Ivan Methuselah's Digi-Box Ration Book

2009 - JULY TO SEPTEMBER

Three quarters of the way through the year, then. Let's see what sort of Summer it's been:

Figure 3.1 - TV, Radio and Film, week by week

Figure 3.2 - TV, Radio and Film, day by day

Overall TV Radio Film

A solid July, and a more variable August and September: television was only really kept going by The Wire, and in the last two months it's been film that's been bringing in the points. Radio has had a fairly consistent run, including a solid wall of points for pretty much a whole month in July / August. That's an Ashes Summer for you and it contributed to a healthy six points spike on 12th July. Television only exceeded that twice, thanks to Pinter Night and the combination of Jonathan Meades and The Wire. Two days equalled the 12th of July on total points, in both cases thanks mainly to films.

Figure 3.3 - Network by network, week by week

BBC TV ITV TV 4TV 5TV BBC Radio

Radio continued its good form this quarter although 4TV's thicket has grown significantly higher, occasionally casting the radio into shade and almost rivalling BBC TV at times (though not in any serious way). ITV and 5TV continue to do battle over who can be worst.

Figure 3.4 - Digital vs Analogue, week by week

Digital Digital excl. Film4 Analogue

Here's the comparison between the five analogue channels and the rest of the stuff on Freeview. Again, the influence of Film4 to the digital tally is rather insignificant, with the exception of the big spike in September. This spike was the only time that digital out-performed analogue to any serious extent, although the two were inseparably paired through much of August. The analogue spike in September is the one already mentioned, where The Wire came to an end; the analogue score is helped along by one or two bits of tat and the odd film. The spike in July is the result of my week with Graham Alison, where I was made to watch more television than normally I would. It is, in part at least, a statistical anomaly. Clearly, then, the big five of analogue are still knocking out the best programming, something which is demonstrated with even greater starkness in the next graph:

Figure 3.5 - Digital vs Analogue (excluding film), week by week

Digital Analogue

Removing the points awarded to films makes for a rather pretty little graph. For three weeks the digital signal flatlines at zero, and only twice does it exceed 5pts. Analogue too has fallen below the 5pt threshold since the end of The Wire, a programme which has doubtless inflated BBC2's TV haul during the course of this run. Let's see another example of that:

Figure 3.6 - Analogue channels week by week

BBC1 BBC2 ITV1 Channel 4 five

You can even see the dint where series four was freewheeling! The spikes at BBC1 correspond to the Formula One season, while that big stack at ITV1 is the result of the Graham Alison experiment and should be considered more as a free gift from me than an indicator of some great achievement on their part. Without this, there's little to choose between the ITV and C5. C4, as ever, coasts quietly along in the background, helped somewhat by Charlie Brooker's You Have Been Watching, which I watched.

At this point I would normally go on to analyze the importance of film to each network's tally, but first let's perform a similar dissection on the part The Wire has had to play on the score of BBC2:

Figure 3.7 - The significance of The Wire

The Wire Other BBC2 Programming

As can be seen, The Wire pretty much doubled the score of BBC2 each week. It gained 53pts compared to 55pts for all other programming on the channel. That's what happens when you put something good on three times a week. Without Baltimore's help, the channel would still have done well, but would be less visible at the back of figure 3.6 than it is.

Now let's get on with the film business:

The table opposite breaks down film and television programming for each network over the course of the quarter. Television programming is in the positive while film runs in the negative. Splitting things up even further we get:

Figure 3.9 - Channel by channel, TV Programmes versus Film, week by week

Figure 3.8 - Network by network,
TV Programmes versus Film, week by week

BBC TV ITV TV 4TV 5TV

The graphs continue to follow the now well established shape, although 4TV puts in a considerably higher TV performance than usual, and F4 stretches further than last season. BBC4 also knocked out as much film as television, which is unusual.

Figure 3.10 - Average performance of each weekday

Overall TV Radio Film

Here then is our average week. It's a little more uniform than it has been in the past, with Sunday and Wednesday having the best picks. The Wire-effect is plain to see with Monday Tuesday and Wednesday blindingly obvious in the television department. Film is strongest at the Weekend, and the bulge in radio of a Sunday shows the benefits of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. The usual Thursday / Friday peak is in evidence, as ever, despite the Summer recess, and Wednesday benefitted from Chain Reaction and Iconoclasts in recent weeks. Best day for the pub during the Summer? Friday.

Ok. Let's take a look at the chart: