The rugby? That finished an hour before Doctor Who started and didn't exactly storm the ratings. And that "come in number 1" bit? It managed to beat the far cheaper to make shows of Pointless and the BBC News by less than half a million, that's not going to give much comfort to the BBC.

We know the ratings will rise with the timeshift and we know that Doctor Who does have a healthy timeshift audience but let's get some context here. This was the first episode of a series that hasn't been on air since last year and yet it's live ratings were worse than every single episode of the last series. These are mid-season ratings, not season premiere ratings. To match Deep Breath the timeshift audience will need to be something like 4.7 million viewers, more viewers than watched it live. Impossible? No but very difficult to achieve.

There's no reason to panic as the timeshift audience will bump it up into a more respectable figure but let's not kid ourselves, those are not good ratings, the show is expected (and should) perform better and the BBC know it. Let's hope things improve next week.

The other thing that hasn't been commented on is that Deep Breath aired in summer, yet Magician aired a month later when ratings are expected to be much higher. And it had Daleks. Although, to be fair, DB did introduce a new Doctor.

The context is surely how it performed against other Saturday night shows last night, not against how the ratings were last year. As has been pointed out, ALL TV ratings are lower than they were last year, across all shows. So comparing with last year isn't actually very helpful.

They do not make up "most" as was incorrectly stated by the other poster. As a group they make up the "least" which the last time I checked was the direct opposite of "most".


I'm a) Not talking about global figures and b) Not really concerned with "imagined" or "perhaps" figures either.


Oh, I didn't realise we were basing the published/checked ratings and how people watch it on a rough straw-poll of this very thread. My apologies, have you notified BARB that they've been doing it wrong all this time?!

The high ratings expectation disregards all competition, of course. There may be a larger audience, but not all watching the same thing. Deep Breath sure didn't have last night's ITV offerings. This year is an every-four-years delight. Beyond X Factor, another 1.6m headed to ITV4 for France v Italy.

Series 9 sinks or swims by it's timeshift - for which we will seek out The Ratings Magician, Yog, for his insights.

If you actually spend a few seconds reading my post, you'd see that I'm not contradicting you.




This is all very well and good, but being pedantic and focusing on the definition of "most" achieves nothing and doesn't discredit the general point of what's being said which is that Doctor Who gets a very large time-shifted audience so getting worked-up about a single overnight figure is not worth it.

So if you compare what percentage each show has dropped over a year then wouldn't that be a indication of what's happening to a show?

On this I totally agree. The issue with low live ratings is that it puts more pressure on the show to get a good time shift and that's the only real concern with low live ratings.

Spot on, I've noticed this too and find it bizarre, people getting excited and egging on/hoping for a show's demise is just.. sad. I dislike X Factor so don't watch it but when I see headlines on the home page of DS about its ratings decline I don't go clicking on it and leaving messages going oh good its had its day, it s**ks, should of finished years ago, Simon Cowell ruins the show etc I think some people like to revel in being d**ks.

Because if DW got cancelled or something major changed, they will feel validated for all the negative crap and comments and in their
minds proven right.

Depends on what you actually count as "Live".

The Overnight figures are actually made up of those who watch it live plus those who watch it later that same night.

So a show with overnight ratings of 4.5 M could have had 3 million watching it Live and 1.5 million catching up with it within a few hours.


If said show then gets 2 million more in the Final ratings then "Most" people (3.5 Million vs 3 Million) have not watched it "Live".


Yes Overnights usually make up more than 50% of the Final ratings but Overnights and Live are not the same thing,

Which reminds me - it's worth keeping an eye on the audience share simply because obviously that isn't affected by the total number watching TV at the time. Normally the show averages around 23-25%. Last night was 21% (no point in comparing it to Deep Breath which was 32% but that had obvious novelty factor). So yes, that's a bit down and perhaps gives a fairer view than the raw numbers.

It seems the show is a bit down overall. Nothing to panic about but it's the sort of time when they start to think about shake ups just to refresh things.

It seems as though the show has returned with the sort of overnight figure it was averaging last season. And the BBC has already admitted the show has a higher percentage catch-up audience than any other BBC show. So maybe the only thing that has happened is that we have 4-5m people who will watch each episode live (including the season premiere) and another 2-3m who will watch it later. Its still the BBC's number 1 Saturday evening show, until Strictly returns.

There was Rugby actually on ITV4 at the same time which got over a Million viewers which would dent Doctor Who.

I clearly watch the BBC too much because I saw the trailer for the new show so many times that I started to get bored of it. That said, it was only the one trailer that they kept repeating and I'm sure there used to be one or two different ones to ramp up the excitement. I also miss the days when they would commission specifically made trailers instead of clips based ones. and I question the judgement of ending the trailer with a clip of the Doctor saying "same old, same old, just the Doctor and Clara in the TARDIS" hardly inspiring stuff...

I expect it's not so much the shows demise that some people appear to be re-joicing in but rather a possible end to Moffat's era if ratings continue to decline and the BBC steps in. People should be careful what they wish for though and I dare say if the BBC did intervene they would get rid of Capaldi before Moffat, and there's certainly a precedent for doing that...

whats the precedent?

anyway, im sure PC will at least do series 10 which was always planned.

That, surely, is the most important statistic. These days the actual number of viewers isn't really that crucial when measuring the success of a show. It's how it performs against other TV shows. And yesterday Doctor Who was the most watched on the BBC and the second most watched programme on all TV.
As far as the BBC is concerned, it's still a success. and it's also a success across the world.

I don't know how everyone will cope when the ratings clashes get worse after all the topics covered following one overnight figure.

Upkeep costs worth the numbers? Best value for licence fee payers? BBC interventions? Moffat or Capaldi getting the sack? Taken off mainstream television? Government endorsements? Charter renewal considerations? Good grief - I hope it won't be quite so knee-jerky all the way through the 28 day consolidations

Does anyone know how much it has timeshifted in the first 24 hours? I'm sure someone used to post it...

That's internet forums for you!

Hopefully we'll find out tomorrow morning.

"Millions desert Doctor Who" is currently the most read story on the BBC News site so that's something

People cant resist click bait LOL

wonder what BBC Americas numbers were?