Nibs

• It looks like Peston on Sunday might launch on ITV1 as early as January 10. The slot is probably going to be 10am, in between Andrew Marr and Andrew Neil on BBC1.  It does, however, clash with chunky Dermot Murnaghan on Sky, and Jon Pienaar's Politics on Radio 5Live. And the last thing Ministers and their Shadows want is more weekends on call. So the Peston format will be of interest to the spinners... 

• With another record audience for Strictly this Saturday, it's not perhaps surprising that 4.8m people have applied for tickets to the live shows this season. It's the live audience that knows more than we do - some saying that there was obvious, audible grumpiness when the judges voted to save Peter Andre rather than Jamelia, but it didn't make the final soundtrack edit of the Sunday result show. 

• BBC Director of News James Harding can't be looking forward to the results of the next staff survey, if a meeting with underlings last week on cuts is anything to go by. Fairly senior figures accused his management of "faffing around", being economical with the truth, and not having much of a clue himself about what 'a fairer way of working might be', despite starting a search for it (to generate even more cuts.)