One-off fee

If, as has been suggested, David Walliams earned £250k for five Nightly Shows, then it's the price for closing down a UK-chat-show-host-career path. One worries more about the salaries of the ITV executives who judged that he was not only capable, but the right man to launch this critical schedule change.

Here's are the week's key figures.

Mon - 2.86m (16.8%)
Tue  - 1.30m (8.0%)
Wed - 2.01m (12.9%) and
Thu  - 1.38m (8.9%)
Fri  - 1.17m (7.0%)
Five day average - 1.74m  (10.7%). I think I'd strip out the Monday, where there was a wider novelty factor interest, and suggest that  1.46m is a better trend indicator.  Next week's host, John Bishop will do better.

For award-winning Bradby and his News at Ten-Thirty support team

Mon - 1.56m (11.6%)
Tue  - 912k (7.0%)
Wed - 1.25m (10.0%)
Thu - 864k (6.7%)
Fri  - 930k (6.6%)
Five day average - 1.10m (8.4%). Again, stripping out the atypical first day, it comes down to 989k - just over half its average audience at 10pm for 2016.