Channel 4

[octothorpe]

Hopefully it's alright to open a new thread discussing Channel 4 - as I can't see one having been made yet - and this is the right place to do it. If not, never mind.

Anyway, very late schedule changes tonight with last week's ratings horror show Strangers Making Babies yanked in favour of A&E highlights:

(Twitter thread
https://twitter.com/TVZone_/status/1376947591099908103

Would love to know what's changed since last Wednesday when they pulled episodes 3 and 4 for episode 2 to be given the same treatment five days on. Perhaps they're trying to protect The Circle after how low that went last Tuesday, though only doing so now gives off the impression the show's not that high a priority.

[Ash101]

I watched Strangers Making Babies last week after enjoying Bake Off & waiting for The Circle - I didn’t think it was that bad. An interesting concept to explore, but maybe a mis-match for the Bake Off audience.

Although, if i’m remembering correctly, nothing has ever really been successful in retaining the bigger audience Bake Off gets till 9:15. Even during the main series.

I fear you’re right about trying to protect The Circle, do we know how if rated last night? It hasn’t exactly been setting ratings alight (which is undeserved as it’s a good format!).

[Brekkie]

No, the ratings deserves far more than it gets but it has grown on series 1 & 2 so is going in the right direction, and a casting call has gone out for series 4. The Celeb Circle averaged 1.65m across the week.

Agree Bake Off hasn't worked as a launch pad for other shows at all. I guess C4 waited to see if Strangers Making Babies lifted in 7-day viewing or on All4 and it clearly didn't. What did it rate - must have been very low for them to pull it considering as little as 2m can win the 9pm slot nowadays.

[Ash101]

What did it rate - must have been very low for them to pull it considering as little as 2m can win the 9pm slot nowadays.

It was 570,000 in the overnights.

More or less (:15 junction of course) against Masterchef (3.3m), The Detectives (1.9m) & Kate Garraway’s Finding Derek doc (4.5m).

Bake Off was 3.4m.

[size=85]Taken from TV Zone: https://www.tvzoneuk.com/post/beatthechef-seriestwo[/size]

[This is UTV]

I did watch Strangers Making Babies last week but could not get into it. Really not too surprise it's been pulled. I found the narrator for it quite odd tbh. The voice over just did not match the content and the story being told.

The programme was even promoted on Loose Women so that should of helped it's ratings but clearly not.

[Brekkie]

The Kate Garraway doc was heavily promoted though and clearly steamrollered the competition and probably took the target audience.

[gottago]

Would love to know what's changed since last Wednesday when they pulled episodes 3 and 4 for episode 2 to be given the same treatment five days on. Perhaps they're trying to protect The Circle after how low that went last Tuesday, though only doing so now gives off the impression the show's not that high a priority.

It looks like this 24 Hours in A&E episode is a new highlights compilation, possibly commissioned last minute to fill this slot? Perhaps they couldn't be sure that it would be finished in time so refrained from changing the schedule until they were sure it could be delivered.

In other not great news this week for C4, the Broadcast magazine annual Indie Survey of well over 100 UK production companies ranked C4 as both the weakest channel and the most difficult broadcaster to deal with.

[James2001]

Not doing well if they're considered weaker than Channel 5 now.

[XIII]

Despite having juggernauts like Gogglebox and Bake Off, Channel 4 is consistently being beaten by BBC Two in terms of share which is impressive considering BBC Two doesn’t have shows which do huge numbers

I find it interesting that indies find Channel 4 difficult to work with. That doesn’t reflect well on Ian Katz.

[Brekkie]

Been rumours of unrest for quite some time.

[Jon]

A very lacking in confidence “casting is now open for a possible fourth series of The Circle” announcement from Emma Willis at the end there.

[Ash101]

A very lacking in confidence “casting is now open for a possible fourth series of The Circle” announcement from Emma Willis at the end there.

I believe they said the same at the end of Series 2 too.

I’d be shocked if we don’t at least get 1 more UK series, because Netflix have commissioned a third for the US & it seems like they’ve always filmed them back to back. Which presumably keeps some costs down for both parties.

[Jon]

Are they doing anymore of the other two international versions?

[Ash101]

I’m not 100% sure. But it looks like the first series of the American, French & Brazilian versions were all filmed back to back in November & December 2019 after our second series.

Cannot see anything mentioned about upcoming versions of the others, whereas the second US show is confirmed to start in April.

Do we know if Netflix have got the exclusive rights to making more international versions? Seems like the type of show that may work down under, considering the amount of reality TV that Australia makes (MAFS, Love Island, Big Brother etc)

I wonder how Netflix decided on those 3 territories, America seems obvious. But the other 2? Although, actually, France has native versions of The Circle on Netflix & Love Island on Amazon Prime... which is interesting in itself as I don’t believe that’s had a streaming only version produced anywhere else?

[Brekkie]

I'm sure Netflix have worldwide rights which may have given the producers the funding for the base in Salford but sadly really limited it's growth around the world as I do think especially over the last year it would have taken off in many more countries were they not tied to that exclusivity. You'd think it would be in Netflix's interests to have the exclusive rights to the US series and perhaps a couple of others, but then just have secondary rights elsewhere so rights could be sold in Australia for example and then Netflix screen the Aussie version around the world.