Springwatch 2009

Springwatch 2009 starts monday 25th at 8pm on BBC Two. The action continues immediatly after with a live show broadcast online.

New presenter Chris Packham joins Simon King and Kate Humble as Springwatch returns for another three-week celebration of UK wildlife – live and interactive from across the country.

Kate and Chris will be at Pensthorpe Nature Reserve in Norfolk, watching a host of those famous Springwatch live nest cameras. Simon this time heads for Wales, where he will be hoping to track down such elusive creatures as the polecat and the leatherback turtle, as well as planning to spend a night alone in Snowdonia.

Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan, meanwhile, goes on the badger trail to Essex, providing a fascinating insight into one of Britain's favourite mammals. Switching from behind-the-scenes work as a Springwatch producer to a new presenting role, Martin Hughes-Games looks at ways to turn a UK summer holiday into a wildlife holiday.

BBC Two will also broadcast three one-hour themed specials in the week following the live event.

Online
To get you in the mood visit the Springwatch website. It's bigger and better, building on the success of last year the team behind Springwatch, Autumnwatch and Big Cat Live have given the webcam player a boost, pimped the design, found a blogging mole and will soon be launching a user gallery.

'Autumnwatch' lifts BBC Two Tuesday

The second night of Autumnwatch helped lift BBC Two from its Tuesday night ratings rut, according to early figures. The channel has suffered on Tuesdays for many months, often finishing last place for the night amongst the terrestrial broadcasters - behind even Five - and averaging around a million viewers.

Autumnwatch, a two-week look at life on Brownsea Island, Dorset, brought in 3.26m (14.2%) in the 8pm hour making it a huge success for the channel. The audience is significantly up on the 1.35m (5.8%) who saw Twiggy's Frock Exchange in the same slot last week and almost beat ITV1's Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, which had 3.57m (15.5%) at the same time.

"Autumnwatch completely overshadowed both of BBC2's nearest rivals and wasn't too far behind ITV1 at the time." - Jon Rogers, Broadcast

Adapted from Neil Wilkes, Editor, Digital Spy

Bill Oddie attempting to plug AutumnWatch (poor Kate)

This is a little embarrassing...



Thanks to ManMadeMound2 for this.

Autumnwatch 2008

It's started! Love-him-or-hate-him Bill Oddie and glowing BBC icon Kate Humble returned to our screens last night for the opening of Autumnwatch 2008.

Having just had one of the coldest Summers in years, some of us may feel cheated at how soon Autumn seems to have arrived, but the Autumnwatch team have already been hard at work for weeks preparing our new Autumn adventures for the screen!

Based at Brownsea Island, home to one of the last groups of red squirrels in the British Isles, Autumnwatch 2008 is promising to take us on a journey through the season's true wild mysteries unravelling stories on land and beneath the surface fo the oceans around Britain.


Simon King has returned to us from the Masai Mara to take on the much less dangerous challenge of examining the rutting and lekking behaviours of the beautiful fallow deer population at Petworth.

The lovely Gordon Buchanan has been struggling his way out to the Farne Islands to check up on the grey seals out there whose freshly born pups are learning to suckle and of course to cope with the elements.

If you want to get involved in Autumnwatch check out the Autumnwatch website, at which you can upload your own footage of Autumnal behaviours, chat on the messageboards about your sightings and even contribute your photos to their Flickr group.

For the full article please visit Giants Orbiting.

By Samantha Dixon

Springwatch shines from Norfolk

Since I worked on Britains Goes Wild (the precursor to Springwatch) back in 2005 I have been an avid fan of the annual Springwatch extravaganza on BBC 1. It grows from strength to strength and has been as great as ever this year. The daring decision to move to a new location in Norfolk, from Devon, really paid off with rich live stories from the remote cameras and a fresh new feel to the show. It has been getting big audiences of 3 to 4 million every night - some of the highest on BBC2 for May and June.

The last programmes will be on iPlayer for a few more days so if you haven’t managed to watch I'd encourage anyone with an interest in British Wildlife to watch a couple of episodes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/

The website http://www.bbc.co.uk/springwatch/ is also a world apart from its previous incarnations, flash, easy, and with lots of clickability. Its message boards have really been buzzing and its immediate approach to British wildlife and its interactivity seem "to reach parts" that many other programmes just don’t. eg. see this heartwarming message called "Springwatch Saved My Life" http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbsn/F10211074?thread=5563319

Presenter Kate Humble with two of the stars behind the scenes, producers Tim Scoones and Colin Jackson - Naturewatch salutes you! http://www.hatherleigh.net/Springwatch_2006_index.asp

Autumnwatch

Bill, Kate & Simon, Autumnwatch Team.











Some audience figure information… (Guardian)

TV overnights: BBC2 wildlife show Autumnwatch debuted with an impressive 3.8m viewers, matching the success of Springwatch earlier in the year. By Chris Tryhorn.

BBC2 wildlife show Autumnwatch debuted with an impressive 3.8 million viewers last night, matching the success of Springwatch earlier in the year.

The programme, hosted by Bill Oddie, had a 17% share of the audience between 8pm and 9pm, putting it level with Tonight with Trevor McDonald on ITV1 in the first half of the hour.

Both programmes were up against BBC1's EastEnders, which attracted 8.5 million viewers, a 38% share, according to unofficial overnights.

In its second half-hour, Autumnwatch faced the second Monday instalment of Coronation Street, which took 9.1 million viewers and a 38% share.

Autumnwatch runs nightly at 8pm for the next two weeks, following Oddie and co-presenter Kate Humble as they look for animal activity from their base at the Martin Mere nature reserve in Lancashire.