No! When strictly finishes X factor increases by a little over a million viewers, which means several million are switching off altogether. Doctor who should be a million higher than what it is.

I think if we had the old days of Rose and tennant and donna, it would get closer to 6m, and still timeshifts of 2m.

Only four episodes (including 1 Christmas Special) received a timeshift of over 1m through Series 1-4. 2m wasn't a factor in the old days of six years ago. It didn't need to be - and iPlayer was only around for S4. Viewership has changed and Doctor Who is not the exception. When a broadcaster offers you the chance (now up to 28 days!) to watch TV when you want to watch it - that's an offer worth taking. As we have seen from the 28-day consolidations, it's being taken up by around 400k-500k people who otherwise would have slipped under the radar.

You can see here the effect that iPlayer has had. Keeping reach around the 10m mark throughout, excluding peaks. Most recently, Deep Breath - and that's assuming that at least half are unique viewers. We'll have September's numbers in a week or so.

Popular shows have been killed off because that option wasn't available or considered or just not viable for commercial reasons. Flexibility for your licence fee.

that seems to assume that those 1 million would be interested in watching DW. That is not necessarily the case.

I didn't know this BARB graph existed - thanks, Ratings Thread! Live viewing has hit an all time low.

http://www.barb.co.uk/whats-new/catc...-compared?_s=4

Wow! A fascinating and very telling graph. So an average show will have 86% of viewers watching it 'live' compared with 14% who watch it sometime over the following week. Is that right?

The shift is a bit bigger for Who I think (something like 70%/30%) but the BBC's already acknowledged that.

Who is ready for the sky to fall, today?! I am!

5 million.

THE SKY IS SAFE!

Didn't you hear? The sky is actually a big patchwork quilt stitched together by a giant space granny

Very close to that 7:30pm, Episode 2 figure What a consistent series, after all.


Now I'm really looking forward to the AI.

That's good; nice increase there.

If the episode thread is anything to go by, the AI will be about 30.

Good but possibly not so good for the AI. I'm not sure I'd want so many people watching that episode Shame Flatline didn't get that instead.

Hey, Fear Her rated higher than a few S8 episodes

If debates earlier in this thread are anything to go by, ITFOTN should be nothing less than Excellent. Because it wasn't "dark."

I'd expect it to get similar to Rings of Akhaten given it seems to have been met with a similar divison!

Bizarrely - a lot of the reviews are pretty good and I can't see much negativity on Twitter either. Maybe it's just us!

A Who episode that the fans didn't like, yet the general public did... Interesting! And probably a good thing when it comes to these episodes.

From Doctor Who News:

5.03 million viewers watched Doctor Who: In The Forest Of The Night, a share of 21.6% of the total TV audience, according to unofficial overnight figures.

Doctor Who was third for the day, reversing last weeks position with Pointless Celebrities which had 4.74 million and came in fourth for the day. Top was Strictly Come Dancing, which had 9.42 million viewers, a substantial lead over its rival The X Factor which had 7.34 million.

Doctor Who is currently 20th for the week, with Sunday's ratings still to come. Final figures will be available next Sunday.

Good solid overnight once again.
I wonder if the AI will be pretty high. I know a lot of us on here really didn't like the episode, but perhaps it's more popular amongst children seeing as it was an episode very clearly aimed at children. Families with kids on the BARB panel might vote it higher. Who knows?

I await the AI with anticipation. I think it will be interesting.
I have a sneaking suspicion that we Doctor Who fans are out of touch with the general public.

Interesting you mention fans vs casual viewers. In the data visualisation book 'Time & Space Visualiser' by Paul Smith that was published last year, when broadcast ratings were compared to scores from the Doctor Who Dynamic Rankings website, the results were as follows:

Most loved by both fans & casual viewers - City Of Death
Most Loved by Fans - Blink
Least Loved by Fans - The Twin Dilemma
Least Loved by Casual viewers - Battlefield
Least Loved by both Fans & Casual viewers - Time And The Rani

Fascinating stats aren't they CD93?

Is it today or tomorrow we get the AI and final figures for Flatline?

I forget every week

Flatline Final figures today.

Forest AI tomorrow.

I wouldn't particularly argue with any of that result, although I'm a bit surprised that Genesis of the Daleks didn't get the fans' nod over Blink.
Fantastic though Blink is, it is a story where the Doctor actually hardly features, which I'm surprised didn't count against it to some extent.

As for ITFOTN, it was never going to be a fan favourite. The basic idea was good, and it looked fantastic, but the way the scenario was presented made suspension of disbelief impossible for me. I'm sure the kids would have been very entertained by it, but for "serious" fans it was verging on un-watchable at times IMO.
Is that necessarily a bad thing? After all, Doctor Who isn't just made for us. It would have been cancelled long ago if it had been, and we should never forget that.
I too will be very interested to see the AI figure!

I'd love it to get the highest of the series so far.

Will both parts of the finale be facing off against Guy Fawkes?

Flatline - 6.71m (25.5%)