Reading the audience wrong

Some experiments don't work. A year ago, the Andrew Marr Show moved from its historic 9am Sunday slot, to an hour later. In a tweet just ahead of the move, later deleted, Marr messaged Sky News presenter Sophy Ridge “Hi Sophy, Andrew here. Just to let you know: they are changing the time of my show to 10am. It’s a management thing, based on their reading of the football audience, nothing to do with us and absolutely not meant to be rolling onto your lawn!”

Earlier this year, Marr editor Rob Burley told Press Gazette "The sense I have is that it’s an experiment to try and overall improve BBC One’s ratings on a Sunday – bring in younger audiences, all those things which we know are important.”

In June 2016, Marr hit records with an average of 2.7m - 38% of the average audience. Things have slipped away, with the show bouncing along at 1.5m+ - though some editions in the past year were closer to 1.2m.

Calling all fans of the #marr show, @AndrewMarr9 is back on 1 September at 9am on @BBCOne 📺 pic.twitter.com/TQ6avwSQcl

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) August 2, 2019