If you spend that much time and effort promoting a show (and by goodness did they push this like they never had before!) and you can only persuade a solid but unspectacular 6.8m people to watch it then it IS disappointing. Not worrying but a bit 'oh'.

Particularly considering a new Doctor normally persuades people to tune in out of curiosity. DW is hugely costly in comparison to their other dramas and was massively advertised. The rating is okay but they would've liked to start from a higher base to cushion the inevitable drop off.

The people going 'IT WILL BE CANCELLED! THAT RATING WAS TERRIBLE!' are daft. It won't. It just didn't grab people as might have been expected. Obviously many viewers weren't bothered enough to watch it live.

I know it will time shirt really well but to me that is is a disappointing rating, even if if had a very poor lead in.

What will help in future weeks is a strictly lead in. To that end is does seem a bit strange to start this week, Early Sept would work a fair bit better.

Well its up on the last time it launched in August with Lets Kill Hitler in 2011 Plus it will be interesting to see how it does on BBC America too

Just out of interest are there any figures for how many people watched it at the cinema last night?

Is that based on a 5 minute or 15 minute 'chop' - if it's the 15 minute figure then that will hopefully be being brought down by people switching off or over at 10 past - I think it would be almost if not truly unprecedented for an episode of DW to lose viewers over the broadcast rather than gain them

They've done it purely to protect Atlantis and give it a decent lead in because it tanked without one.


But not enough for the amount of promotion. That's disappointment really. All that promotion and all that money spent really didn't do very much!

Peaked at 7.3m according to the BBC.

6.8 million overnights are a bit low for the introduction of a new Doctor. Now, I'm not going to jump on the old "THE SHOW IS DOOOMED!" bandwagon just yet as 6.8 million is still a pretty respectable figure... and of course, it's meaningless unless you compare it to the other shows on at the same night (which as Mulett pointed out were all lower than usual).

There's probably a reasonable explanation for this. My guess is that, because it's still summer and because last night was a very nice evening, a lot of people were out enjoying themselves and not watching television. Certainly, a large number of my friends were unable to watch it because they were out... and when I turned up at the cinema, I was shocked to find huge queues of people waiting to be seated coming out of all the many restaurants surrounding the cinema. Obviously if a large amount of people decided to do what I saw a lot of people doing and go out and have a meal, then there'll be much less people watching the television.

If my hypothesis is correct, we should expect to see a bit of an increase in overnight figures when the schools go back.

The final viewing figures should also help support my idea if a lot of people ended up time shifting.

Cheers! So 10 million consolidated might be a tad optimistic. How is i player taken into account these days?

Sorry for all the questions. "I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition."

BARB had plans to include unique iPlayer views in the final figures... but they haven't got around to it. For now they are included in a monthly report. We will get to see how DB performs over the first week at the end of August.

I definitely think it's started too early. Why would you protect that rubbish Atlantis when you've got DW to let really shine?! (Can you tell that the fact that show even got a second series really bugs me? )

Some interesting points brought up in the main ratings thread about whether it's alienated its casual audience and become too insular now and they can't just dip in on it like they used to. Hence there wasn't a large curiosity jump even for a new Doctor. Whoever is playing the character it seems many have already made up their mind whether this version of the show is for them or not. I think you'd probably need to see a new show runner for casual fans to give it another try now.

It will get a final of around 9.5m - 10m as predicted. No worries there, but i would have thought an overnight of over 7m considering the promotion and the new Doctor.

But then again i'm not surprised as overnights for a lot of shows lately have been very low.

I think it will settle down to it's normal 4.5m - 5.5m overnight rating over next few weeks, and finals of 7.5m+

I think the BBC know that if they don't protect Atlantis, it will fail miserably. I'm not sure why they thought it would be a good idea to bring it back for a second series. I didn't watch it myself, but most people I know who did all thought it was a little bit rubbish.

Honestly, the overnights for Dr Who are largely irrelevant these days. Not just because it will time shift really well, but because the show has become such a success worldwide. The overnights might be down a great deal on what they once were, but the show as a whole is vastly more successful than its ever been.

The money is being made elsewhere. I doubt anyone at the BBC is losing any sleep.

The ratings were good at the start but fell later. I think if the bbc had waited till the end of the series they would maybe have had second thoughts of renewal. I gave up after 4 EPs as I found it boring.

That is a fairly solid rating, don't understand the disappointment about it, especially when that's what the daft soaps are pulling in on a regular basis.

Some of you guys are severely over-estimating the popularity of Dr Who it seems, yes its a popular show, but like all popular shows over a length of time the ratings will decrease a bit and level out, which it seems to have done now.

Almost 7 million people watching a sci-fi showed aimed at familes is not to be sniffed in this day and age where viewing habits have splintered over so many different ways,

Is it? I'd always been led to believe it was allocated the same budget as other BBC dramas as is their old fashioned way. It reaps no reward from its merchandising and overseas sales and is stuck with a slightly stingy and somewhat unfair pot of cash. I remember it was always the same with Red Dwarf, it getting the standard BBC sitcom budget despite having sci fi plots, setting and FX.

IIRC they renewed it after episode 2. Goodness knows why. It was incredibly dull. I think I made episode 6 before I gave up (definitely gave it a fair shot). Painfully thin and boring with terrible characters.


But the soaps aren't hyped to within an inch of their lives with the sheer amount of publicity DW has been given in the last couple of weeks. The rating was fine it just didn't warrant that level of promotion which is fair comment. I can totally see why people expected more.

I actually think more than anything it shows the promotion was a bit of a waste of time and didn't really do anything for the ratings!

It's too early to say that, really. The bulk of the promotion took place for a global audience.

For a normal episode, it's a very good overnight figure, but I was expecting a bit more considering not only was it the first time Doctor Who was on our screens since Christmas, it was a new Doctor's first episode which had a lot of promotion.

Anyway, I'm not too bothered. It's the final figures which matter and viewing figures for everything were down. As I mentioned earlier, I think there's a reasonable explanation for this.

The world tour definitely. There was lots of UK stuff too though. I think people will perceive this as low in part because of the amount of promotion.


Basically this. I thought the new Doctor would bump the ratings by a good million simply because of the curiosity. Doesn't seem like it did. It's the same core DW audience but not a massive surge of new interest.

Top overnights for the week:

01 …. 7.4m (35.2%) …. The Great British Bake Off 20:00 BBC One - WED
02 …. 6.9m (31.3%) …. Coronation Street 20:30 ITV - MON
03 …. 6.8m (35.2%) …. Coronation Street 19:30 ITV - MON
04 …. 6.8m (32.5%) …. Doctor Who 19:50 BBC One - SAT

I expect Who to comfortably top Bake Off by the end of the week.

Thanks. That does rather put things into perspective!

Rather less than I was expecting. I didn't think a million more was unreasonable.

Is there any episode to compare it in like for like terms?

Did series 7b launch in August?
How much is Peter down from Matt's debut?