excellent ratings

average of 8.4 million viewers tuned in to the first cybermen episode last night.... peaking at 9 million

ITV managed to get about 3 million for x-men lol

Great! Fantastic even...ooh, whats that coming round the corner? Is that a Series 4?

So that's two great results in one day:

Liverpool beat West Ham and The Cybermen wiped the floor with The X Men.

Excellent!

thats really great news,i see it totally crazy why ITV are even bothering
the most annoying this ITV sunday line up is always dire those films are being wasted on saturday night.

I only found out that X-Men was on about 5.30pm, and I was worried because it's a good film that could potentially do quite a bit of damage to Doctor Who.

I'm glad I was wrong, but at the same time I feel a bit sad that decent programmes are sometimes set up to Slug it out with each other so one or both have to suffer. That's life in TV land I suppose.

Looking at the details briefly in the OG forum, it looks like the average may be even higher. Will the time-shift figures be affected by people missing the last 20 minutes of their recording?

What was the audience share? (IMO this is far more important than actual guesstimates of viewers).

Looks like around 41-42%. BBC2 also beat ITV at this time!

Thanks for the info! Peak of 9 million is very impressive!

Another excellent result for the BBC and the DW team.

I bet ITV are wondering what they need to do in order to turn things around.

I guess that is one of the reasons they are considering bringing back Sapphire and Steel.

The only player in their team that would stand a chance, at the moment, is X-Factor. But they need to save that for their late year showdown with Bruce Forsyth.

That's a fair point. ITV are being idiotic. With Saturday nights on BBC currently compulsive viewing (well, for me anyway because I love the Danding show too, and Casualty), why do they put some fairly good films on that I might otherwise watch if they were on a Sunday afternoon/evening? And I can't be the only one! It's just daft really.

Now ITV is swinging the axe in all directions it will be interesting to see what direction they are going to take. If they think the future is just more reality shows or celebs on ice, on a beach or wherever then they are f****d!

I prefer that dancing programme to X-factor, but then I'm one of the older DW viewers, I suppose

I just got so annoyed with the X-Factor last year I probably shan't watch it again. So obvious Vain Shane was going to win, and Gooey Louis gushing all over him (ugh!) and Sharon dribbling like some characature old floozey. Ugh, ugh, ugh!

I'd rather have to put up with Graham Norton (actually, he's fairly bearable on SCD). I think I don't care if they don't have an X-factor this year. Watching it once all the way through was enough - the stadard teen-idol won, rendering the whole X-Factor thing a waste of time in my book. I thought it was supposed to be so that older contestants could have a go, not so that they could scrape up the droppings from Pop Idol

Sorry, I'll go and post this on the correct forum now

Well, I think they might be clued up enough to realise that people can have enough of those things. I think they have peaked, to be honest, there's no more mileage in them unless they are actually going to kill someone on screen (and having seen "The running man" and knowing people's hunger for extreme entertainment, maybe I'm only half joking there...) then they have to have a change of direction I would think. Now, if they were to start broadcasting Firefly or some such (maybe someone could make Gattaca into a series...) to clash with Dr W, then the latter might just have a bit of a problem.

Not just yet, as they have vowed to take on Big Brother with Zeleb Love Island, Zeleb X-factor (yawn, a bit like Celeb Fame Academy), and a few other zeleb reality things.

The Beeb are claiming 8.6million.

Outstanding yet again if it's broken through the 40% barrier...as I've been saying that's the key to success and an outstanding show (cf. last week was down at nearly 36%)

Couldn't beat the FA cup final though- that peaked with 11 million viewers and a beyond outstanding (spectacular? amazing?) 65% audience share. Just out of this world for the BBC.

Got to feel sorry for Norton though...I haven't seen the figures, but I'm fairly certain he would have lost almost all of the FA cup final audience with his strictly dancing show. It'll be a more than noticeable trough on the viewing figures graph of the evening!!

Or even better, why not commission their own cult series. If they were to reprise old classics like Blakes Seven, The Tomorrow People, Space 1999, or re-do the Prisoner, they would be on to a winner.

Borrrrrrrrrrrring! :yawn:

But it's tricky for ITV- why would they spend money on such an expensive programme to put up against Doctor Who, when they're only likely to split the viewers and end up with a poor audience share.

It would maybe be a spoiler for the BBC, but doesn't really make commercial sense for ITV. Takeaway was a successful alternative to DW, but it seems that Ant and Dec aren't interested in more of that.

I think ITV have made a sensible decision to accept a loss against Dr Who. So they're putting on films that they can easily repeat later (proabably with better audiences).

Doctor Who peaked with almost 10 million in the last ten minutes or so, and the 8.6 million average is correct, apparently. The late start also gave Strictly Dance Fever a huge boost, as that went up from about 5 million to 7 million as soon as it hit 7pm!

They could show Buck Rogers again like in the old days!

Erin Grey. Oh Wow.

If they do bring it back, let's just hope it isn't on at the same time as anything with SJS in it.

That would be an impossible choice.

Next week will be trickier for the doctor....ITV have the Princes trust 30th birthday bash. Hosted by Ant and Dec it's likely to knock the audience a bit.

Having said that, it does start 20 minutes after DW, so the moving forward of the episode (for Eurovision) may be a good move.

ITV haven't confirmed what they're putting up against Idiot's Lantern.

You do spread your favours around..SJS, Erin Grey...anyone else you would like to add to the list!