of 8m (excl +1) last night, the programmes's smallest launch audience since 2006.

— TV Scoops (@tvscoops) August 19, 2012

The share was also the lowest since 2006, apparently, so it wasn't just that some of the audience stayed outdoors barbecuing their children; those people who were indoors were tempted away by Indiana Jones And The Destruction Of Franchise Goodwill on BBC One.

UPDATE: The MediaGuardian figures are little brighter for ITV:

The X Factor's peak of 9.9 million represented a 46% share of viewers, while the 8.7 million for the whole 75-minute show, 42% of viewers, gave it double the audience share of any other programme.

Gordon in the morning: Gloves off

Popping up on the edge of Gordon's column today is a massive advert for his current employer's current other business, Sky Atlantic:

Viewers are Mad for Megan Draper

THE season five premiere of Mad Men pulled in 98,000 viewers – while 45,000 tuned in to the second episode of the Sixties-based hit.

It's a little bit of a stretch to suggest a programme which managed to displace more than half its audience episode-to-episode has viewers "Mad for" it, but the Bizarre team try to talk things up:

Ratings are expected to rise as fans watch it on catch-up.

Well, perhaps by a bit.

In case we forget, how did the first episode do for the last series, when it was on BBC Four?

US drama Mad Men returned to BBC4 for its fourth series with just over 350,000 viewers last night, Wednesday 8 September.

At the time, MediaGuardian sniffed that that was a bit underwhelming for a series with such a stature.

Oddly, Gordon's gang don't mention how Rupert Murdoch has spent a small fortune on a programme managing to take it from an audience of a third of a million to less than fifty thousand in one leap.

Elsewhere, the bid to try and make One Direction sound interesting continues by a suggestion they might have stolen Darth Vader's gloves.

Actually, the story is that a "Darth Vader mimic" (mimic?) has misplaced a pair of his gloves, and he thinks he might have had them last at an event that One Direction were also at. It barely even registers as circumstantial evidence.

Falling Idol

There's life left in it, of course, and doubtless Fox will continue to squeeze every drop from it, but American Idol is now firmly on the wane, being beaten in its slot by The Big Bang Theory.

There's a scent of panic coming from the show, scrabbling to bring back Nigel Lythgoe as executive producer and trying to drag interest out of 'look, these people are mad' and 'look, the judges are having an argument amongst themselves that isn't in any way staged, oh no.'

It's not working, though. 30% of the viewers that were still buying it this time last year have vanished; what was once an unstoppable behemoth now resembles more a smoking, stuttering bandwagon.

American idles: Is the steamroller running out of steam?

This week's edition of American Idol - the one where Paula Abdul provided a critique of a song that didn't exist - was notable for another reason; the show dropped off 1.2 million viewers week-on-week; its worst performance in a half-decade. There is a season for all things - could, at last, Cowell's behemoth be entering its autumn?

Lily Allen and Friends... well, friend, perhaps

We actually feel a little bad now. We really meant to mention that last week's Lily Allen and Friends got its largest audience of the run - a record busting third of a million - but didn't get round to it; now, we're mentioning last night's ratings and it'll look like we're only counting the flatline figures and ignoring the ones that are slightly less bad.

But we're not. It just happens that last night's audience averaged 173,000 - although by the end, the figures had dipped to 148,000. The good news for Lily, though, is that this figure is so small, it can't really be counted accurately by the ratings systems.

The BBC has been suggesting that the series was doing well on the iPlayer - perhaps that's where all the viewers are.

Brits: Audience drifts away slowly

ITV is, apparently, quite happy with the audience figures for the Brits last night, posting a headline 6.1 million viewers, up 800,000 on last year's figures.

Doubtless many people will be suggesting it was their magic element which helped the audience rise, although the key factor ("not being on at the same time as BBC One showing an FA Cup replay") it's hard for anyone at ITV to take credit for.

The 800,000 extra viewers figure is interesting in its own right - because that's the number of viewers who deserted the programme during its two hours on air. The first fifteen minutes of the show were watched by 6.5 million; by the time McCartney came on, only 5.7 million were still tuned in. It's unclear if those figures include viewers watching from behind their sofas.

Lily Allen makes new friends

Good news for Lily Allen: her 'look at what we've found on YouTube' programme might not have been very popular in its launch week, but the audience has rallied for the second week. Yes, 7,000 extra viewers plonked themselves down to watch Lily Allen And Friend this week. Might not sound much, but when you're scraping quarter of a million, every few helps. It's actually a lower audience rating than that programme about the girl with four legs was getting on Channel 4's hour-later catch-up service.

Lily Allen's friends unsubscribe

So, after all the hoopla, how did Lily Allen and Friends programme do for BBC Three?

255,000 viewers.

That's not bad for BBC Three, is it?

Well... actually, yes it is. It's down on what you'd normally expect in that slot - about half of the average on BBC Three for the time. And that's despite the heavy trailing across the main channels for about three weeks, a lot of pre-publicity and the supposed draw of Ms Allen.

Of course, to be fair, Lenny Henry was presenting pretty much an identical programme on BBC One at the same time.

Grammys: Fewer watch, again

The quickest tot-ups of ratings for the Grammys last night make grim reading for CBS, with 12% of last year's viewers going missing, and 18% of the 18-49 year old viewers not turning up. It's almost as if the tantalising prospect of an English crackhead singer about not going to get the treatment she's currently having wasn't such a draw after all.

Scary development

I don't think anyone can view the news from Australia that some CDs are going to be made illegal for under 18 year olds with anything but concern. Ever since Tipper Gore and her befuddled perm-headed cohorts brought in the ridiculous concept of rating records for content, it's been on the cards that someone, somewhere would take the censorship to its logical conclusions and start to make tricky artists illegal. The Australian Record Industry Association (ARIA - anagram of, and analagous to, the RIAA) have introduced new levels of 'bad' record, to go with their existing Level 1 (Moderate Impact - coarse language or themes) and Level 2 (Strong Impact - coarse language or themes). Level 3 and 4 are the new "restricted" levels which covers High Impact themes.


But what does it mean? Aria explains:

Level 2

"This sticker means the album contains more explicit and/or
assaultive language or deals with issues which may offend
some sections of the adult community. This can include
lyrics which combine large quantities of expletives with
detailed descriptions of violence or acts of extreme
aggression. The album is not recommended for those under
the age of eighteen. This recording contains explicit language and is not recommended for persons under the age of eighteen. or disturbing to people under 15 years of age.[sic]

Hope that's clear.

Level 3:

MA 15+: MATURE ACCOMPANIED. RESTRICTIONS APPLY TO PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF 15*
*The MA category is legally restricted. Children under fifteen will not be allowed to purchase MA video or multimedia,

- there's a hanging comma, which means we suppose they might add some more things, like booze and knives to the list later. Why does it feel like they've copied these categories wholesale from a movie website.

LEVEL 4 R 18+: RESTRICTED TO ADULTS 18 YEARS AND OVER
The R category is legally restricted to adults. Material which
is given a restricted classification is unsuitable for those under 18 years of age. Material classified R deals with issues or contains depictions which require an adult perspective. The classification is not intended as a comment on the quality of the material. Some material may be offensive to some sections of the adult community. Material which promotes or incites or instructs in matters of
crime and/or violence is not permitted.

That doesn't sound like some sort of catch-all for records that we don't like, does it? Are there any issues which don't benefit from an adult perspective? It doesn't mean that young people can't bring their own understanding to them. And what exactly is this nonesense about instructing in matters of crime? Does this mean Billy Bragg's Greetings To The New Brunette ("trying the handles of parked cars") or that Barron Knights song about nicking lead from the roof of churches is to be put out the way of tiny ears?

But surely the people of Australia have stood up to demand this change? Not quite. A campaign has been led by a "Queensland Christian mother of five" to have all explicit material banned, totally, from Australia. Her name? Robin. Robin what? Nobody knows. Apparently ARIA's policy is to be bullied by a minority interest group who won't even debate the issues in public. Fold up your free speech and put it back in the box on the way out.

Under the old system, Level 2 records included VAST by Vast. We didn't count, but we can't help but notice a large number of Level 2 acts are black.