[Score]

In With a Shout’s ratings were actually okay last year. Nothing amazing but reasonable, overnight series average was 2.1m (18%) and that’s pulled down by Eurovision night. It was generally around a 19/20% share and 2.3/2.4m otherwise. Not brilliant but for a new format, enough to give it a second shot. Certainly better than Moneyball ever did.

It didn’t do particularly well last week but it was against the football and In For a Penny did even worse so will need to see how it holds up. It tended to grow out of Penny (which doesn’t do particularly well) last year so I can see why they kept them this way around. Although the whole schedule has shifted 30 minutes earlier this year so it’s still on pretty early for the time of year.

I don’t think it would suit Sundays very well and I think broadcasters generally would rather put shows where they’ll do best rather than trying to make sure they fill slots every night.

The Sunday lineup is definitely weak though. Family Fortunes must have been pushed back. They do seem to be juggling things around and running a bit less than they normally would at the moment due to the downturn in the advertising market. For example I’m pretty sure they’d have originally intended to be stripping a 4 part drama next week where they’re instead stripping 4 (notably not 5) episodes of Celebrity Beat the Chasers, which normally air self-contained.

Indeed I wouldn’t be surprised if those Celeb Chasers episodes have been lifted from the Sunday 8pm slot, hence Millionaire repeats going there instead. That slot will be quite disrupted in May by BGT anyway which will need 2 or 3 Sunday episodes this year as it started later and there’s a Women’s England match during the live week so they’ll probably need a Sunday semi final.

The afternoon lineup is another area of cost cutting. All on repeats at the moment, including the same episodes of Lingo again and again and using axed quiz Winning Combination. They’ve not shown any new episodes of Lingo in well over a year even though they’ve got them recorded. I notice no decision on Jeopardy yet either.