Over on DW forum , a poster has referred to somebody they know who works in the tv industry informing them of interesting speculation about the broadcast of season 5. They are suggesting Moff and the beeb are looking to split it into 7 episodes starting in February till March or April. Then the remaing 6 episodes in October to November , with the potential of the xmas special becoming the season finale.
Possible reasons suggested have been that this avoids clashes with the football world cup fixtures being shown next summer. Also that it gives the beeb two lots of launches for DW a year.
The poster does say their informant is somebody who works in advertising revenue for ITV though!. If there's any truth in it , then I can see benefits and disadvantages. The xmas special as a season finale would create a build up of great excitement. Not sure if it would be fair to Matt and Karen either , just as the public would be getting used to them , we wouldn't have a new story for six months.

They had almost exactly the same rumour a few years ago.

I'll believe it when I see it!

It makes no sense to split up so small a series. If it was 20+ episodes then I can understand it...

The main reason they would do this is the lull in ratings that usually happens mid-season, which is never good news for a show as big and expensive as Who. We've seen some of the best ever episodes, like The Impossible Planet, get crap ratings because of the good weather and everything. If they have 6 or 7 episodes starting at Easter Saturday that would be pretty good.

The problem with having the Christmas special as the season finale would be the DVD release. I think we would all want the full season released BEFORE Christmas, yes?

why is it the whole bloody world stops for football?

It's not gonna' happen.

One word: X-FACTOR.

Given that BBC isn't a commercial station, I don't think that is anywhere near as much of an issue as it would be for any station which relies on advertising revenue.

If football's gonna get in the way, they'll just start the series earlier. Anyway, what are they going to do about Merlin series 3 and Robin Hood series 4, which should also be on in that timeslot in 2010? (I know we haven't had Merlin series 2 yet, that's this autumn) No room to totally avoid the footy by the looks of things, the three shows together have a combined 39 episodes. That only leaves 13 spare weeks, two of which are lost to Christmas and Eurovision.

Don't we have this same crap rumour every year?

Wake me up when someone comes up with something more interesting.

DW gets higher ratings at the time of year it's shown than anything else the BBC puts in that slot. Hell it gets higher ratings than just about everything they show on a Saturday at ANY time of the year.

True. Robin Hood is doing as well as it normally does, but Doctor Who does get better ratings, as Planet of the Dead (which was back to back with Robin Hood) proved.

Robin Hood's been getting hammered in the ratings in a way that's usually reserved for mid-week ITV dramas. It's not gonna reach a fourth season.

To avoid the Football World Cup they would have to start series 5 on 13th March. This does seem a little early.

Having said that why would the BBC worry about on the night viewing figures. They don’t have to worry about advertising revenues.

So what they need to worry about is the viewing figures that include other showings (BBC 3), other platforms (iPlayer) and people who record the episode and watch it later.

Anyway looking at the timings of the group matches (allowing for lead in time and injury time) BST 12.150pm-2.30pm, 2.45pm-5pm & 7.15pm-9.30pm.

The time between the 2nd match of the day and the last match of the day gives time to show Doctor Who. Possibly a little earlier than ideal but 6.30pm start for Doctor Who is within the normal range that the BBC have shown it in the past.

Also if they do have to show it at a time that another match is on as long as it does not Clash with an England match that should not be a major problem.

So that means that they could start Doctor Who on 27th of March. This is only one week before Easter which is not far from its normal start time. Of course there is always Eurovision to take account of but as that is in Norway next year it may be possible to show Doctor Who before Eurovision.

Eurovision always starts at 8pm GMT regardless of the country it is on in, so not really an issue.

and the fact that Robin Hood has lost the plot!

Well apart from the fact that both series 3 and 4 took a weeks break the week Eurovision was on.

As did Robin Hood this year.

Hammered in the ratings? Only because of the super-popular Britain's Got Talent, which got bigger ratings than even X Factor does. It's as good as the BBC were expecting, you're going by percentage of available audience, not the actual viewing figures.

If I remember correctly Tom Baker's first season was slightly shorter than the norm in order to allow the production team to do a phased cutover to a September/March broadcast schedule rather than the January/June which had been the norm during Pertwee's era - could be they are planning something similar in a way which would avoid the show being off air from July 2010 to September 2011.

Alternatively it might be a palliative measure to allow the new production team to bed in and get to grips with the demands of the show without the pressure of needing all 13 shows to be ready for next spring/summer.

Tell me about it. It's bloody ridiculous.
On this subject it would mean that we would get one less who episode a year as the xmas special would still be part of the series. This is a bad idea; the long wait is stupid. If they try to do even a slight storyark this will make it very hard to follow.

Send the Doctor to the world cup for a few episodes. I'm still waiting for him to go to the actual Olympics in 2012 and bump into Ten there.

Good point! LOL! Matt Smith could revisit the events of episode 2.11, where he visited the 2012 Olympics, and bump into David Tennant's Doctor. As it would be in his third series, it would be long enough after Tennant's departure. There would be a continuity problem though - at the time of filming, the now infamous logo hadn't been revealed, so the episode used the LONDON 2012 bid logo. Of course in 2012, the real, much hated logo would be used. Also, the "monster" was actually a possessed child in that episode - she'll be six years older by then.

No I'm not.

Of the first eight episodes of Robin Hood (the only ones for which the final figures have been published), only one episode (Lost in Translation) was up against Britain's Got Talent. Ironically, that was RH's second highest figure for the season!

Here's the final figures to date:
1) 6.20m
2) 4.63m
3) 5.85m (against BGT)
4) 4.26m
5) 4.08m
6) < 4.10m
7) < 4.13m
8) < 3.84m

Episodes 6 to 8 failed to get into BBC One's top-thirty for the week so their final figures are somewhere below those shown above. And I seem to remember reading that the overnights for last week's episode were below 2m...

A February start wouldn't help. The Six Nations Champisionship runs from February to March. It gets BBC1 coverage with some games played after 5pm.

Accoring the fixture list Saturday March 20 has games kicking off at 5pm and 7.45, so no room for Who there.

A six week run from Feb 6 to March 13 might just work. At least we wouldn't get any more 6.20 transmissions.

if the BBC are worried about falling ratings over the summer, then wouldn't it be a better move to move the whole season to an autumn timeslot rather than splitting the season in 2.

My thoughts exactly.

Another word: MERLIN


Actually the main reason it lost viewers was because of its scheduling, even though it got a higher share it got less viewers than that awful Barrowman (though I probably shouldn't admit to that on this thread)

Yeah, don't diss the Captain. LOL! You're right, they can't put Merlin and Doctor Who on together, not unless they do it back to back like they did with Planet of the Dead and Robin Hood. But one or both of them would definitely clash with X-Factor if they did that.