Who will take up the mantle of second-least-watched TV channel in the land?

Did you know NME TV vanished from the EPGs of our nation back in January? It's passing was low key, like a old soldier who'd lived a good life slipping away quietly in the night. I only realised it was gone when I was filling out an NME survey yesterday and realised that they weren't asking about the TV channel at all.

It's demise comes as no surprise - last year intensive research by Broken TV found it to be the second-least popular TV channel in the country.

So, with NME TV now apparently having made space for something called BuzMuzik, what station is replacing it in the nation's withheld affections?

Happily, Broken TV have produced an updated list of least-watched channels. (The methodology, in short, is to add together the audiences for top ten programmes on the 223 BARB counted channels for the last week of April, May and June, and then divide by 30 to get a figure for the average of the best-performing programmes on the channel.)

So, what do we discover? The bottom fifty is cluttered with music channels - Smash Hits puttering along with 12,500 viewers, for example; Kerrang just keeping ahead of Euronews down at 193; Scuzz and MTV Rocks fighting it out to be ignored by the largest number of metal fans with 9,700 and 9,470 viewers respectively.

But what at the very, very hard bottom of the list?

MyChannel is the least-bothered network in the land, with an audience of 4,170. But in the NME's old position of second-least watched channel is - of course - Q TV. 5,100 viewers, which does mean it welcomes 150 more bottoms - a whole 300 buttocks - onto sofas than NME TV was gathering in. But unfortunately, that's 250 fewer (viewers, not buttocks) than it was managing in 2010.

At the top end of the list, 4Music has dropped out the most watched fifty channels, but the R&B network Starz has taken its place as The Only Music Channel With An Actual Audience. (Also, that of all the UK TV portfolio, Yesterday's mix of Summer Wine and Nazi docs has made it the golden child.)

There's a lot more to enjoy in the tabulated data - go and have a look on Broken TV. Go on.

NME TV: The second least-popular channel in the country

There's a lovely table on Broken TV tabulating the popularity of UK TV channels. Based on the average figures for the ten most popular programmes broadcast in May 2011, most of the ratings for music channels are quite grim - only 4Music scrapes into the Top 50, with ratings of 98,425 viewers.

The once mighty MTV is at 52, behind NickJr 2.

At one point, The Box was going to change how we related to television and could at least call on drunk people watching overnight to shore it up; now, it's just the 110th most popular channel in the UK, with a figure a bit over 22,000. MTV Base is only 500 viewers ahead of BBC Parliament. But the further you fall down the list, the more once-famous music brands gather. Smash Hits? 15,000 viewers. Magic? 11,000. Q? 5,350.

But at the bottom of the bottom, with only WTF TV keeping it from getting mud on its ass, is NME TV. 4,950 viewers. And remember, that's the average of the ten best performances during May, implying there must be great acres of time when nobody at all is tuning in.

Adding salt to the wound, the great rival Kerrang is at least managing an average in the five figures. Just.

American Idol straps on waterskis, looks for marine mammals

Is American Idol entering its decline phase? Although the return was the most-watched programme so far this year on US TV, it hasn't had a starting audience this low since 2004. Even the defence of the audience size isn't that spirited:

A spokesman for the show said it was not surprising for the popularity of a show, even one as big as American Idol, to fall after eight seasons.

He added that a bigger chunk of the audience had started recording the two-hour programme.

But isn't one of the attractions for broadcasters of this sort of programme that it has to be watched more-or-less live, that it's appointment television like what they used to have in the old days? Do advertisers want to know that more and more viewers will be spooling through the adverts?

Could it just be that a simple-minded programme is now creatively running dry?

Viewers watched hopefuls auditioning in Phoenix, Arizona. They included a contestant wearing only a swimsuit who earned the nickname Bikini Girl.

An astonishingly sharp and inspired nickname. Bikini Girl - because she's a woman, and she's in a bikini. When you have it explained to you, it's quite clever, isn't it?

People can't bear to look

Well, we suppose that seeing as nobody liked it much, it's probably a good thing that Victoria Beckham's Coming To America didn't attract many viewers. It hit 4.9 million, trailing a rerun of Wife Swap and - oh, the humanity - CBS sitcoms. And nobody watches CBS sitcoms.

[First night: Beckham Coming To America]

Pleas to cool global warming fail to set world alight

The audience figures for Live Earth in the UK suggest the much-touted "two billion viewers" target will need all of China to have been watching: the peak audience for BBC1's coverage was 3.1 million - about a third of the audience the piano-playing Princes managed for their Diana tribute. Or about a half of what Casualty would have got.

Indeed, they might have been better off simply running Casualty with a global warming storyline:

- "this is just the start of what rising sealevels will do to Holby, Charlie"
- "I'll pop the kettle on - but only enough for two cups..."

In other broadcast-related news, roughly six times as many people - over 600, in fact - complained about Metallica's set being cut off to show a recording of Crowded House than complained about the language.