ITV has dropped Tycoon from its Tuesday, 9pm slot after a second successive week of disastrous ratings. Surprised? Me neither. In fact, in a previous article about this, I signed off with "ITV? P45 is in the post."

The business-based reality show which is fronted and produced by Peter Jones (and is in no way a rip off of the hit BBC show The Apprentice) - debuted last week to 2 million viewers but lost 100,000 on its latest outing last night. The figures are significantly down on ITV1's year-to-date slot average of 4.5 million. The series will return on Monday, July 9 as a 30-minute format for the 10pm slot. An unconfirmed 90-minute drama will now air next Tuesday, July 3.

"Tycoon has been moved into a new slot," confirmed a spokeswoman. "ITV1 has performed very strongly so far in 2007, with some of our best results for three years, and we have taken a commercial decision to protect that performance. Happily we have been able to return the series to a new slot." Tycoon replaces the reality-chat hybrid 24 Hours With..., which will now play out "in the future", the spokeswoman added. [Mof Gimmers]