Below a bar at the bottom of each chart is a list of programmes that Ivan has taped during the run of the experiment, but hasn't watched yet. As he gets round to looking at them, they will be processed into the scores of their broadcast week.

Ivan scores the best programmes as "Keepers & Classics" (3pts), "Jolly Good" (2pts) and "Pretty Good" (1pt), with a running total of each per week. Anything considered "Missable" or lower is not scored. The results are divided into TV, Radio and Film, with the red figure being the sum.

Ivan also calculates the best performing channels of the week. TV channels have a deliberate points advantage. B = BBC, R = BBC Radio, C = Channel, I = ITV. 

The above table compares the average weekly tallies for the last five runs of the Ration Book. Note that the scoring was stingier in 2004, and that I started recording all 1pt+ films on telly from about half way through the July - September run. This accounts for the greatly increased film scores, and for the low scoring in 2004.

TELLY:

We see from this that the Spring telly was the best by a clear margin. This was thanks to the likes of Casanova, Hammer House of Horrors, Wallace & Gromit, Poker and something called Doctor Who. There was also a General Election. The best week for TV was two weeks before the Election, (16th-22nd April) when we had Doctor Who, Popworld, Casanova, Poker, Paxman Interviews, University Challenge, Snooker, Grand Designs, Buffy, Twisted Tales, Around the World in 80 Treasures, HIGNFY, Blackadder III, Animation Nation, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, Hammer House of Horror, Derren Brown and 100 Greatest Albums. A fair slice of that lot was repeats, and another portion is stuff that has since begun to overstay its welcome (I'm thinking of Grand Designs and HIGNFY especially). But back then it was a genuinely good week for telly, in one way or another.

As for this run, telly peaked (as it so often does) in week 1, and the top 50% of those points were from repeats. They were good repeats but I didn't actually watch them. You can make your own conclusions there.

The worst week of the entire year TV wise came in this block. Week 4 (5th-11th November) managed points fromFamily Guy, Rumpole, The Avengers, QI, Funland, and Arrested Development. But I did my marking after the disappointing first episode of the disappointing third series of Peep Show, and despite some thawing warmth from Mrs Peel, I was decidedly protective of my points that week. I was probably a little harsh.

RADIO:

The best week of the year for radio was 3rd-9th September, which was also a pretty good week for cricket. The former is not unrelated to the latter. The best week of this run was Wk2 which was the week the Peel biography was Book of the Week on R4.

Radio had a dismal spell in May which coincided with one of the runs of Quote...Unquote. It had a few bad weeks in this run too, but just about gripped onto life. Its worst week was the week before Easter when it scored absolutely nothing. In the medium's defence, the best programming on the radio is largely exempt from this scoring system.

FILM:

As I say, I've started being more thorough in my film scoring over the last few months, which makes it harder to make a cross-the-year comparison. That said, the main motivation for this increased diligence was the increase in the number of films on telly, largely as a result of the new digital channels. I2 and I3 have clearer listings, and we've been joined by I4, E4 and M4. That's a lot of 4s, and a lot of films. So I would argue that the increase in film points is, if not entirely, then partly real.

The best week of the year was also the best week of this last run. It was last week, which was the week before Christmas. The two facts are doubtless related. 

The worst week for film was 5th-11th February. It scored 0pts. But my scoring was less complete back then. It'd've got at least one point now. True Lies was on.

The following films cropped up in more than one week of the Ration Book summaries:

2001: A Space Odyssey (3 times, though two of them were consecutive weeks)
Super Size Me (3 times, in pretty much successive weeks)
Alien: Resurrection (twice...)
Capturing the Friedmans (two showings in a fortnight or thereabouts)
Casino Royale (obout to be 3 times by the end of the year)
Clockwise (on again in 2006)
Don't Look Now
Duel
Fifth Element
Picnic at Hanging Rock (had two showings in as many weeks but is about to make that three)
Raging Bull (probably also a double showing)
Raising Cain (not a double)
Rear Window (not a double, and on again on New Year's Day)
Ronin (recently made it thrice, but not in the scope of my monitoring)
Spartacus (this was a double, and there's another double due over the New Year (one in 2005 the other in 2006))
The Thomas Crown Affair (this one's back over Christmas too)
The Untouchables (and this)
Total Recall
True Lies

A lot of the digital channels do multiple showings over a week, and ITV3 especially tends to let its showings straddle the Fri/Sat border -- getting them logged twice by the Ration Book. The films that tend to get these showings must be nigh-on contracted to the ITV for good, which may explain why the same films have a tendency to crop up again and again... Alien Resurrection, Total Recall, et al. On the other hand, a moderately entertaining indicator of corporate fractionalism is that Granada Media owned films (not least most Archers productions) seem more regularly optioned to the BBC and C4 than to the ITV. Black Narcissus made the leap to B2 from I1 this year, I think. Not sure what other films have been redistributed, cos I've not been keeping tabs on channels. The BBC definitely has Ronin and keeps us aware of it.

ALL:

The best week, all told, was last week. The Family Guy / American Dad! run and all those films helped seal that. Before that it was the General Election week that was winning. At the other end of the scale was 19th-25th March. A pre-Easter programming vacuum meant that we only managed 10pts from everything. On the plus side, I caught up on my Christmas taping.

Week 4 was the weakest of this run, and that was largely down to the telly which we've mentioned already.

Here's a graph showing the week on week performance throughout the year. Black is total, red is telly, green is film and cyan is radio.

A good start in January slipped away to 13 points by the start of February. Things crept up again before a disasterous slump in the week before Easter (mid March). Easter itself is a feast period and as such is not rationed. Consequently it doesn't appear on the graph.

The graph picks up in mid April, with another good start, peaking to 41pts for the start of May and the General Election. But it can't keep it up, and there is February-like slump through May, reaching a low of 16. But then Glastonbury comes to our rescue and we're back up to 35.

Midsummer means another festival and another break from rationing. The chart picks up again at the start of August, where we are in a mid-20s patch of mediocrity. This then makes another plunge, much like February and May, reaching a 17pt low by the end of August. This is followed by yet another dramatic recovery, and again it's a bank holiday to blame. This time though, the momentum is kept up thanks to Wener Herzog, Matthew Collings, Late Night Poker and the English cricket team. Things then drop back down to mid 20s normality.

We break for Ramadan and the Jewish New Year before embarking on the Christmas run. Again, we start well, in mid-October. But a month later we're down to 13. There's a hint of August to that curve, which mirrors February and May. And again, we make a recovery, albeit this time a somewhat undulating one. Then suddenly it's Christmas and all is right with the box.

It's no great surprise to see the schedules hammocked across bank holidays, and there is something pleasingly uniform about that lull every three months. 

CHANNEL BY CHANNEL -- OCT-DEC '05 RUN:

Rather than analyse this table on its own, I think it will be easier to include this run's channel analysis into the full year's review. So let's do that.

CHANNEL BY CHANNEL -- 2005 (COMBINED TOTALS):

That's nice. Does it tell us anything we didn't know? BBC TV scored 493 (12pts per week) from five of its nine channels (counting BBCi), The 4TV network managed an admirable 155 (4pts per week) despite late starts for two of its three channels (the +1s don't count), while the ITV got 117 (3pts per week). BBC Radio managed 109. 
I think it's now time for the channel by channel review.

001 BBC One (5th, 64pts; 3rd BBC TV channel)
B1 began the year in a dismal state, barely able to keep up with I1. It was awash with failing Saturday evening quiz-show formats, and dreadful substanceless comp-gen documentaries. And then, after the first Ration Book, something magical happened: the TARDIS materialised. Doctor Who has been, without doubt, the true highlight of B1's scheduling this year. The station then took the summer off, as a birthday treat to the old rival, before coming back this Autumn with Life in the Undergrowth. It now stands one point ahead of I1.

002 BBC Two (2nd, 186pts; 2nd BBC TV channel)
B2 was the best channel for three of the four Ration Books this year, including this last one. But a duff summer left the door open for its digital bedfellow B4 to scrape the full-year win. What happened? Well the biggest culprit was Coast which dominated the channel's summer schedule. Alas it wasn't very good. In fact, it was a bit of a mess. Which I still think was a shame, cos it was a great concept. It was just poorly executed. Coast took up two prime-time slots a week, and at an hour a time, that neutered the channel's Summer flow. Extras and Absolute Power did their best to pick things up, but the damage was done. And another hole was created by Arrested Development, which was still getting shown on B4 first. Consequently, all its points were going there. That was something that was put right in the Autumn when the B4 showing was axed (to the detriment of B4 and the advantage of conversation). But let us not concentrate too much on one dodgy summer, because for the rest of the time this channel was unbeatable. Be it by picking up small points here and there with its educational programming, Top Gear and University Challenge, or by giving us quality imported comedy like Arrested Development, My Family  and American Dad!

003 ITV 1 (6th, 53pts; 1st ITV channel)
I1 was 50 years old this summer. It seemed to take a while to register with the schedulers. The fist thing we got was a documentary with Melvyn Bragg, hidden late at night and running ten minutes behind schedule. I watched a couple but they weren't very good really. TimeShift would've done it better if only cos they'd've dwelled more on old programming. But alas such a show never really showed up. The closest I saw was a local number put together by the region now known as ITV Yorkshire (though other regions may have done something even better). Just when I thought all was lost, Ant & Dec arrived with their Gameshow Marathon. It proved a mixed bag, and suffered from having the same celebs each week (and from being decidedly liberal with the formats it had selected), but on the whole it was adequate, and at times it was really rather good. We might grumble about the choice of gameshows, but now is not the place. The Gameshow Marathon is only one of two programmes on I1 to make the series flow chart we looked at earlier. The other is Creature Comforts. This is because for the mostpart I1 remains the place for soaps and naff Woman's Realm documentaries. We still don't really have a proper hard-hitting documentary strand on I1. There is no World in Action to rival Panorama (not that that is itself especially good these days, but it's still better than Trevor McDonald). But it does have Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, which is still one of the best quiz formats on telly.

004 Channel 4 (3rd, 142pts; 1st 4TV channel)
I've been worried about C4 over the last few years. But it's still holding on despite having to raise its own advertising now. And this season it came second, above its BBC namesake. That's quite a claim from my point of view, though it was certainly B4 as much as C4's doing. Has C4 made any real improvements? Well if anything its comedy output has deteriorated. Mitchell & Webb are less funny than they were, and Noble & Silver haven't been seen. They're still giving us pointless chart shows, and the quality of both the charts and the talking-heads has deteriorated. But Late Night Poker returned this year (albeit an amateur version), and we've had Popworld, The Ashes and Matthew Collings to keep us happy too. There's also been a few one-off docs of note. Let's not get too excited though, cos Popworld's not been so good of late, and the cricket has moved on to pastures satellite. The New Year will give us more Big Brother, which will eat chunks of airtime, sell some adverts, but not do much for me. And now we have More4, there's bound to be some leakage of programming in that direction. But whatever happens, there's always C4N.

005 five (8th, 45pts; 1st stand-alone channel)
The best C5 should perhaps hope for is 5th place, which it hasn't got. It didn't even chart in the autumn run, which is not really a good sign, especially as it means there weren't even any decent films on (the saviour of many a sub-standard channel). Where does C5 fail? Well its greatest failing always stems from its audience share. If no-one is watching the channel, they can't see the trailers. At least ITV2-4 have ITV1 to trail their stuff. C5 doesn't have this luxuary. The second problem stems from the first. They're poor. Most of the programmes I've seen on C5 in the last year haven't had any adverts at all. ITV1 has suffered from this problem once or twice too, but I1 has soaps to make up for it. C5 is not selling enough adverts to afford programming that will get it noticed. Still, we do get Tim Marlow taking us around the Galleries Tate, and we get lots and lots of poker. It's that that has kept five in our consciousness this year, having had no Angel to keep us connected in the long-term. That said, maybe we should've been watching House. Whilever I find poker entertaining, C5 will have a use to me, but we've had a lot of poker this year. They've got the Christmas Lectures this year and have been sensible enough to put them in a prime-time slot, but stupid enough to put them against two soaps in a quarter-past slot. So they've probably not gained anything by doing that. Which is a shame. I kind of like C5, and I'd like to see them do better, but most of what they have on is cheap and nasty. If they want to compete against I1, now's the time to try. If they want to compete against C4, they need to get some decent stuff on their books. There are no easy answers though.

006 ITV 2 (13th, 12pts; 3rd ITV channel)
I2 is a repeats and imports channel that specialises in soapy stuff and the fluffier end of I1. As a consequence, I don't get a lot out of it. But they do have the odd half-decent action flick or whatever. They do what they do well, but no better than C5 really.

007 BBC Three (10th, 31pts; 4th BBC TV channel)
B3 struggled at first to find an identity. Its mistake was pitching itself at a fictional stereotyped 30-something demographic and telling everybody about it (something that could only serve to alienate). It's biggest failure though has been (and remains) its mess of a schedule. It is very much a multiplex channel, which is very handy, but with current listings it's quite tricky to find new output amongst the repeats. But what matters is how good the new output is. Its early success was Little Britain, but I preferred 15 Stories High. The former has been stolen by B1, and the latter has seemingly been dropped. This left behind Smoking Room, which came back for a second go this year and continued in the manner to which we were accutomed before promptly eating itself in a self destructive final episode. So now that's gone, which leaves a comedy vacuum. Man Stroke Woman hasn't really filled it and that means that most of B3's comedy consists of endless repeats of 5 pints of lager and a packet of crisps, or however many pints it is. B3 also has its self-help doc slots which do very well but only work if you have young kids. Then there is drama. Well, comedy-drama. B3 gave us a string of one-off 30 minute comedy-dramas in the form of Twisted Tales (a mixed bag but a good thing), and then unleashed Casanova. That was good. Not brilliant, but good. Funland was less good, but still passable... a lot like a Twisted Tale stretched to breaking. So lets have more comedy drama, and a lot more experimentation. Maybe even a regular stand-up slot? 

009 BBC Four (1st, 193pts; 1st BBC TV channel)
B4 entered the year as top channel, but I was worried about it. It's ended the year as third channel, but did well enough to come out on top for the year as a whole. Still... I am deeply concerned. B4 effectively kicked off in a blaze of Pinter, at a time when digiboxes were frankly a little scarce. This year Pinter won the Nobel. B4 celebrated by not showing any Pinter. This is worrying stuff for a channel whose archive-raiding Pinter season was the impetus behind me going digital in the first place. In 2002 we had many Pinters on B4, in 2003/4 we had three Pinters, in 2005 we had no Pinters. I'm not saying that having Pinter plays on makes a channel good. I just think it's an interesting indicator. In 2003, B4 regularly had archive dramas, usually tied to TimeShift. We had Threads, Cathy Come Home, The Stone Tape, and much more. There was noticably less of this sort of thing in 2004, and it was usually tied to a season. Still, we opened 2005 with a van-load of Dennis Potter to keep us quiet, and that was very very very very pleasing. B4 had redeemed itself. It continued with the TV on Trial week, which saw five decades of repetition in as many evenings. But then things went pretty quiet. Actually, in fairness that's not strictly true, because actually we had two major landmark repeats. It's just that they were very long-running: Civilisation, and Heimat. We've also had the Pevsner season and most recently The Avengers. So to say we've had no archive is actually utter bullshit. We've had a large amount. It's just been serial on the whole, rather than one-off dramas. If I have any complaint about The Avengers it's that it started with the colour, seemingly assuming that we can't cope with black and white nowadays. But they've bought it in so maybe the problem was in that regard. The one disappointment I really felt this year came through the Lost Decade season. The Animation Nation season had been slim on anything beyond clips, but the Lost Decade season really was light on archive. A few cheaply cobbled together docs was all we really got. Barely any archive at all. And that, I felt, was a bit crap. The main issue was, of course, largely one of lack of recordings, but that's not to say that tapes don't exist of early '50s output. We're often shown clips of presentation from Ally Pally. But that aside, the most noticable failing of B4 has been in this last season. There's really been nothing on. A few repeats, and The Avengers. Since Lost Decade we've had a few sorry looking docs but that's all. Christmas has a Sherlock Holmes season which is probably ok, and no less of a season than the Judi Dench season two years since, but much less inspiring than the oodles of Potter last year. I have to keep telling myself that B4 has actually been rather good and done more archive than I'm giving it credit for, but I keep getting this dominating sense of disappointment that is tricky to shake off. Let's hope that next year B4 does at least as well as this year, but if this last Ration run is anything to go by, it's got its work cut out.

010 ITV 3 (7th, 48pts; 2nd ITV channel)
I3 is a repeats and imports channel that specialises in more serious / expensive productions. It could be called the Granada Drama channel. This year it has given us two welcome repeat runs from the archives: Hammer House of Horrors and Rumpole of the Bailey. It's no B4, but it's the closest ITV gets. There's other half-decent stuff on the channel, and as it matures I hope to see a more concerted effort to raid the archives for older gems. But this is the 50th anniversary of the ITV. What better year to plunder the cellar. I was genuinely expecting some old stuff to come out of the woodwork, by which I mean older than 1975. Alas, we got nothing older than Brideshead Revisted and Jewel of the Crown. All well and good, but not really celebrating the full 50 years. B4's TV on Trial was more of a celebration of the importance of ITV than anything ITV managed. Ho hum. All that said, ITV3 remains my favoured ITV channel, and I still see it as a decidedly Good Thing. The good range of films (including a brief season of acclaimed films in the summer) helped a lot.

011 Sky 3 (-)
For most of the year, this was Sky Travel, and it still looks like Sky Travel whenever I flick to it. I never really watched Sky Travel, but I have seen good things on it: Repeats of Rough Guide and Floyd, and I'm pretty sure that thing with Ewan McGregor and his mate on motorbikes got there in the end. Still, travel isn't really much of an interest to me. Now it is apparently Sky 3, but I still see Floyd and Airline. But later it gets barrel-scraping import dramas too. I've not watched.

012 UKTV History (-)
UK History has had some good programmes on through the year. But they're mostly repeats of middling BBC progs, with adverts unexpertly jammed in. I lost my respect for the station when they took a Walden lecture and edited it to make room for ads. I consequently assume that this is a technique regularly employed, and I hiss. If UKH had anything of genuine note I doubt I'd notice now. There was a time I'd check, but those days are pretty much gone. The worst you're going to miss is a day of Local Heroes repeats. That's a good programme, but I don't know as you'd lose too much sleep missing it, nice as AHD is.

013 More4 (14th, 8pts; 2nd 4TV channel)
More4 arrived in time for the latest run of the Ration Book. At the moment it's still a bit empty and shapeless but maybe it'll come into its own come Big Brother. M4 is effectively an extension to C4 for stuff that's political or otherwise not full of bikinis or pop bands. They call this "adult entertainment" which confused a lot of people at first. It's kicked off with a string of acclaimed American documentaries but little else of real substance, and is slowly turning into a graveyard for old Grand Designs episodes. This is something that rapidly needs addressing in the New Year.

014 E4 (15th, 5pts; 3rd 4TV channel)
E4 finally came to Freeview in time for Big Brother, and has stayed with us since. This is a good thing. It'd be better if E4 had something good on. Mostly it seems to be repeats of Friends. In the mornings, E4 is essentially a music video channel, and this works very well. In the evenings it's a bit unsettled and I've not really got to grips with it yet. Thing is that it's C4's equivalent of BBC 3 (or vice versa). But there's been a small thimble of films on it, so that's ok. But two years ago they had Noble & Silver. 

015 abc1 (-)
abc1 (that's a number one at the end) is essentially a lot of duff US sitcoms. But Moonlighting is on in the mornings, and that seems half decent. They do an odd thing at abc1... they place the ads immediately after the opening titles of a show. It's very curious and a novel gimmick.

016 QVC (exempt)
Still Queen of the shopping channels.

018 The Hits (exempt)
Of the two video channels, this is the most consistent. If you want to see some music videos, here's the place you can rely on. It does it and it does it well. The only problem is all the crap it sticks over the top: logos and texts and stuff. Other than that it is a good little channel.

019 UKTV Bright Ideas (-)
DIY makeover shows are the staple of this channel. I'm not really its audience. It doesn't exactly do exactly what it says on the tin, but that's only cos it's called Bright Ideas rather than DIY.

020 ftn (-)
ftn's biggest success comes through broadcasting Living TV and Bravo repeats. The most obvious example of this is Most Haunted, which I have seen a few times. I have to say that it is a bit rubbish, but I expect it's better with a few friends and a cellar of wine. From Bravo it gets some mildly interesting gameshows that once upon a time would've gone to C5, not least Fort Boyard (now with Tom Baker, and Burnside from The Bill).

021 TMF (-)
TMF (The Music Factory) would be so much better if it stuck to playing music videos. Alas it also shows MTV cast-offs like Cribs. These are dull and invariably come in blocks. Please just stick to showing vids, TMF.

022 Ideal World (exempt)
Ideal World is the other shopping channel. It's pretty much a carbon copy of QVC, but with a slightly different range of tat.

023 Bid TV (exempt)
TV auction house. Why?

024 Price-Drop TV (exempt)
Visually indistinguishable from Bid TV, except this time the price goes down, somehow. Peter Simon is reduced to presenting one of these now. The women always seem to wear pinstriped trouser-suits and the men are always exceptionally tanned. Would you buy something from these people? Then you are a fool.

030 ITV 4 (17th, 4pts; 4th ITV channel)
I4 started very recently, and hasn't been able to catch up the other three ITV channels yet. But it may well manage to pass I2 with a prevailing wind. At the moment it seems unsure of what it want to be, and ends up as a confused amalgum of ITVs 2 and 3. There's US imports, and repeats of stuff like Department S. But the one genuinely interesting thing that's been on, frankly worthy of C4, is the spaghetti western season Once Upon a Time... which has been an entertaining and educating run of films that I hope will continue well into the New Year. I4 also has a good logo and I hope it does well with it. At the moment, the channel is placed at a bit of a disadvantage by the Radio Times because there's no room for it on the main listings page (they'd just reorganised it to get M4 on when I4 cropped up). I hope this will eventually be addressed somehow, though it will be difficult as there's not a lot of space for it.

031 More4+1 (exempt)
032 E4+1 (exempt)
The +1 idea is a good one, but I'm not sure if it's ethical really. It seems a bit greedy to be taking up two channels with it, convenient as it can be. And it can be very convenient once you realise it's there.

035 Men & Motors (-)
I have to say that I feel sorry for M+M. It's a proper little channel for the mostpart but it doesn't get a listing in the RT. I don't know on whose side that problem lies but it's something that needs resolving. On a weak week I could've scheduled a repeat of Auf Wiedershein Pet or Minder. It's not all '70s and '80s drama, alas. There's a lot of cop docs and a bit of shopping, but also a bit of cheap motorsport. So listings would be quite handy really. Ho hum.

037 QuizCall (19th, 1pt)
Normally this would be exempt, but I was feeling generous when I gave an hour of this a point. QuizCall is a decidedly dodgy looking affair in which seemingly obvious visual puzzles turn out to be so cryptic as to be impossible. Viewers call in and give their usually wrong answers, selected for airtime at the whim of the station. Worth looking at as a studypiece or for some curious entertainment, but really a bit of a bad thing as they go. I think there's another wounded CBBC presenter in there too.

070 CBBC (-)
071 Cbeebies (-)
I can't say I watch these a lot, cos I don't. I'd watch them more if they had more archive stuff on. The only archive I ever saw was an old Postman Pat which was spoilt by an oversized Cbeebies logo that contrasted badly with the "foggy day" and rendered the action even less visable than it should've been. Shame. I like that one. We're expecting competition from the ITV next year. Maybe that'll have more archive on, but I doubt it. Missed trick really. No reason why old progs shouldn't be as effective as new ones on the kiddy brain.

080 BBC News 24 (exempt)
N24 is the best rolling news on Freeview. But that doesn't make it really especially good. It's a struggle for any TV station to keep up rolling news in any sensible fashion. But you all know that. You've all seen N24 when it simulcasts on real telly.

081 ITV News (exempt)
ITV News started the year as a blank screen and ended it likewise. That period of off-airness last year did it no favours and it never really recovered. The biggest problem from my perspective though was that it was ITV News and not (as it once was) ITN News. C4N, after all, is an ITN production. But it was never going to be 24hr C4N so lets not pretend otherwise. That'd be fun though. Especially with Krish in the middle of the night, bored. Heh. Now, ITV News is no more. And not many are missing it, lets face it. Though that could also be said of B4, so lets not be smug.

082 Sky News (exempt)
083 Sky Sports News (exempt)
I'm afraid I've never grazed on either of these for longer than a few minutes.

085 BBC Parliament (-)
Still limited to a keyhole, but that's never really been a problem. BP has suffered this year from lacking an inquiry into a war, which was the major highlight of 2004. Select committees remain the best bits of BP but tend to clash with prime-time Saturday evening viewing. And we've not had any crazy election repeats this year, as far as I've noticed. BP remains a good little channel though (in more than one sense) and worth the occasional browse.

087 Community (-)
The other day I finally got out of bed to see what this channel gets up to in the early hours of breakfast time. It seems it gets up to morning TV documentaries. And there was something with one of the Snows but I was too tired to remember which one. Anyway, what it isn't is Mrs Hendershaw from number 32 reading poetry in a shed. Which is a shame. Alas, kids, those days are gone. Except on webcasts, where she does an interesting thing with her thimbles.

088 Teachers' TV (-)
I hoped for great things from this. Well not great things but quite good things considering. Schools & colleges highlights etc. Whenever I turn it on though I get a couple of people in a studio, or maybe a very dull S&C castoff. In fairness I should probably give it another sniff.

100-104 Teletext (exempt)
I've always had a problem with Teletext ever since its inception. It's like calling a TV station "Television". It's not right. You're listening to "The Radio". No. It's evil and shouldn't've been allowed. I also don't like the way it rebelled against the page-number conventions set up by Ceefax and Oracle. But it did give us some entertaining music pages and proto-Millionaire quiz format Bamboozle. For years, the digital version of teletext lagged behind. It wasn't even gettable from ITV (or maybe that was my dodgy old box). But now it's finally sorted itself out and works as well as BBCi. That means that it still has a few holes though. I'm not sure if the music pages are there properly yet, but I can't say I've really looked. But Bamboozle is there. However, it's only five questions and there's no Bamber, which says a lot about the medium. It may have a nicer font and whatnot, but that takes up valuable bandwidth. So at the moment it's three cheers for analogue Teletext and only one cheer for the digital version.

105 BBC i (teletext element) (exempt)
The term BBCi covers a multitude of fish. This channel carries the textual element, which older members may prefer to call Ceefax. The great leap forward here was the arrival of page numbers, but I think that happened last year. Since then, no great change. There's still a bit of variation in the content of the digital and analogue services, but the digital does the job very well. The most important development at BBCi this year was the green button feature which allows all boxes to clear the "Press Red" prompt (though this doesn't work on 701/2 yet). As for crusty old Ceefax, it's still plodding along nicely. One inovation BBCi might want to adopt next year (and indeed Teletext) is some sort of animated "Please wait..." sign. Ceefax has the page number scrolling, but digital lacks this luxuary, and that makes it seem like a longer wait. That is something I really should time, but at the moment all my boxes are employed in evil acts of piracy.

106 You Play Games (exempt)
It's a simple but silly name for a channel, but it's also a demonstration to Teletext that you can do much more than a five question Bamboozle with digital text. For the uninitiated, this is a games channel. I've played Tetris on it but it was pretty clunky. There are other games; some free, some pay-to-play. It was, and remains a novelty feature. I don't suppose it makes a lot of money, but it must do well enough to get by cos it's still there.

300 4TV Interactive (-)
So far, the only thing I've seen down this is Big Brother. I should say, hats off to 4 for letting us Freeview plebs get Big Brother. It was just like the old Freeserve days, only much less blotchy.

301/2 BBC i (full screen elements) (12th, 19pts; 5th BBC TV channel)
Formerly 701/2 and for a brief period 801/2, these are the lines down which we get those choices of viewing. We've been getting a few concerts alately, but they've not been well publicised. You should always keep a look out, cos there's often stuff in there on the sly. Mostly though it's Grandstand stuff, and still the best uses are for Snooker and Glastonbury, when it gives us a choice of tables or stages. Occasionally they cobble together elaborate video games like after Doctor Who on Christmas Day. This is still an inexpert art, and needs refining, but it can also be fun. What is less fun is the sort of mess that followed the Shakespeare Re-Told eps, in which we make decisions on what we want to learn about and don't get a chance to learn about the other things. That's just pointless and pathetic.
303 BBC i (little screens for N24 and BP) (exempt)

700 BBC Radio 1 (18th, 2pts; 5th BBC Radio station)
The death of John Peel removed from the airwaves the one R1 show I used to listen to. The biggest problem the replacements have is that they aren't presented by Peel, but almost as big is that they're genred. I quite like the odd bit of hip-hop but I couldn't eat a whole show of it. Etc. The natural successor to Peel from a musical perspective is Steve Lamacq, though his frontiers are less expansive and he looks kind of scary. I did enjoy his Christmas Special though. So much so that I'll be giving him more goes in the future. As for the rest of R1, it is meaningless to me.

701 BBC 1xtra (-)
That's a 1 again. Not a clear font, this. 1, l, l, 1. The 1 is more seriffed. A bit like 1xtra. I'm afraid I've not tuned in yet. I've passed through, but that's all.

702 BBC Radio 2 (20th, 1pt; 6th BBC Radio station)
R2 has now passed through its reinvention and settled down to quiet 30-something domesticity. Lamarr still does a good enough turn, and Radcliffe cobbles together a passable graveyard shift (albeit with the occasional duff track or six). R2 is not something I'd say was great, and I'd not shout its greatness from the rooftops. Or even from a quiet street. Cos it's not great. It's ok at what it does, and most of what it does isn't my sort of thing. Sometimes there is a meeting of minds. These things happen. Could do better for me, but perhaps less so for others.

703 BBC Radio 3 (11th, 22pts; 3rd BBC Radio station)
R3 is a good thing. Over there is some classical stuff - very nice, and there's some older stuff, and there's Mixing It, doing their really rather new weirdshit, and there's some jazz, and there's a play, and some interesting noises, and there's Andy Kershaw, the natural successor to Peel from a presentational perspective, giving us a bit of everything. So R3 is very good. I should listen to Kershaw more, I should listen to Mixing It more. I should listen to more of it more. But I don't. Cos I have other things to listen to. But I know it's there, and I wouldn't want it to not be.

704 BBC Radio 4 (4th, 79pts; 1st BBC Radio station)
R4, of course, benefits in the ration book by having more rationable programming. Music stations are largely (though not entirely) exempt, but R4 is a spoken word station which makes it the radio equivalent of most telly. But that's a statement of the obvious really. R4 should therefore find it difficult to fail. It's only potential competition really comes from BBC 7, but that can only get points if I programme it on account of mainly being (digital) repeats. And it has been a bit of a walkover. R4 has over twice the points of B7. Such a landmark lead should really give R4 little reason for concern. But I think it could do better. Most of the points here are from comedy, but they've been putting out some weak stuff lately (and I don't just mean Weak at the Top). The 6:30 and 11pm slots have mainly been full of less than hilarious stuff (Sunday Format was the last really funny thing on that wasn't in a weekend repeat slot), and Just a Minute often has rough line-ups. News Quiz is increasingly naff, and the less said about The Now Show and Quote...Unquote the better. When QUQ's on, I don't get to hear The World This Weekend. I liked that programme but it was better with James Cox. Some time during the last run of QUQ, James Cox disappeared, and now it's Shaun Ley doing it. This makes me even more angry with QUQ, and worried that something's happened to James Cox. I'm not mad on Dead Ringers either, though some of the more R4 jokes are ok. But they have to do something about QUQ. It's not good enough to spoil Sunday lunch with. R4 is more than just comedy, of course. But I'd like to also appeal for another slot change. I want an end to shitty little 15 minute slots. They're too small to be of any use to anybody. Knock two through into one. One more thing that needs saying (apart from how good the Shipping Forecast still is, despite the loss of Finistaire) is that in an ideal world, R4 LW would have a fuller digital presence. Maybe some sort of second audio trickery from one of the TV channels? Oh. And another thing too... which pips are right? The FM ones or the digital ones a few seconds later? Hmm.

705 BBC Radio 5 Live (16th, 5pts; 4th BBC Radio station)
R5 is actually my favourite radio station. But much of its programming is exempt from the Ration Book. There are three programmes in particular of note (although I feel I should also mention the excellent Formula 1 coverage). Victoria Derbyshire does the morning talk show, where she has to deal with idiots on the telephone. Simon Mayo does the afternoon magazine show where he interviews celebs, talks politics and sport, and reviews stuff (telly on Monday is rubbish and wrong, but books on Thu is good, and films with Kermode on Friday is brilliant and a must hear/download (best thing on the radio)). And then there is Drive with heavenly doubleact Peter Allen and Jane Garvey. They tell the news and they tell it well, between arguments and biscuits. However... there was a time, in 2002, when R5 was even better than this. The problem though was my making, so I can't complain. I said that Fi Glover's graveyard talkslot was good, and that she should be given Nicky Campbell's morning slot cos he was shit. They did. But they put Nicky on the breakfast show with Victoria, breaking up the almost Allen/Garvey standard pair that was Derbyshire and Julian Worricker. The result was awful. Derbyshire and Glover had shared boyfriend issues and the whole thing had a deeply unpleasant atmosphere. Thankfully, Fi was given Broadcasting House on R4, and Victoria got the morning show, but Campbell remains in the now dead breakfast slot, and Anita Anand can only do so much in the night shift. But none of this really matters, because the bit I listen to is in the afternoon and that's still, thankfully, unchanged.

706 BBC 5 Live Sports Extra (-)
This channel comes into being whenever two or more major sporting events coincide. It also carries R4 LW during the cricket. It's just an extension on the side of R5, and it does its job perfectly well. Not a lot more can be said really.

707 BBC 6 Music (-)
Here's where the digital numbers go a bit skewed. This is R1½... indie-rock for 30-year-olds. Not quite R1, not quite R2, but somewhere in the middle. It does it well, I'm sure. But it's background programming and a digital telly doesn't really suit that. The only show I heard this year was Jarvis Cocker filling in for Marc Riley, and that must've fallen off the Ration Book or it'd've got some points.

708 BBC 7 (9th, 37pts; 2nd BBC Radio station)
Again, it's second because its programming is Ration Book friendly rather than because it's truly the second best BBC Radio station. It isn't. It's a lot of repeats of which only a few are any good. And it has irritating and pointless continuity announcers that think they're disc jockeys. They really get on my tits. But when it has something good on, it has something good on. And it does that with some regularity. It's a pain sifting through the listings though.

709 BBC Asian Network (-)
I've not listened to this this year, though they teamed up for a couple of simulcasts with R5 around the time of the election, and the presenters seemed ok. I'm sure there's some good stuff on there but it's predominantly talk radio. Some might question its existance or necessity. Others might find it a useful forum. So there we go.

710 BBC World Service Radio (-)
Again, I've not picked anything out on this in 2005. That's largely cos I've been neglecting the listings, I have to say. I do like its news though. Has more of a context.

711 The Hits Radio (-)
712 Smash Hits! (-)
713 Kiss (-)
714 Heart (-)
715 Magic (-)
716 Q (-)
A lump of music stations I never listen to. Maybe if XFM were to show up...

717 oneword (-)
For a brief moment last year this spoken books station had a run of vintage American radio programming, including some Orson Welles produkt. If there was owt like that this year, I've missed it. In fact, I've stopped looking at the listings properly now. Listening to books on it is painful because every ten minutes theres adverts. Which wouldn't be so bad if they were proper ads, but they're all trailers for oneword, which wouldn't be so bad if they were proper trailers but they're not. They're two minutes of people saying "oneword... the station for..." etc. Grr. oneword's fine if you can't read, I suppose, but otherwise just read a book.

718 Smooth FM (-)
721 MOJO (-)
722 Kerrang! (-)
More radio stations. There used to be Jazz FM once too... but that seems to have gone now.

723 talkSPORT (-)
724 3C (-)
725 Premier Radio (-)
Sport phone-ins, country music and god respectively. Again, I'm afraid I've not really listened to any.

And that, for now, is the lot. Which pretty much brings this review of 2005 to a close. Next year I'll be concentrating my rationing on those sections of the year which in 2005 had the most programming. So expect four 5 week runs rather than four 10 week runs. This is progress. Days of plenty are on the horizon. And together we will rebuild the Welfare State (I fear it's going to need it soon). Look out too for the AView Awards on New Year's Day.

Thanks for sharing, and happy viewing.