Rise and rise of Dave

[david44]

Dave: how the 'home of witty banter' became TV's big success story
The digital channel is watched by 27m people a month, and it's growing. It couldn't all be down to repeats of Storage Hunters? We sent our man to Bavaria to find out (and an interstng illuminati tryst)

Greek gymnasia. Burmese monasteries. The Italian parliament. Every culture has a sacred male space, where men will be boys. For modern Brits, that space is the Dave channel. Dave's your mate, the marketing tells us. You do five-a-side and pub quizzes together. The only problem is you have to share the winnings with his 27 million other mates.

In a crowded digital market characterised by fragmentary audience share, Dave is an outlier. While total TV viewing in the UK is down across all other networks, Dave is growing. The biggest channel outside of the public broadcasters, Dave is celebrating its strongest quarter yet and is watched by more than half the men in the UK. Are they boneheads? What's going on?

To get to the bottom of the mystery, I'm standing at the top of Wank mountain. Alongside me in the Bavarian Alps are Olympic long-jump hero Greg Rutherford and comedian Josh Widdicombe. We are here as part of Dave's new travelogue, 24 Hours To Go Broke, a show in which sportsmen and comedians try to spend £10,000 in one day in uncommercial locations such as post-communist Armenia, or Cork. I know, but Countdown doesn't make any sense either, when you really think about it.

From Wank's snowy summit, suave Olympian Greg looks like James Bond in The Spy Who Loved Me. Josh resembles Samwise Gamgee surveying the prospects of Mordor and deciding they don't look good. The crew are spending an interminable amount of time doing something crew-y. So far today the pair have bought some chocolates and visited a museum where they watched a 40-minute video about bobsled fatalities. Widdicombe describes the latter exercise as "a total waste of time", especially it was free to enter.

"Why don't we rent as many library books as possible?" Greg suggests.

"You only pay when they're late," Josh replies.

Wandering about, I find Greg on his own and try my hand at lad-speak. Dave is, after all, the home of "witty banter" (as if witty banter were formerly a feral cat looking to come indoors) and this must be the reason for its success. So is Josh a twat, or what?

"Laughter is such an interesting emotional response to demand from people," Greg reflects, un-laddily. "That's what makes a comedian like Josh so powerful, even though he comes in a small package."

I don't want to get into Josh's small package, I say, which is first-rate banter, but Greg isn't interested. "What do you think of sportspeople?" he asks me. Confident, dumb, lovable? He nods. "I have a lot of frustrated creativity," he says. "I take design seriously. I love history, particularly the medieval period, right through to the late Tudors."

I had wanted some salty anecdotes about the Olympic Village but this doesn't seem like the right time to ask.

"When you do sport, people assume you're an idiot," he explains. "A couple of people give the rest a bad name. Like Joey Barton, who's just a bellend."

Greg seems a bit sensitive to be a lad. Which might just make him ideal for Dave. Its success may partly be driven by repeats of shows such as Top Gear – a stud-pasture for Ukip sympathisers – and Storage Hunters, the US phenomenon in which grown men punch each other amid piles of rubbish like alcoholic Stig Of The Dumps. But while UKTV, which owns Dave, used to be almost entirely made of repeats, last year it ploughed a record £110m into programme investment. Commissions such as Dara O Briain: School Of Hard Sums, the archly conceptual Dave Gorman: Modern Life Is Goodish and a new series of Yes, Prime Minister on Gold indicate it's not just after numbskulls. Dave's no longer in the pub every night recycling the same old stories. He's taking evening classes.

Back on the mountain, the crew are ready. Time to make it rain. Josh picks his way over to a nearby family to pay for an ad-hoc German lesson in a cable car. The claustrophobic result, faltering into uncomfortable silence, is superbly awkward. Greg swoops off down the groomed slope to pay fellow skiers to tell him jokes. A crew member – hoisting a camera as cumbersome as a foal – follows. With no free hands for ski-poles, he's simply balanced on slats, hurtling at a frictionless 50mph. It's undeniably manly.

'Men won't watch "female" channels like Really but Dave's almost evenly split. Women are equally drawn in by comedy and will watch a male-branded channel. So it makes sense to brand male'

[wasabi]

My Sky satellite package includes the channel Dave.
Top Gear repeat channel it is.

[Chittychangchang]

Kid's fav channel! Top Gear and storage hunter's.
Storage hunter's inspired the oldest to start selling old toy's on ebay.
This time next year...

[david44]

Kid's fav channel! Top Gear and storage hunter's.
Storage hunter's inspired the oldest to start selling old toy's on ebay.
This time next year...

toyboys?

[Bogon]

Dave Ja Vu.

Whoever thought of that name for a channel should be knighted and sit on the Iron Throne.

I might even send a raven later on to suggest such a motion.

[david44]

Doing bird,some branches in a flap

Any possible solutions to the Mad Hatter's conundrum: Why is a raven like a writing-desk? | Notes and Queries | guardian.co.uk

[Bogon]

^ Picasso with words.

[wasabi]

[somtamslap]

Don't really watch Dave. BBC3 and Sky Gold tend to float my boat. Oh, and Asian Milf Damages Kunt with frozen Bratwurst also piques my interest.

[chassamui]

^Me too. No idea why anyone would freeze bratwurst.

[patsycat]

Tomorrow, i moved a meet up with a friend from 11.30 till one because i need to get my i am not a big fat, badly dressed, swearing person hour of Jeremy Kyle moment.

I did stroke a swan.

[Fluke]

The digital channel is watched by 27m people a month,'

Which is less than 1 million people a day .
About 40 000 people are watching at any given hour .

[david44]

or 400 per second if they are all different and flick off

[chassamui]

About 40 000 people are watching at any given hour

That's still more than you get at a Premier league match any weekend.

[Fluke]

About 40 000 people are watching at any given hour

That's still more than you get at a Premier league match any weekend.

It isnt .

[luckyjim]

Reception[edit]
Within just one month of its launch, Dave had become the tenth largest television channel in the UK. The broadcaster puts daily averages at around 3 million viewers, although, much of the growth may be attributed to its presence on Freeview; nonetheless, it is performing significantly better in pay TV homes than UKTV G2 ever did. Over the month since its launch, Dave averaged a 1.32% share in multichannel homes and a 3.2% share in the 16-34 male demographic.[16]

Dave's positive reception is proven by an attraction of 4 million viewers throughout 18 November 2007 for its coverage of "Car of the Year", pushing it to second place in multichannel behind ITV2.[16]

Some of Dave's more popular shows, such as Mock The Week, Top Gear and Have I Got News For You, often, self-mockingly reference the channel with phrases such as "...happened last week. Unless you're watching the repeat on Dave in which case it happened 3 years ago."

The shows with the highest ratings are Mock the Week (over 420,000 viewers), Jo Brand's Big Splash (417,000) QI (over 400,000), Top Gear (350,000) and Dragons' Den (about 300,000).

The first episode of Red Dwarf: Back to Earth attracted 2,060,000 viewers on the first viewing,[17] though over 4 million viewed the episode at some point over its debut weekend.[7] The highest rating original commission before this had been Red Bull X-Fighters (about 185,000).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_(TV_channel)

[david44]

oh dear.....

[Loy Toy]

David lets all rise.

[david44]

Rising they couldn't bea rsed to get out of the hammock for free bj by socal

[david44]

The Man From The Daily Mail - The Man From R.T.E. Lyrics And Guitar Chords.
The original song '' The Man From The Daily Mail'' was written around 1920 and the writer is unknown. The song gives his account of Ireland at the time. The other version by Fintan Valley which uses the same tune is about when R.T.E reporters arrived in Ballinamore to do a story about the missing race horse ''Shergar'' for the Today Tonight programme. The horse was kidnapped by I.R.A and which was owned by the Aga Khan. No ransom was ever paid and the horse was never found. The video is by The Irish Brigade who changes some words of the original song.



[D]Leitrim is a very funny place, sir, a [G]strange and troubled [D]land.
All[D] the boys are in the IRA, sir, all the [G]women in Cumann na [A]mBan.
Every [D]tractor has a Nicky Kelly sticker, dis[G]played for all to [D]see.
Sure it was no [G]wonder that the Gardaí made a [D]blunder,'
Says your man from[A] RT[D]E.

CHORUS:
'[D]Every bird, upon my word, is singing, "I'm a [Bm]rebel," sir up in Mohill sir,
Every [D]hen is laying hand grenades, I do [A]declare, sir, in Droma[D]hair, sir.
Every [G]crock of a Leitrim [D]cock is [G]longing to be[D] free.
Even [G]sheep are ad[D]visin' there'll [G]be another [A]rising'.
Says your man from[A] RT[D]E.

'Today Tonight went to Ballinamore, sir, they were briefed by the Gardaí.
On a video they showed to me the Provies 'ating curry and drinkin' tea.
They were all wearin' Russian balaclavas, each carried an RPG.
British scalps around the tummy, pockets full of stolen money'.
Says your man from RTE.
Chorus:

Leitrim is seething with sedition, it's Sinn Fein through and through.
All the task force have joined the local unit, the post office is the GHQ.
They've a racetrack underground for training Shergar, "no commint" they say to me.
Subversion here is bubblin', oh please take me back to Dublin,
Says your man from RTE.

[Drainpipe]

I did stroke a swan.

Is that a metaphor, or really?

[chassamui]

It isnt .

Oh yes it is.

[chassamui]

The average attendance at premier league matches this season was 36,657.
Source:FA Premier League 2013/2014 Home Average Attendance

[david44]

but he's not citing average morons like us only the 'special ones"

I think we are drifting in he said she said numbers distraction

I'm sure an educated ajarn or an Indonesian missing link will be along to wise us up.

P.S. I trust your avatar is not dietary related, in a land f plaa ra and abutt burning chillis it woukd be perveers to hold back?

If I ever have trouble a quick read of theTV mods corpses and smegs exes knocks the shit out of me

[Chittychangchang]

Kid's fav channel! Top Gear and storage hunter's.
Storage hunter's inspired the oldest to start selling old toy's on ebay.
This time next year...

toyboys?

What kind of reply is that?

Could you please explain it to me!

Or maybe someone else could?

CCC