All articles by Stephen Price – Page 77
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RatingsTop Gear races to the summit
This week, Top Gear returned to show Benefits Street who’s boss.
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RatingsBBC sword saga loses its edge
I once interrupted a big knobs’ meeting, holding the week’s schedule aloft.
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RatingsBBC’s Midwife really delivers
It’s winter and if in the hearth there burns just a candle, then the dear old television set compensates with many a warming treat.
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RatingsOld Fools are the best
Daves of the world, no matter what their actual names, will this week have felt a pang of sadness stab at their heart with the news of Roger Lloyd-Pack’s passing.
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RatingsPast treasures fail to shine
Rococo or Ancient Egyptian treasures? The votes are in and (if it existed anywhere outside of my head) the most esoteric poll ever delivered the ancients the spoils.
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RatingsSeasonal hits for BBC and C4
The only winter watching I want to do is the sort that involves waving it off at a bus stop, followed by anxious glances down the road searching for the garlanded spring bus.
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RatingsBBC dares to win on Saturday
At an evening of cello scraping on Saturday, I was reminded why I couldn’t master a musical instrument.
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RatingsBBC has its time in the Sun
When I was a humble ratings estimator, an agitated sales exec asked why I’d rated so highly a drama that had yet to air. “Because it’s on in January and it’s got the word ‘summer’ in the title,” I blurted. To my relief, it was believed.
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RatingsC4 reaps the Benefits
The year is now well under way and the schedules are beginning to take shape. Returning code-crackers got off to a decent start for ITV, while a British children’s classic has been given a youthful American rubdown for E4.
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RatingsTidy result for Dave
Amid mobs and all the excesses that Babylon has come to represent, only outdone by modern day football, the appeal of two young lovers from Essex and South Wales continues unabated, with a whole series splurged out at once for avid fans.
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RatingsGeeks help out E4 cops
E4’s geeky boffins have competition from a cop whose new boss wants less fun and more criminal capturing. Meanwhile, over on BBC4, Britain’s oldest butcher did rather nicely.
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RatingsBun fight fails Benefits test
Last year, there was a Twitter-based hoo-ha about one of the Bake-Off finalists. It was largely ludicrous, if unpleasant for the baker involved, but creator Love Productions probably felt that as controversies go, it was manageable.
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RatingsDramatic improvement at ITV
The success of Broadchurch and the continuing appeal of Coronation Street, Downton Abbey and I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! helped ITV become the only terrestrial network to grow share across its schedule in 2013.
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NewsWatching the detectives
As we emerge into the new year blinking like lambs, our national fondness for the irregular has been confirmed.
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RatingsFootball and crime pay
As usual, football dominates the charts – and each week that it does, its price will just go up and up.
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RatingsThe Bridge lifts up BBC4
My fierce history teacher once delivered summary justice to one of the cool kids (during a lesson about appeasement, ironically). He was my hero after that and would have fitted right in with BBC3’s young instructors.
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RatingsBenefits Street claims top spot
Gazing at the night sky seeing stars that blew up long ago puts missing the council’s Christmas tree collection day into perspective.
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RatingsThe Voice sings loud and clear
While John Profumo, minister of war and soon-tobe epithet to a scandal, lounged around Bill Astor’s pool at Cliveden more than 50 years ago, talking of things toffs do, Christine Keeler sashayed up and a nation was gripped.
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RatingsYear kicks off with football
Judging by the top programmes list, all too many of us were able to do, weighed down by delicate constitutions following New Year revelry and left-over Christmas trimmings, was watch others run about booting a ball or wonder abstractly what might be hidden in the loft.
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