That's a disappointing rating for Doctor Who - down over a million from last week and 7 share points. It's DW's 5th lowest overnight rating since coming back in 2005. No doubt it'll timeshift a lot but still was hoping it'd have been closer to 6m. It's a shame they won't switch it around with SYTYCD, which is flopping badly and is not compatible or benefiting from DW at all. Don't Scare the Hare rated very poorly too. Relatively speaking, Who Dares Wins held up well against BGT. Casualty is still a couple of share points lower than I think it should be doing but the poor lead-in won't be helping.

Poor rating for People Do The Funniest Things, You've Been Framed holds up much better than that against Doctor Who usually. Sing if You Can low too and just shows if shows aren't worth watching, people will avoid them, even if the opposition is poor and there's a big show after it. As steady as a rock for Britain's Got Talent, given that there was barely any press coverage for it this week I think they'll be pretty pleased with that figure. I expected Life Stories to rate better than that, although going by past form it hasn't done well when politicians are on. I can see the John Prescott episode rating quite badly in a few weeks time.

Still a lot of people who haven't discovered ITV1+1 yet.

ITV are still regularly Tweeting its existence and where to find it.

Disappointing for Doctor Who. 5.4m is a good rating for the slot but the drop from last week is a little alarming. They need to move it to 7:15pm with SYTYCD before it. Don't Scare The Hare did abysmally, although Who Dares Wins did quite well against BGT. Casualty is being dragged down by the lead in. Sing If You Can is flopping badly but at least managed to narrowly win the slot. Funniest Things did terribly against Doctor Who though. I thought it would do much better than that. Great rating for BGT though considering how everything else did. I thought it would be down again but it was solid. Disappointing for Life Stories. Looks like people weren't really interested in Widdecombe's life story and just enjoyed her in Strictly. I agree with rzt that the John Prescott episode will do badly (especially as it looks like it'll be on Eurovision night). The Hoff should do well next week with the BGT connection though. Not sure how the final episode in the series with Des O'Connor will do though, but the guests overall this series haven't been as good ratings-wise as the last series.

Dr Who deserved more last night - I watched it for the first time in about a year last night and it's got me hooked again, such was the quality of the episode.

Suprised BGT only managed a tiny 0.07m bounceback after last week's low, considering both the heatwave and the school holidays are over, and with the flag waving/national good feeling you would think also giving a show like BGT a lift.

Maybe "Britain's Gone Off Talent"?

Shocking for DW but not unexpected. Not sure there's any more to be said about this scheduling insanity that hasn't been said already.

In a wedding coverage postscript I see in the papers today that ITV is facing a telling off from the Westminster Abbey authorities for airing the cartwheeling verger, in breach of an agreement that the cameras stopped rolling after the ceremony.

Naughty if true...

I think it may drop below 9 million next week. Last night was my last show it was SO DULL. A child with a snake around her neck reciting a poem probably her mum wrote isn't relly talent, alot of people seemed critical on FB and Twitter too

A snake reciting poetry?!

Wow, wished I'd tuned in now...

Was the snake called Simon?

Seriously, I wonder if cowell saw the paucity of talent on offer this series and that's why he bailed out?

But it got 10 million viewers? How can that be a disappointment? Would you like it if it was on BBC1? or would you moan about the BBC getting 10million viewers for an awful programme?

People who had things to do/people who had prior engagements.

Plus, many people were working. Only 7.7m took the day off.

I don't understand this reasoning, to be honest. You say BGT should've been up more because the school holidays are over and there was no heatwave - that's fine. But those factors also apply for other shows too and yet you contradict yourself by saying you expected DW to be down by over 1m week-on-week, which is a pretty big drop, compared to a launch overnight rating which was already relatively low by DW's standards. The average prediction for DW on the RPG was 6.2m, so it rated quite a bit lower than many expected. The share is quite important in this case - DW's rarely as low as 30.5% for any episode. The first parter last week though was quite difficult to understand which could've put off casual viewers so I can see next week's episode doing better as it's not a 2nd parter like last night, also it's 15 mins later which'll help.

Liking how Match of the Day beats SIYC and SYTYCD!
I'm just simply watching Who Dares Wins then BGT and BGMT on the +1's.

Reminds me of The Guardian sub headline a couple of weeks ago:-


Then in the second paragraph:


Then the third paragraph:


Which totally negates the first headline!!

Oh to be a journalist!!

Well Sky also showed it too, not sure if BBC did. Plus the camera's inside the Abbey were BBC ones, were they not....

Naughty on the BBC's part if true....

Sky and ITV shared additional cameras in the Abbey to supplement the BBC feed.

So up on Charles and Diana then (which I assume was around the same time). Interesting too that 22.8m watch in 18.6m households - so most were watching alone then.

Was it live across the nation or was it delayed on the West Coast?


That really puts yesterdays figures in context where ITV's coverage of the Royal Wedding was over 20% most of the day - which is even more remarkable considering the 50-60% share the BBC had.

Agree though BGT is suffering from the lack of talent this year, though the actual judging panel is working well. (IMO it is the judges which make SYTYCD unbearable to watch!)


Unless it's axed mid-series it's got a fair way to go yet, so I'd guess the most likely outcome is something like:

6.05 Doctor Who, 6.50 SYTYCD, 7.50 Lottery, 8.00 Eurovision - with the SYTYCD results on Sunday.

Although no reason really why the Lottery draws, SYTYCD results and Match of the Day couldn't be shown on BBC2. I'd have thought the Premier League might prefer a 10.30 airing on BBC2 to an 11.30 airing on BBC1.

Eurovision is on on the same day as the FA Cup Final. Unusually there is a full premier league schedule that weekend but all the games on Saturday kick off at 12.45pm to avoid the cup. So no need for Final Score at 4.30pm. So I predict a schedule of:

2.30 Final Score
3.00 Film***
4.45 News
5.05 Don't Scare The Hare
5.45 Dr Who
6.30 SYTYCD including Results
7.50 Lottery Draws
8.00 Eurovision


***or they might stick on a selection of their cheap lazy shi1tty daytime rubbish

No need to worry regarding Doctor Who being on that early. The BBC Press Office says that the SYTYCD Results show will be on Sunday at 7-8pm.

Why is such a large fall for Doctor Who not unexpected?

As you say, the heatwave is over as are the school holidays, so that would mean a higher rating surely?

On the day of the World Snooker final, former BBC commentator Ted Lowe has died aged 90.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/snooker/13253010.stm

Because last week'e episode was the series premiere which always gets more hype than every other episode apart from the finale. I stand to be corrected but I'm pretty sure the first episode of the new series always gets more viewers than episode 2.

Nearly always. In 2006, the 2nd episode rated better than the 1st episode:

2005- 9.9m (1st ep) ... 7.3m (2nd ep) ... change: -26%
2006- 8.0m... 8.9m... change: +11%
2007- 8.2m... 6.8m... change: -17%
2008- 8.4m... 8.1m... change: -4%
2010- 8.0m... 6.7m... change: -16%
2011- 6.5m... 5.4m... change: -17%

Last week's episode of Doctor Who had a consolidated rating of: 8.86m.

That's a very impressive timeshift of +2.34m (+36%). Compared to previous series opening official ratings:

2005- 10.81m
2006- 8.62m
2007- 8.71m
2008- 9.14m
2010- 10.08m
2011- 8.86m

Thanks to MattJ for the rating

So actually, more people watched last week's series opener than the 2006 and 2007 ones!

A shame about DW as last night's episode was the best for ages, but like last year when a heatwave was on, a lot of people timeshift and watch it on the i Player. However, looking at yesterday's ratings, a 7 pc share for ITV1 with This Morning Saturday is pathetic. It proves one thing, who really wants to watch highlights( if any) of a trashy daytime show that's well past its sell by date.

So the BBC were right and we were all wrong.

We put too much emphasism on the overnights. This is the 21st century. TV technolgy and TV viewing habits have changed. Still don't think it's worth propping up SYTYCD, though.