It's Now or Never

When I first heard about It's Now or Never getting axed, I thought it sounded familiar, and I've just realised why:

http://www.tvforum.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21424

Seems ITV were desperate right from the start.

well as said ITV will be dead, Charles Allen and co have destroyed ITV, and it's going to be lost in a few years in this age of multi-tv crap programming.

As to ITV not hitting targets, if they keep commissioning and wasting money on ***t like this, they have absolutely no chance of satisfying their shareholders, as I said ITV is a complete joke now.

Which is rich considering their tv critic probably slagged it off and dedicated many column inches to it midweek.

I would actually love to see this comparison- I recently published one comparing a weeknight in 1986 to 2006, which showed a MASSIVE decline in variety. The 1986 schedule was a varied mix of comedy, drama, investigative journalism, and primetime evening news. The 2006 schedule offered soaps, more soaps, continuing drama (read soap- The Bill) and a late news.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a similar comparison in variety of 1996 to 2006- does anyone know how to find archive schedules?

The oldest I've got to hand is a schedule from Saturday 11th August 2001, near enough 5 years ago.

The schedule looked like this

BBC1
6.20 Big Break
6.50 The Other Half Celebrity Special
7.30 National Lottery: Winning Lines
8.15 FILM: Made in America
9.55 BBC News
10.15 FILM: Total Recall

ITV1
5.40 The Charm Offensive
6.10 Oblivious
7.00 Bruce's Price is Right
7.30 You've Been Framed
8.15 This is my Moment
9.15 Poirot (Rpt)
10.15 This is my Moment Results
10.30 ITV News
10.45 Film: The Pelican Brief

See, just as unforgetable as summer saturdays in 2006

I'm genuinely interesting in your reply to this question Andrew, and I ask it because I don't watch that much of the channel, whereas I know you keep a keen eye on it:

In your opinion is the ITV1 of today better/worse/the same as ITV of 10 years ago?

It sounded as if back 10 years ago they had a wide range of programmes. Such as Cemedies, Dramas, Entertainement, Primetime news and Journalism (sorry if wrong spelling).

But now its, Soaps, more soaps.. dramas, often repeated too much. Junk Entertainement / Reality. No comedies or investigative programmes.

Wheres the need.. they really should think about what's happened over the years. Plus they need a really good shake-up

..thats my views.

The oldest tv guide ive got is week commencing Saturday 8th April 2000.

Schedule for Saturday night that week was as follows;

BBC1

6.00pm Question of Pop
6.30pm Whatever you want
7.20pm Red Alert with the National Lottery
8.05pm Casualty
8.55pm Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
9.45pm Its only tv but I like it
10.15pm BBC News

ITV

6.00pm Family Fortunes
6.30pm You've Been Framed
7.15pm Blind Date
8.15pm Stars in their Eyes
9.05pm The Brian Conley Show
10.00pm News
10.15pm Film: Total Recall

Lets compare a weekday evening on ITV as well

Monday 10th April 2000

7.00pm Wish You Were Here?
7.30pm Coronation Street
8.00pm Airline
8.30pm Carol Vorderman's Better Homes
9.00pm Monsignor Renard
10.30pm Savage Planet
11.00pm ITV News

So much more variety therein 2000, especially weeknights on ITV. Only half hour of a soap on a Monday evening, we get 3 times that now and that was only just over 6 years ago!

God, whatever happened to Wish You Were Here? I don't think it was ever officially "axed" - just disappeared didn't it (via daytime TV!)


As for Saturdays - it's all rose tinted spectacles again! Thinking of the BBC, we remember the likes of Noels House Party and the Generation Game being on in the Autumn/Winter, but I for one can't think of what they showed in the summer!

Year on year, ITV1's audience share has dropped by 16.8%

It's quite obvious that ITV1 today is worse than it was 10 years ago, but this isn't just something that ITV decided to do on their own, a lot of it is due to external influences. Show me a channel that isn't worse now than it was 10 years ago. The entire TV industry is becoming so thinly spread, with audiences low across the board and 100s of channels showing nothing special. Almost all channels rely on a small number of programmes. In the case of the main channels it's by showing lots of episodes of it, be that Emmerdale or Big Brother, on the digital channels it's a case of showing a new episode and repeating it 100 times, i.e Two Pints.

When multi-channel started they should have limited it to about 50 channels max!

I think the BBC had shows like Whatever You Want with Gaby Roslin and dramas like Daziel and Pascoe, Time Traveller with Michael French throughout the summer months. Obviously the heavily relied on the constant National Lottery show ideas back then.

I remember ITV on Sunday evenings - now that has changed alot. In the mid-nineties we had regional programming, Surprise Surprise with Cilla or Schofield's Quest. Then of course they decided to air Corrie on Sunday nights along with Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Nowadays of course, we have Emmerdale filling the 7pm slot.