[Reith85]

I wonder if ITV will ever bother again in producing a proper New Year's Eve show?

They put their National Lottery Bash very early in the evening and then fill the rest up with a James Bond film.

It wouldn't be hard for them to produce say a Jonathan Ross Show special to be an alternative to the now fairly boring and dull Graham Norton New Year's Eve special which this year had very below par guest line up

Jonathan Ross doesn't exactly perform very well for ITV these days. For example, the Jonathan Ross Christmas Eve special last week didn't even manage 1m viewers - it only got around 690k viewers between 10:15 - 11:15pm, and was comfortably beaten by the Not Going Out Christmas special on BBC One at around the same time, which was close to 3m viewers. For context, a typical edition of The Graham Norton Show on Friday nights of late at 10:40pm gets close to 2m viewers.

[Brekkie]

To be fair ITV somewhat created the format the BBC use now - they did 2-3 years of gigs at the O2 as an alternative to what the BBC were doing at the time who then took on the music format themselves.

[JMT1985]

I would like them to try something for New Year's Eve - just something different to BBC 1 and BBC 2, considering Channel 4's Last Leg special ends at 11pm.

Why not go down a totally different path, and have a New Year's Eve magic show with magic acts from Britain's Got Talent for example - they did a Christmas special of BGT magic, maybe a special for New Year's Eve would be nice.

I can see why they don't bother - ITV is commercially minded, and doesn't want to waste cash on New Year's Eve, but they did spend some money in the 70s and 80s celebrating New Year's Eve ... oh dear, I do sound old

[Ash101]

But of course they do offer something different, as they show a movie while BBC One/Two is showing music.

I don’t think Jonathan Ross is a good idea, plus they seem to have settled on him having a Christmas Eve special instead. Although that lineup was pretty poor this year.

[Brekkie]

I spent the night catching up with Nolly, which I must say was a night well spent actually.

I know BBC1 got around 12m for the 10 minute fireworks show at midnight but not seen how the rest of the night panned out - both channels had movies starting around 8.30pm and on a normal night you'd expect a Bond repeat to outrate a random romantic comedy.


What does surprise me BBC wise is they've not promoted the Hootenanny to BBC1.

[Larry the Loafer]

What does surprise me BBC wise is they've not promoted the Hootenanny to BBC1.

I think it'd be sacreligious to have a pre-recorded show on BBC One leading into midnight... Oh wait...