External factors CANNOT be ignored. Which part of this don't you understand? It's a simple truth that any kind of statistic is only of worth if taken in the right context.
In the early Eighties a television showing of Jaws scored 23 million viewers on Terrestial television. No film has ever since come close to such a figure and according to BARB no film showing on TV has made it into the top ten programs for any given year since 1989 (Crocodile Dundee if you were wondering).
Now based on your logic all we have to do is look at those facts and say well 'People don't like movies as much as they used to'. Because that's what a simplistic look at the data would suggest. Of course we all know this is nonsense. Movies are as popular if not more than ever. The reason for this change in viewer numbers? Where do you start? The advent of home video/more people buying VCRs/the local video shop boom/rises in pirating of films on video/the arrival of satellite and cable etc etc. All these are exactly the kind of 'external factors' you seem keen to ignore but are in fact vital in understanding why and how the change occurred.
Viewing figures are dipping across all channels even effecting some of the previous untouchable shows. You cannot ignore the fact that we now have Netflix/Hulu/Apple TV/Amazon Prime/Xbox Video/Numerous on demand services/the ability to record and store hour upon hour indefinitely on a hard drive/I-player/increased internet speeds/rise in illegal downloading/Tablets/multi-room TV. These are things that are changing the face of tV forever. Fact. You ignore them if you wish. Moffat and the BBC can't and haven't.
Game of Thrones loses about 1 million viewers on offcial channels to illegal streaming/download. I suppose you think this is irrelevant as well?
As I said in my previous post, there I wouldn't say there was any big dramatic change in viewing habits between series 6,7, and 8, given that throughout those time we had iplayer, downloads, streaming etc whilst all those series were airing yet the drop is still uniform year after year.
The problem is with the same sample size that BARB use the margin for error means we cannot say whether the ratings have gone up or down. The viewing figures are only approximations and cannot be taken as fact. The viewing figures have been between 7-8 million for all series and that is as far as we can take it.
Commercial networks are more interested in the demographic of the viewer as much as the numbers. I did read that programmes like Heartbeat were less valuable than other programmes with smaller ratings as the demographics were wrong.
As I said in my previous post, there I wouldn't say there was any big dramatic change in viewing habits between series 6,7, and 8, given that throughout those time we had iplayer, downloads, streaming etc whilst all those series were airing yet the drop is still uniform year after year.
Online figures are not included in those numbers. You'll have to go back through the iPlayer Performance Packs for that. But that's what's going to start happening this September. Hence why you wouldn't see a change in the BARB numbers... well, actually you're more likely to see a drop, aren't you?
Time-shifted viewing has doubled since 2010, though, and It all adds up. Series 7a, for example: 9.65m, 8.64m, 9.22m, 8.68m, 8.92m
As I said in my previous post, there I wouldn't say there was any big dramatic change in viewing habits between series 6,7, and 8, given that throughout those time we had iplayer, downloads, streaming etc whilst all those series were airing yet the drop is still uniform year after year.
Thanks to CD93 who sent me a whole bundle of published figures for iPlayer when I asked him about them. Unfortunately I'm not clever enough to draw averages and haven't had time to go through the data completely yet (and there's a few incomplete months anyway) but just as an example here are the officially published iPlayer figures for each of the series opening episodes, from series 5-8:
Series 5 - Episode 1 (April 2010): 1,649,000
Series 6 - Episode 1 (April 2011): 1,379,000
Series 7 - Episode 1: (September 2012): 2,190,000
Series 8 - Episode 1 (August 2014): 2,059,000
In all instances the opening episodes were the most requested program on iPlayer for those months and beat other heavyweight programmes such as EastEnders, The Great British Bake Off, Top Gear etc
Online figures are not included in those numbers. That's what's going to start happening this September. Hence why you wouldn't see a change in the BARB numbers... well, actually you're more likely to see a drop, aren't you?
Time-shifted viewing has doubled since 2010. It all adds up. Series 7a, for example:
9.65m, 8.64m, 9.22m, 8.68m, 8.92m
I wasn't aware that I player viewing's weren't taken into account so it will be interesting in a few years (when the is a few series worth of 'new' data) to see exactly where things lie. Contrary to what some may have got the impression of, I do actually want the figures to be good of course, what fan of the show wouldn't. I had just previously been stating concern based on the figures you posted which seemed to suggest otherwise.
I wasn't aware that I player viewing's weren't taken into account so it will be interesting in a few years (when the is a few series worth of 'new' data) to see exactly where things lie. Contrary to what some may have got the impression of, I do actually want the figures to be good of course, what fan of the show wouldn't. I had just previously been stating concern based on the figures you posted which seemed to suggest otherwise.
Unless iPlayer performance suddenly takes a dive, based off Series 8, we can probably expect anywhere around a 1.3-2m boost from one episode to another. As cylon put it in The Ratings Thread:
Sorry for the delay on this, but for those interested:
28 Day consolidation:
Deep Breath: 9.529m (7 day consolidated: 9.169m)
Into the Dalek: 7.672m (7 day consolidated: 7.286m)
Robot of Sherwood: 7.707 (7 Day consolidated: 7.277m)
Listen: 7.426m (7 Day consolidated: 7.011m)
Time Heist: 7.378m (7 Day consolidated: 6.993m)
The Caretaker: 7.175m (7 Day consolidation: 6.820m)
Kill The Moon: 7.248m (7 Day consolidation: 6.914m)
Mummy on the Orient Express: 7.475m (7 Day consolidation: 7.111m)
Flatline: 7.014m (7 Day consolidation: 6.712m)
In the Forest of the Night: 7.295m (7 Day consolidation: 6.921m)
Dark Water: 7.701m (7 Day consolidation: 7.340m)
Death in Heaven: 7.846m (7 Day consolidation: 7.600m)
You actually start to pull back the sort of numbers which we see lost between series (and then some, almost an extra 500k on Ep3?) As DBB said, it will be interesting to look back on all this stuff after a few years of consolidation. BARB is slowly but surely catching up.
BTW I am happy to post the complete set of iPlayer figures as sent to me by CD93. There's quite a lot to pick through and if I'm honest it doesn't all mean that much to me as I'm no statistician but, regardless of a persons view of Moffat and/or RTD it's nice to see Doctor Who in pole position month after month. In the world of iPlayer Doctor Who really does rule! It's also interesting to see what other programmes do well on there, for example:
In the same month that Day of the Doctor received a whopping 2,813,000 requests, Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents Episode 1 came in at third place with 887,000 requests.
In the same month that episode 1 of series 7 received 2,190,000 requests, Citizen Khan, episode 2 came 2nd with 1,032,000 requests.
No show sustains the status of phenomenon for ever. No show ever has or ever will. That's the nature of a phenomenon. At the peak of interest in S4 they were running items on the news previewing the finale and discussing the cliffhanger. Because it was at that time a novelty. Tennant was the first truly beloved Doctor for the mainstream audience since arguably the days of Tom Baker. He brought on millions of viewers who hadn't even watched before so for them this was a brand new thing. A possible regeneration?!?!! Ecclestones wasn't even close to the same level for numerous reasons. So the hype machine kicked in.
It was 'watercooler' TV in the same way Dallas was with 'Who shot JR?' in the eighties or Big Brother at its peak in 2002/3 or The Simpson's in the early nineties when not only was it dominating the TV landscape but it had songs topping the charts and suoermarkets full of its food and toy stores crammed full of its merchandise.
That level of fevered interest never lasts. The flame burns out entirely in most cases. What was new becomes old and is replaced. What Moffat has done since the almost ludicrous saturation point of 2009 is consolidate the show as an important part of the BBCs output. On top of that he has increased its popularity overseas (this is a fact btw so don't bother trying to argue it) and within the whole 'geek' fandom Doctor Who is still massive. To have done this while only losing a small proportion of viewers is impressive. To have done this while the entire viewing habits of the World have been forever changed so quickly is nothing short of a miracle. I'm afraid the fact your Granny doesn't like it anymore or you're not seeing enough toys on the high street means nothing in light of this.
You say you don't want it to fail? Sorry but it sounds like you do because you're either deliberately ignoring facts and truth about the changes in how we consume TV/film about which there are numerous articles and statistics...actual cold hard facts..or you really don't know what you're talking about.
As I said before look at the viewing figures across the board and how they've changed over the years and then notice the sharp change in the last five. No one's making excuses. We don't need to. Even without that stuff the facts are DW is easily holding its own and its a prestige show. It won't last forever. It'll be rested again. But that wouldve happened whoever is in charge. And a lot sooner had RTD stayed on.
Time-shifted viewing has doubled since 2010, though, and It all adds up. Series 7a, for example: 9.65m, 8.64m, 9.22m, 8.68m, 8.92m
Took Deep Breath to 10.76m.
Where did you get those figures from and why are they so much lower than everywhere else? Shouldn't the Deep Breath figure alone be closer to 11.3m going by the figures quoted above?
Where did you get those figures from and why are they so much lower than everywhere else? Shouldn't the Deep Breath figure alone be closer to 11.3m going by the figures quoted above?
They're the Live+7 figures... I don't know where you would find higher figures?
As far as I can tell, those figures were just made up by someone on GallifreyBase. They don't seem to exist for anything other than Doctor Who and wildly misrepresent the iPlayer statistics published by the BBC media centre.
As far as I can tell, those figures were just made up by someone on GallifreyBase. They don't seem to exist for anything other than Doctor Who and wildly misrepresent the iPlayer statistics published by the BBC.
Live +7 data is calculated by the BBC... the Series 8 numbers are here.
What is Live+7?
Live+7 is a measurement of all viewing in the seven days following first broadcast. It is the BBC's response to how to measure TV viewing in the new media landscape. In the past, a programme was broadcast once, at a set time, and people either watched it there and then or not at all. The overnight audience figure the next day reflected the whole story.
Now audiences can watch a programme live as it is first broadcast, record or bookmark it to watch an hour, day or week later, watch a scheduled repeat on another channel, watch it on demand on the BBC iPlayer – or a combination of all these. The BBC has therefore combined its audience data collection sources to tackle the measurement problem this created.
I think they must have trialled it in 2011 and later abandoned it, otherwise they would have actually referenced them in press releases. I found one article on a section of the site that has since been abandoned.
I think they must have trialled it in 2011 and later abandoned it, otherwise they would have actually referenced them in press releases. I found one article on a section of the site that has since been abandoned.
See above edits
ETA: Of course after refreshing the Broadcast link I realized it was a paywall. It was some info on BBC ratings published this year - with words from Danny Cohen.
Quite a few British 'genre' programmes have gone by the by in the last 10 years! Can't even remember the name of that one with Phillip Glenister playing an American...(ETA 'Demons'. GIYF)
(Cut to Capaldi's Doctor, shades on, performing a guitar-heavy cover version of 'I'm Still Standing'...)
I like some things about Moffat. He started off so well with the 5th Series. However, (see the above post), he quickly fell into the M. Night Shamalyn trap of trying to be too clever.
I like the fact that he has some neat ideas. However, generally the execution is horrible.
In my humble opinion, for everything, of course, he tends to do his stories and plots all "timey-wimey" where nothing makes sense in the end and there are always more questions than answers. He does these great setups and then has horrible letdowns.
In my humble opinion, many of the worst episodes ever have been under his stewardship; The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe., The Rings of Akhatan, The Wedding of River Song and the vast majority of Series 8.
I also can't stand the fact that he makes giant shifts in Doctor Who lore/canon which make no sense. For example: Two humans have sex in the Tardis and viola, a Timelord emerges. Really? (Don't worry about the extinction of the Timelords, just have an orgy in the Tardis and we will have a whole new race of them in nine months!) A Timelord can change genders (which had never been mentioned in the 50 year history of the show prior to Moffat at the helm). Really? A single leaf can change the universe in more ways than The Doctor has done throughout his entire 2,000 history of saving a nearly infinite number of civilizations. Really? (Forget the Timelords and The Doctor, we just need more leaves!)
In summary, Moffat comes up with some cool ideas, but without a hand to guide him, he seems to fall prey to the style over substance problem very frequently. He also likes to arrive at what he thinks are decent endings with absolute rubbish in the middle. And sometimes, his episodes (the Series 8 two-part finale included) are just complete rubbish with so many questions left hanging.
He seems to be a person who wants to build a house who has all of the materials but not the know-how. He thinks that if he throws it all together in a haphazard way, that the house will simply work because it is supposed to work. And, while it may look decent from a glance from the outside, the inside doesn't work at all; not the plumbing, the electricity nor the structure. It is all style over substance and flash over function.
I hope that this makes sense and, of course, it is all in my humble opinion.
Makes perfect sense, and in my opinion* which is not remotely humble but correct in all particulars, as well as very important, you're right in all your criticisms. Especially in saying The Doctor in Narnia is the worst thing ever. But you missed out the one about the Moon being an egg, which I find particularly unforgivable.
I disagree about series 5, I thought it was dull. I also hated the fact that River was Amy and Rory's daughter. The loss of the baby was very badly dealt with.
(I hope you're still around to read this, and haven't stomped off for good. I couldn't reply earlier for various reasons).
*How come it's only the Moffat critics who have to say imo? His advocates are not stating opinion, but fact, apparently.
Quite a few British 'genre' programmes have gone by the by in the last 10 years! Can't even remember the name of that one with Phillip Glenister playing an American...(ETA 'Demons'. GIYF)
(Cut to Capaldi's Doctor, shades on, performing a guitar-heavy cover version of 'I'm Still Standing'...)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I always start watching these fantasy things with such hope and enthusiasm, only to be bitterly disappointed yet again. I lasted one episode for Atlantis. Perhaps two for Demons. Merlin was apparently good, but I couldn't watch it as I'm a Merlin purist and it bore no resemblance to the Merlin myths.
A special mention for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which was wonderful, fantastic, marvellous. A brilliant adaptation.
Don't expect knock-out ratings this year, either. Although there'll be plenty of automatic "That'll do nicely" posts when the overnights for the first episode come in. And even the 4m episodes.
And to think of the abuse I got in this and (more) on so many other threads on this same forum by the same old people (some of whom got bans along the way for comments to others about basements and grandmothers).
And to think of the abuse I got in this and (more) on so many other threads on this same forum by the same old people (some of whom got bans along the way for comments to others about basements and grandmothers).
And jokes about "Emergency Temporal Repeats"... ;-)
And jokes about "Emergency Temporal Repeats"... ;-)
I don't remember ever being banned about that? Or it being a knee-jerk decision at the Eleventh Hour. Yet that's what you've just alleged, so do enlighten me?
Or are you saying someone else here was banned by the mods for using the phrase, "Emergency Temporal Repeats"...
And do you have any reply to the main part of my post, outside of the brackets? Or your own joke about the waters of Mars being discovered that day?
I don't remember ever being banned about that? Or it being a knee-jerk decision at the Eleventh Hour. Yet that's what you've just alleged, so do enlighten me?
Or are you saying someone else here was banned by the mods for using the phrase, "Emergency Temporal Repeats"...
And do you have any reply to the main part of my post, outside of the brackets? Or your own joke about the waters of Mars being discovered that day?
I do not have a reply to any part of your above post - perhaps Kapellmeister can correct himself presently - but I was just wondering where you stand on corrugated aluminum?
Comments
As I said in my previous post, there I wouldn't say there was any big dramatic change in viewing habits between series 6,7, and 8, given that throughout those time we had iplayer, downloads, streaming etc whilst all those series were airing yet the drop is still uniform year after year.
Commercial networks are more interested in the demographic of the viewer as much as the numbers. I did read that programmes like Heartbeat were less valuable than other programmes with smaller ratings as the demographics were wrong.
Online figures are not included in those numbers. You'll have to go back through the iPlayer Performance Packs for that. But that's what's going to start happening this September. Hence why you wouldn't see a change in the BARB numbers... well, actually you're more likely to see a drop, aren't you?
Time-shifted viewing has doubled since 2010, though, and It all adds up. Series 7a, for example: 9.65m, 8.64m, 9.22m, 8.68m, 8.92m
Took Deep Breath to 10.76m.
Thanks to CD93 who sent me a whole bundle of published figures for iPlayer when I asked him about them. Unfortunately I'm not clever enough to draw averages and haven't had time to go through the data completely yet (and there's a few incomplete months anyway) but just as an example here are the officially published iPlayer figures for each of the series opening episodes, from series 5-8:
In all instances the opening episodes were the most requested program on iPlayer for those months and beat other heavyweight programmes such as EastEnders, The Great British Bake Off, Top Gear etc
Unless iPlayer performance suddenly takes a dive, based off Series 8, we can probably expect anywhere around a 1.3-2m boost from one episode to another. As cylon put it in The Ratings Thread:
We'll see how it gets reported / presented soon enough. Just in time for Series 9.
Both
The on-demand range has been increased up to 28 days now, too. Yog kindly kept us up to speed with any increases that brought, last series:
You actually start to pull back the sort of numbers which we see lost between series (and then some, almost an extra 500k on Ep3?) As DBB said, it will be interesting to look back on all this stuff after a few years of consolidation. BARB is slowly but surely catching up.
In the same month that Day of the Doctor received a whopping 2,813,000 requests, Snow, Sex and Suspicious Parents Episode 1 came in at third place with 887,000 requests.
In the same month that episode 1 of series 7 received 2,190,000 requests, Citizen Khan, episode 2 came 2nd with 1,032,000 requests.
Where did you get those figures from and why are they so much lower than everywhere else? Shouldn't the Deep Breath figure alone be closer to 11.3m going by the figures quoted above?
They're the Live+7 figures.
Where are they higher..?
As far as I can tell, those figures were just made up by someone on GallifreyBase. They don't seem to exist for anything other than Doctor Who and wildly misrepresent the iPlayer statistics published by the BBC media centre.
Live +7 data is calculated by the BBC... the Series 8 numbers are here.
http://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/news/bbc-beefs-up-ratings-data/5083893.article
They wheel them out when they feel like it. Not particularly regularly.
I think they must have trialled it in 2011 and later abandoned it, otherwise they would have actually referenced them in press releases. I found one article on a section of the site that has since been abandoned.
See above edits
ETA: Of course after refreshing the Broadcast link I realized it was a paywall. It was some info on BBC ratings published this year - with words from Danny Cohen.
Ahh, Atlantis. We hardly knew you.
Quite a few British 'genre' programmes have gone by the by in the last 10 years! Can't even remember the name of that one with Phillip Glenister playing an American...(ETA 'Demons'. GIYF)
(Cut to Capaldi's Doctor, shades on, performing a guitar-heavy cover version of 'I'm Still Standing'...)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Makes perfect sense, and in my opinion* which is not remotely humble but correct in all particulars, as well as very important, you're right in all your criticisms. Especially in saying The Doctor in Narnia is the worst thing ever. But you missed out the one about the Moon being an egg, which I find particularly unforgivable.
I disagree about series 5, I thought it was dull. I also hated the fact that River was Amy and Rory's daughter. The loss of the baby was very badly dealt with.
(I hope you're still around to read this, and haven't stomped off for good. I couldn't reply earlier for various reasons).
*How come it's only the Moffat critics who have to say imo? His advocates are not stating opinion, but fact, apparently.
I always start watching these fantasy things with such hope and enthusiasm, only to be bitterly disappointed yet again. I lasted one episode for Atlantis. Perhaps two for Demons. Merlin was apparently good, but I couldn't watch it as I'm a Merlin purist and it bore no resemblance to the Merlin myths.
A special mention for Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which was wonderful, fantastic, marvellous. A brilliant adaptation.
And to think of the abuse I got in this and (more) on so many other threads on this same forum by the same old people (some of whom got bans along the way for comments to others about basements and grandmothers).
And jokes about "Emergency Temporal Repeats"... ;-)
I don't remember ever being banned about that? Or it being a knee-jerk decision at the Eleventh Hour. Yet that's what you've just alleged, so do enlighten me?
Or are you saying someone else here was banned by the mods for using the phrase, "Emergency Temporal Repeats"...
And do you have any reply to the main part of my post, outside of the brackets? Or your own joke about the waters of Mars being discovered that day?
I do not have a reply to any part of your above post - perhaps Kapellmeister can correct himself presently - but I was just wondering where you stand on corrugated aluminum?