[Score]

I think they should give Wheel of Fortune another run and maybe it would do better as a lead-in to BGT and away from Gladiators.

But there is a serious lack of money / investment now particularly in shiny floor entertainment shows, commissioning appears to have been scaled back massively.

Not a bad shout for Wheel of Fortune although I wonder if it might be more at home on Sundays at 7pm along with Family Fortunes.

There does seem to have been real cutbacks in entertainment. There’s general cutbacks across the board which I get given the advertising downturn and ITV do seem to be holding up better than C4 in that regard. But entertainment seems to have been hit a lot further in favour of the pivot towards weeknight reality. The money for Big Brother had to come from somewhere, then on top of that there’s the increase in stripped reality on the main channel, with CBB, Fortune Hotel and My Mum Your Dad all launched in the last year, plus Genius Game coming later in the year. I can only assume that’s all coming out of the entertainment pot as drama doesn’t seem to have been scaled back all that much.

I get that they want to find shows that can do well on ITVX and reality is arguably more likely to do that than shiny floor, but there’s a middle ground and they really could do with some new shows for Saturday nights where they’re really dwindling down. The BGT change is just covering cracks and of course means that Saturday Night Takeaway will probably be ‘replaced’ by another 9pm reality/ent format rather than a Saturday shiny floor show.

This Autumn looks particularly miserable for weekend entertainment. Despite having far more weeks to play with due to no Rugby World Cup they’ve not announced anything new (unless 99 To Beat is for Autumn). Even last year with fewer weeks they did the Mamma Mia show (which I know didn’t rate but was at least an attempt at a big weekend entertainment show). Yet another revamp of The Voice isn’t going to cut it, and with Cowell seemingly going to a streamer for his new talent search “documentary”, an X Factor reboot seems unlikely (not necessarily a terrible thing but they need something to fill that void).