For talent show fans, it’s usually a quickstep from Strictly Come Dancing on BBC One to X Factor on ITV.
Audiences could find themselves on the judging panel choosing which show to ditch, however, after executives at the rival broadcasters went to war over the Saturday night schedules.
Peter Fincham, the director of television at ITV, accused the BBC of breaking an agreement not to allow the programmes to clash. He claimed that the BBC had moved the launch show of Strictly on September 5 to a later slot to ensure that viewers would be unable to catch the start of The X Factor.
He said that there was an agreement between the broadcasters that the dance show would finish by 8.15pm, the start time for The X Factor, but the two programmes would now overlap by 20 minutes. He pledged to publish all the start times for The X Factor shows this autumn so that the BBC can schedule Strictly to allow viewers to see both.
Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television, retaliated by accusing ITV of deliberately scheduling double bills of Emmerdale to clash with EastEnders. He said that he could not guarantee that Strictly would not overlap with The X Factor because BBC schedules were sometimes dictated by live sports events.
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In a panel debate at the Edinburgh International Television Festival, the long-running battle for Saturday primetime audiences flared up again. Mr Fincham said: “What happens with billings is that we have a number of exchanges, so on Saturday week, there’s a Strictly Come Dancing launch show and a third X Factor audition show. And we had a first exchange [with the BBC] which had the X Factor show starting exactly where the Strictly show ended. Which is a pretty happy outcome for everybody: a 7 o’clock Strictly and an 8.15pm X Factor, with both 75-minute shows.
“That revealed to each broadcaster what we were doing, so the BBC guys knew what we were doing. In the second exchange, they moved Strictly 20 minutes later. I don’t know why they did that, but it feels a little bit like: ‘Let’s try to see if we can clip The X Factor’s wings.’ Our audience tell us they don’t want those two shows to overlap.”
Mr Cohen said that there was always “to-ing and fro-ing” and added: “These things happen all the time. We’ve noticed very often that suddenly Emmerdale can find itself in a double bill against EastEnders with astonishing regularity over the last two years.”
Mr Fincham said: “I’ve tried over the years to talk to the BBC about whether we should keep drama away from each other, but I’ve been rebuffed.”
Jay Hunt, the chief creative officer of Channel 4 and a former controller of BBC One, admitted in the debate she was a “very competitive controller” of BBC One.
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She added: “The BBC does need to be mindful of its scale. The point Peter is making is that if X Factor loses young share then that is real revenue to a commercial business that will have to make a set of decisions. There are no consequences if Strictly takes a hit . . . [The BBC] just needs to be mindful of the fact that the people on the other side of the fence are not taking billions of pounds of public money.”