Well, Endemol Joe has accused me of putting a negative spin on the ratings for Australian Million Dollar Drop of which he is insistant is an amazing massive hit.

Here at Bother’s Bar I like to pride myself on fair and impartial reportage, and so I would like to present to you, the viewers, the ratings for The Million Dollar Drop in graph form and then rather than extrapolate opinion let you: the reader decide. I have also recorded some other statistics to provide some context so that you: the reader can reach a fair and impartial conclusion. I will not be telling you what to think.

As it is important you: the reader can use this fair and impartial graph to reach your own conclusions, I think it is important to note some notes and methodology so you can make an informed opinion.

• The dates here: Ep 1 Monday 21st March, Ep 2 Thursday 24th March, Ep 3 Monday 28th March, Ep 4 Thursday 31st March.
• All viewing figures have come from fair and impartial TV blog TV Tonight.
• There is an anomaly with Episode 2 – it didn’t air in Melbourne and in fact got a rating of 493,000. However, TV Tonight has somehow come up with a weighted average of 879,000 for the week across both episodes. Therefore we have used 825,000 as the figure for episode two extrapolating from the evidence given (the first episode on Monday got 933,000). This strikes me as being the fair and impartial thing to do.
• I’ve also included the ratings for the shows that were previously in the timeslots the week before the first episode. On Monday this was Shit My Dad Says which earnt a rating of 790,000, and has been cancelled by the network. On Thursdays this is CSI which in the week before got 855,000.
• In future weeks the show will be airing on Mondays only (before anyone jumps to conclusions, this was always going to be the plan).

So there we are, I hope you will be able to draw your own conclusions as to how much of a hit Million Dollar Drop is in Australia and I have not pushed you in any direction at all.

So there.

Edit: Bumped to the front page, it’s the Accumulate final!

I am so tired today. HOWEVER, tonight at 11pm UK time 5Hole are piloting their new Massively Multiplayer Talkshow With Prizes Jury Duty through their UStream page. It’s normally quite good fun watching Double Cross being recorded, hopefully this will be too.

Edit: Well this is either late or cancelled. Never mind!

INTRIGUE AT ITV, a new audience call for another recording for Sing If You Can has come up at Applause Store and it looks like Vernon Kay’s being dropped in favour of Leigh Francis, presumably as Keith Lemon.

Celebrity Juice does very well for ITV2 (it was rating over 1.6m a few weeks ago) and I quite enjoy it, but Lemon for primetime? It’s not an obvious choice.

The show was always likely to come across as a bit naff on ITV1 so bringing more of a comedy element is probably for the best.

Edit: It sounds as though there might be a little more to this than meets the eye, although I’m still in the dark.

In other news BBC4 are planning an entire Connecting Wall night, based around everyone’s favourite third best round on Only Connect. Amazing.

Thanks to Buzzerblog for the heads-up, Popmonkey TV have bought the rights to “international comedy hit” (apparently) In the Dark, and are hoping to sell it it MIPCOM starting next week.

For those who don’t remember, a pilot was filmed with Julian Clary for ITV in 1996 (he also filmed a series in the States, but was pulled hours before broadcast). In fact it was picked up by Channel 5 and fronted by Junior Simpson, where nobody watched it.

Here’s the pilot!