David is a good actor I think. He was cheeky and sarcastic. Matt Smith is a terrible actor and pretty childish much of the time.

If im at home on xmas day I will have to go over to ITV1 for Emmerdale at 6:00pm which is something I've not done since 2006

I was summing up the general sentiment on this thread though - "EE is all doom and gloom...", whereas ITV1 has a heartwarming festive murder on Emmerdale, and that's ok...

Final rating for Doctor Who: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe was 10.77 million. All Star Family Fortunes had 6.36 million final rating. Overnight ratings for Doctor Who do not matter.

(Unless it beats The X Factor overnight on 23/11/13. In which case they will, purely because it'll be funny. )

oh right lol and don't forget a man being beaten to a pulp by his girlfriend in that happy,fluffy northern soap Corrie

Someone on either this thread or the Christmas TV thread (it's so easy to get those two mixed up at the moment) that BBC1 used to show Miss Marple dramas on Christmas Day and they have murders in them.

And ITV have shown Morse and Frost on Christmas Days past and they had murders in them.

And characters have a habit of dying in Dr Who as well. It was Kylie Minogue and Geoffery Palmer one year.

Come to think of it, a squelchy birth on Call The Midwife could come as a welcome relief.

Do you know that's going to happen for definite on Christmas Day? Cos I can well imagine it will.

But then, surely Trevor must have giving Little Mo a Christmas Day beating in Eastenders dim and distant past.

I'd put money on it. I won't dispute that it's a good storyline (or Not) but EastEnders (nor it's fans) have ever said that it was light hearted and Happy

Now that's the Gritty EastEnders that I (and Many others) want back

In the overnights it got 8.9m down 3m/3.5m on the 2007/08 overnights and that was in the easiest slot of the day against FF and in a slot later than 2008-10.
The final figures failed to make up for the big fall on previous specials.

Given the amount of attention Christmas ratings get in the newspapers, I think they are very important on that day particularly. It would make for very bad publicity if it was beaten by Emmerdale given how it used to wallop it on the day.
Also the overnights show what people actually watched on Christmas Day rather than what they watched on catch up a few days later.

It'll be interesting to see how DW fares this year especially with the BBC promotion machine firmly switched to Call the midwife.It's about time DW stood on its own two feet imo.

Too right, Matt Smith is the latterday Sylvester Mc Coy, he's stopped me watching what was my favourite show when DT was the Doctor. He's too wacky and immature.

Anyone any predictions how the following week will go ratings wise, some of the schedule is as wishy washy as we've seen for a while. eg 'Madeley meets Squatters' and 'War on Britain's Roads'.

Many of these could be anywhere from 2 to 6m

It's the run up to Christmas, IAC has finished and TXF and SCD are due to finish soon.

SCD finishes 3 days before Christmas Day but it was kind of ITV to finish X Factor a week early to let Sports Personality have the Sunday night slot to itsself on December 16th.


I liked David Tenant as the Doctor but I much prefer Matt Smith. I see Matt as being a bit like Patrick Troughton who I liked as the Doctor even though I've only seen him in clips. Although I believe that Troughton's reign as the Doctor didn't do as well in the ratings as William Hartnell's did.

I'll just be happy to see things return to normal. These past 2 or 3 weeks have not been kind to other commercial channels. It's made for boring ratings.

Anywhere from 2m to 6m = exciting ratings that are interesting to follow
A loyal 9m or so every night = deathly dull, and taking up too much of the pie for it to be interesting how the remainder is divided

What do you mean 'dull' - haven't you been interested in the impending doom of EastEnders and The X Factor which has taken over the thread? The 9m ratings have been dismissed with a wave of a hand.

With The X Factor declining, I was wondering could ITV revive Survivor or maybe create a show like 'The Murder Game' which was shown on Saturday nights on BBC1 for one series in the early noughties. One of these could become the next big entertainment hit?

The Murder Game was a great show, involving contestants who played detective and they had a load of actors as suspects and each week a suspect and detective would be eliminated from the game, until one detective correctly guessed the killer and walked away with a cash prize. I don't think The Murder Game did too well in the ratings though, as it only lasted one series and was pushed back later and later on Saturday nights as the weeks went on. But maybe ITV should experiment with a show like this, and give it a try? Or revive Survivor with members of the public. Or maybe create a format that is a cross between both shows?

Or, could BBC1's 1989 Christmas train be a copy of ITV's 1984 Christmas Train and that in 2012 ITV are just revamping their own creation?

Matt is more wacky and immature than David? you clearly haven't been watching. Matt habitually delivers a much more nuanced and varied performance than David ever did, though I personally think that both work really well in the role and look forward to inevitably seeing them act opposite each other next year.

And I'm sure it'll do better than last year's in the ratings - primarily because of the introduction of the new companion, but also because series 7 did better in the ratings than the latter part of series 6. It's also worth remembering that Doctor Who beat Downton Abbey in the overnights last year, so it was hardly a failure.

Wonder what the Royal Variety Performance will get tomorrow night.

Overnight for last year was 6.76m (29.2%) + 252k (1.2%) on +1 but this was on a Wednesday.

There were rumours they were going to air a civilian version of I'm A Celebrity... a few years ago but it never happened.

Lol. It wouldn't be The Ratings Thread if every ratings decline involving the big shows wasn't some sort of crisis. However, we are right to flag up the problems that both programmes face as clearly neither of the two are in a good place right now and they are obviously important to their respective channels. I think though the prognosis for each is slightly different.

You'd fancy EastEnders to have a good chance of bouncing back with Christmas not far away, historically a fruitful time of year for the show, and the typically strong set of programmes the BBC plans to schedule around EastEnders during this period supports this theory also, but they need to deliver the goods onscreen in order to keep viewers around into the New Year and whether they are up to that job remains to be seen. The X Factor meanwhile is simply a programme past its peak, there really is little more to say about it other than that. We've seen all there is to see from it, they've played all available cards and it's just ran out of gas. The decline will surely slow next series, but I don't honestly see a way back for it now.

I find it strange how there's so much emphasis on how X Factor could get viewers back, which seems unlikely, and so little thought given to how ITV could replace it in the long-term. A mere rebranding of X Factor which has been suggested a few times would be uninspired compared to something genuinely fresh and of a big scale. The situation with EastEnders looks more straightforward and with better writing the show can turn its fortunes around. Whilst the days of rivalling Corrie for number one soap are probably over, they can still build some distance between themselves and Emmerdale.

Interestingly, wasn't it originally scheduled for 19:30 to 22:05? Noticed it is now scheduled to finish at 22:15, so nearly three hours long.

Ah the Murder Game -- the Beeb's sophisticated answer to Cluedo.

Survivor was great. But it was the right show at the wrong time for ITV.

I agree it'll rate well at Xmas.

I wouldn't describe Cora as a warm character. Cold as a witch's tit, yes. Warm, no.

The Derek character is probably the show's biggest problem of 2012: badly conceived, badly acted. To be fair, no writer could do much with Derek.

Yeh that was a good show. It won't be back for ITV, certainly whilst they have I'm A Celebrity. Maybe another channel could have a try as it's a franchise that hasn't reached its full potential in the UK.

Lots of other territories have their own version, and it's had something like 26 seasons in the US !

I must like a witch Tit then

I think I must be the only one that likes Derek. I think his character is fantastic and I've liked him since day one. Annoyed they are killing him off