ITV1′s scheduling reel
Wednesday, July 8, 2009 by Graham Kibble-White
ITV1 has just announced major scheduling changes for w/c 18 July.
This is the week when The Bill moves to a new once-a-week 9pm slot, whereupon it upgrades to HD, a new title sequence and theme music. And to hammer that point home the channel have, confusingly, scheduled two episodes of the drama, running over Thursday and Friday.
In addition, it’s revealed that Coronation Street is to lose its traditional Wednesday at 7.30pm slot. Instead the soap will TX on Thursday nights at 8.30pm, while Emmerdale will screen two episodes also on Thursday, and its regular Tuesday hour-long episode will be cut back to 30 minutes.
An ITV spokesman said: “Coronation Street will make a move from Wednesday to Thursday nights on ITV1 from July 23 as part of a change to the schedule to reflect ITV’s contracts for the Champions League, FA Cup and England internationals, which will see ITV1’s live football broadcast on Wednesday evenings. In addition, two separate episodes of Emmerdale will be broadcast on Thursdays from the same date. We’re delighted that Thursday evenings on ITV1 will be a great showcase for soap from Weatherfield and the Woolpack.”
Slightly off-topic, but it’s related to Emmerdale/Corrie…
I read the other day that Ofcom have just changed the rules on commercial breaks for “public service broadcasters” such as ITV meaning that they can now, in theory, broadcast TWO commercial breaks in 30 minute programmes, instead of the traditional single centre break. So they could, if they wished, insert an additional break in both 30 minute episodes of Emmerdale and Coronation St, remove the break between the two shows, and create a seamless “soap hour” between 7 and 8pm, with Emmerdale leading directly into Corrie, then perhaps Corrie leading straight into an 8pm show, which would benefit from The Street’s large audience.
Do you reckon ITV will ever make use of these new rules to do something like that?
STV has just said it’s – ooh – opting out of this new network schedule and is planning to show regional stuff instead of The Bill. It’s like Bruce Gyngell and Hollywood Lovers all over again. Well, a little. It does smack of a PR stunt, though, and I’m sure there’ll be a convenient “last minute change of heart” 24 hours before The Bill Late’n'Lewd is due to start.
Hmm, it seems ok. But, when there is no football what will it do then?
Perhaps its the last throw of the dice, but maybe it the Grade magic working again…
STV have been opting out of loads of network drama recently, and lobbing on repeats of Taggart and Gregory’s Girl instead. I doubt they’re going to go back on dropping The Bill.
Just yet.
Is the Emmerdale thing permanent? Two episodes on Thursday, every Thursday until we die?
“We’re delighted that Thursday evenings on ITV1 will be a great showcase for soap from Weatherfield and the Woolpack”
I’m not.
Still, ITV1 is a channel I no longer watch anyway, so any changes to their scheduling make no difference anyway.
I wish they’d stop running six half-hours of Emmerdale every week, there’s no reason for it at all, it’s only because they can. Even my mum’s sick of it, and she’s an Emmerdale fan.
This schedule is a bit of a mess now, I don’t know why they don’t put Corrie back on Sundays, as now you’ve got three episodes within 25 hours from 8.30pm on Thursday to 9pm on Friday. This schedule might help ITV win Thursdays but it’s going to make Tuesdays and Wednesdays look very weak – in the case of the former, even weaker than usual.
STV’s opt-outs are a joke, they say it’s to make more room for Scottish programming, but by a strange coincidence they’re opting out of all the drama – The Bill, Kingdom, Lewis, all that – but not all the cheap rubbish like Ladette to Lady. But it’s not based on cost grounds, oh no. It’s said that they’ve fallen out with ITV because they’re dropping Taggart, but if STV had more than one programme, that might not have been so much of a problem.
STV is bizarre. Last night they failed to show new comedy drama Monday Monday at 9pm (maybe they feel it would be better on another night of the week) but at 1030 they showed incredibly depressing garbage-strike-themed art movie Ratcatcher (which is brilliant but hardly mainstream viewing).
A case of rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. ITV1 is in such deep trouble now all they can do is move soaps around rather than think of anything new. Emmerdale on some nights struggles to get 5 million viewers as people are sick of it being on so much and Corrie is a big turn off for male and Southern viewers. About time the bosses of ITV1 stopped pandering to soap addicts and reality show viewers and showed something that men and better educated viewers want to watch.