I often wonder how the many millions, happily watching one channel, know of an unusual event happening on another channel, and then decide to abandon what they're already watching and switch over causing an enormous spike in recorded viewers.

Must be clairvoyance. Or horse-sh*te.



Yeah keep your hooter out Maud. Your not an expert on these matters.

But, and I'm not being awkward, how does that work though? To take Basicasic's point, if Phyllis's game did have this big 'spike' of viewers towards the end of the game that caused it to be the most popular in the series, how on earth would viewers on other channels know to switch over? Surely they would only find out about it after it happened? Given that you obviously work in the industry somewhere, I'd be genuinely curious to know.

I think the figures may include the repeat showings on 4+1 and More4 (and More4+1, if it still exists...) and also tape recordings, so it's possible someone might have watched the episode again on More4, or phoned a friend and said "Wow, watch DOND on More4 this evening", making it get high ratings. However, I don't think these repeat show figures are included in the "overnight" figures... they only appear in the BARB figures a couple of weeks later, as far as I'm aware.

Yes lets learn of this great feat of mass clairvoyance.

I totally agree that it seems like people would have to guess that it was an interesting show but in fact it's not that weird at all.

The overnight figures come broken down initially into 15 minute chunks. Almost all shows actually have quite a lot of variance across the whole duration of their programme.

The worst situation is if the later quarters are lower than the earlier ones, obviously, as that means people are turning off.

Deal is lucky, and admired for the fact that it's figures never, ever drop off at the end. In the early days of the show however, at top popularity, the difference between the last and first quarters wasn't that great. Now however it can be huge.

This is because Deal has a core of about 1.3- 1.5 million who will watch the whole show, seemingly even in the event of a war. However as the show becomes "wallpaper" there are about 2 million other people who used to watch the show religiously but don't anymore through over familiarity. They call these people "tired fans" and it happens to long and/or frequently running shows. They tend to graze to the show now and then but stay only if the show is interesting to them on any particular day.

This is why spikes occur; when lots of tired fans (!) tune in late and decide to stay. The spike at the end of Phyl's game was just short of three million.

By the way, to answer H's question; the overnights actually don't include digital channels or repeats.

I can see the reason why the figures would tend to peak towards the end because the start is the 'boring bit' and no-one ever deals the first or 2nd offer so I guess many people switch on to see whats happening towards the end. If its exciting they stay otherwise they switch back over.

What I would be interested to to know is how an early deal affects the viewing figures. ie do they go down generally once somebody has dealt? And do they drop off massively on a 3rd offer deal? My anecdotal evidence suggests people dislike early dealing and switch off if its particularly lame. Is this actually reflected by the viewing stats?

Honestly, no. There hasn't been a single game - not one in two years I've read -where more people switched off than switched on. The figures always rise across the show. That's the number one reason that Deal is still considered such a juggernaut.

If there's an early deal and the proveout isn't very interesting, amazingly the figures still rise - but not by much. But some proveouts (Kelsie, Donna) spike even higher than live play.

However, late deals definitely produce consistently higher figures in part three.

This is very interesting and probably deserves a topic of its own!! Where do you get these figures from? Do you work for Endemol and supply them with these figures? As you seem to know quite a bit about the DOND ones in particular.

No. I work for B&B. We handle marketing accounts for companies who sponsor TV shows. One of our accounts is the BT phonebook for example. I know lots about Deal partly because I love Deal but mostly because viewing figure stuff is intrinsic to my job and Deal is the most significant show figure wise in years and years. I don't work on the BT account myself.

I get all terrestrial and ten digital channel figures every morning.

There probably are a lot of people who tune in for part 3. Not just those coming home from work/school/college etc. but also some who choose to watch it in that way. In the vast majority of games the first two parts merely set the scene, and the main action - the deal, if there is one, and the revealing of the box amount - happens in the final part.

Us DONDaholics don't mind the long drawn out build-up, getting to know the contestant, seeing how the game develops early on in terms of the board and the relationship with the Banker etc. But I'd guess there's a lot of viewers who can't really be bothered with all that, and people who say it should be a half hour show do have a fair point I suppose.

I was wondering if, based on figures from other shows past and present, if its possible to extrapolate the likely longevity of DOND. I know shows like Countdown and The Weakest Link have been going for donkey's years with a decent enough core audience but they seem to be produced on a shoestring budget (well Countdown anyway) and don't have huge prizes to give away or expenses such as keeping contestants fed and watered in expensive hotels.

At some stage if it starts to take in less in ad-revenues than it costs to produce then C4 will surely pull the plug.

This probably does deserve being split off into its own thread.

Worth pointing out I even got my mum to watch the third part of Brenda's game, and I suspect there were quite a few phone calls flying around at 4:45pm!

What I'm surprised at given that is why there isn't a break before O'Grady or whatever's on at 5pm. Surely that'd be Channel 4's most profitable adbreak of an average day outside BB season?

For the record, More4+1 only exists on Sky Digital - FilmFour replaced it on Freeview!

I read somewhere that the ad break after a program is where everybody switches channels or turn off. If they don't have an ad break and go straight into the next program people tend to stay tuned. They then have a short first section and get the ads in there.

That does make sense, the idea of basically 'feeding' O'Grady the end-of-DoND audience. Knew there had to be something cunning there!

To add to this discussion... POG just had adverts before he started.

I don't suppose the fact that POG's episodes on Thursdays and Fridays are pre-recorded has any bearing on whether there are pre-POG adverts or not?!

I don't have a clue how much something like deal costs but I do have an idea as to how productive they are. Shows like Weakest Link, Millionaire and Deal all have something in common; when they began they were an absolute phenomenon. As such they buy themselves longevity largely from the power and prestige of the brand. This alone would guarantee Deal a long shelf life. But Deal still has the biggest audience share on it's channel and it gets it every weekday without fail. Last year it, literally, single handedly held the channel high. This year, as Deal figures level out naturally, the channel has a viewer share crisis. It is the single most profitable show on Ch4 and still has plenty of slack too. They key is, it delivers daily without any promotion needed. It this infinite, self governing repeatability that makes it channel's number one show by a mile.

Pulling Deal would be like Steve Mac coming on the pitch today and deliberately knobbling Rooney with a cricket bat and is far less likely to occur.

Ive been on the overnights and the Barb website, but i just dont really understand it that much, it could just be me being stupid. But can somebody answer this, is DOND getting good ratings or bad ratings?