Mostly bad luck/timing.

Child/Dances was, like the Series 1 finale, hit by a spell of very good weather.

Girl is close to its predecessor, and somewhat higher than two episodes on from it, but Rise had a huge, distorting boost from sport. And, of course, Series 2 spent much of its run sliding in the ratings,

Blink had the start of BGT and a hot burst of weather.

Silence was hit by being opposite a BGT finale (with a 13.8m rating).

Think I'm right in saying that Time-Flight episode 1 was (at least) one of the most highly rated episodes of Season 19 (10 million? This is from memory...), which might well have been a knock on effect from the rather dramatic last episode of Earthshock and how generally well received that story was. Can't possibly *think* why the ratings went down after that first episode.

ETA I say that as a big Davison fan. And episode 1 of Time-Flight was probably the best of that story, thinking back!

Thanks for that I recall the weather being abysmal whilst Rise of the Cybermen was on also, though of course you never know whether your local weather is reflective of weather across the UK I remember the weather whilst I watch most episodes of Doctor Who...if I have to squint from the unavoidable sun glare I presume the weather will have played its part in any small dip.

I suspect the high ratings for that episode had something to do with the return of the Cybermen after a break of 17 years. It was very widely advertised.

As for Moffat episodes in the RTD era, they were mostly mid-to-late season if I recall (Fireplace aside). Part of their lower ratings might simply be because ratings tend to drop over the course of a season. I really doubt the average viewer checked to see who the writer was and simply didn't tune in

I do find the suggestions scattered through this thread that people don't watch live telly any more a bit odd after a week in which Doctor Foster scored nearly 8 million solely on the overnight figure. I wont mention the other show that got a much higher rating which forumites might have noticed.

The other point is that Who doesn't seem to be breaking records for catchup and iPlayer viewing either at the moment- which it was a few years ago.

Doctor Foster's Ratings have surprised everyone (go look in the UK Ratings Thread) so it's hardly the norm.

It's actually gained a couple of million viewers as the series has gone on due to word of mouth but it's very rare a show will do that.

I'm not suggesting it is the norm. But it puts the lie to the notion that live telly watching is dead. Sherlock and last year Cilla also illustrated that point. And note that I am applying a self-denying ordinance which excludes reality shows and sports events precisely to circumvent inevitable cries of 'foul, that's not a fair comparison'.

Apart from its own merits, and it does seem to caught the imagination, Doctor Foster may have benefited from having Bake Off before it.
Maybe Wednesday is the peak night for TV now? Not really a going out night,, no live football or other sport on terrestial TV, I imagine The Apprentice will get decent ratings too.

I don't think many people are trying to suggest that live viewing is dead, not remotely. I think it's just a case that a lot of other people fail to see that it's not quite the by-all and end-all that it once was. There's even been people on here who argue that iPlayer views should be discredited because they're not as important...one person going so far as to say iPlayer should be scrapped altogether, partly because it harms the overnights.

It's so deeply mentally engrained that a show that doesn't get a decent few million of viewers during its first TV broadcast is automatically a failure. People who think that 2 million views on BBC America for Doctor Who isn't a big deal... by comparison, the TV leviathan that is Game of Thrones had an average of 2.5 million US viewers in its first series, and look where it is now. It gets 6 million viewers routinely in the US and despite that being a relatively small number per the number of US citizens, it's a breakaway success and has been considered as such since its start. A show like Breaking Bad being as popular in the UK as it is, despite the fact it hasn't yet been shown in its entirety on UK television. A few of countless examples of how the TV-scene has changed. And changes that seem to slip the minds of a good number of people who insist of fuelling unfounded 'ratings crisis' headlines, often just to try and aimlessly defend their hatred for the show.

My apologies for misinterpreting!

Yeah, Doctor Who used to get more viewers on a Saturday night. Then it got a million for the BBC3 repeat on Sunday. Then hundreds of thousands more for the Friday repeat. Then there were at least two magazines with healthy circulations, multiple spin-off series that got several millions of viewers between them, and all the 'watercooler' moments at work, in pubs or overheard at bus stops. I remember hearing 35 year old women sat around a pub table talking about the show and people raising the subject of "last Saturday's episode" at work. Now, nothing. No one ever mentions it, and I suspect that the average small group of 35 year old women in a pub on a weekday evening would not be impressed with someone asking what they thought of last Saturday's Doctor Who. I don't think the show gets mentioned much on daytime TV these days, either.

No, I haven't approached such groups of women in pubs with a clip board, a Bic pen and started interrogating them about Doctor Who for my 'survey'.

I've repeatedly asked in other threads about the ratings for the repeat showings and have not once been answered by the same people who appear daily to post VOTSD+1+2+3+4+5+6 and +7 ratings for every episode this series. And now, the one and only repeat at a reasonable time that remains (7pm, Friday on BBC3) appears to have been replaced with old Top Gear episodes - a show that's been effectively axed!

Peter Capaldi's Doctor does not come across as life & soul of a party, like Tennant's did. That's OK, just introduce companions who replace some of that FUN and sparkle instead of Clara and it may be fine. But as things stand, it is not, and two series into Capaldi's run means there's little hope of the public re-evaluating his time now. It's become fossilised, fusty, frowsty, and less polite words beginning with an F.

I've spent a little while looking and instead of series averages, I've managed to put together a list regarding all of the episodes individually...

LIST OF ALL EPISODES BY AUDIENCE SHARE


So according to the Audience Share, the ten most successful episodes in order have been:

1 - The Next Doctor (10Si, 52.1%)
2 - Voyage of the Damned (4X, 51.6%)
3 - Journey's End (4.13, 48.7%)
4 - Army of Ghosts (2.12, 45.1%)
5 - Dalek (1.06, 44.9%)
6 - Rose (1.01, 44.8%)
7 - The End of Time: Part One (10Siv, 44.7%)
8 - Doomsday (2.13, 44.5%)
9 - Father's Day (1.08, 44.4%)
10 - The Parting of the Ways (1.13, 44.0%)

Notably all ten episodes were from the RTD era of the show. Voyage of the Damned was the first episode to appear on a beta version of a very primitive iPlayer which launched on Christmas Day 2007, which if we are to exclude fairly on the basis of no public exposure to the online platform (approximately 87,500 people opted to access the episode on iPlayer within 14 days) 7 out of the 10 episodes listed in these top ten were broadcast before iPlayer existed.

Compare it to the top ten most viewed episodes in terms of viewing figures:

1 - Voyage of the Damned (4X, 13.8m)
2 - The Next Doctor (10Si, 13.1m)
3 - The Day of the Doctor (11Si, 12.8m)
4 - The End of Time: Part Two (10Sv, 12.3m)
5 - A Christmas Carol (6X, 12.1m)
6 - The End of Time: Part One (10Siv, 12.0m)
7 - The Time of the Doctor (11Sii, 11.1m)
8 - Rose (1.01, 10.8m)
9 - The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (7Xi, 10.7m)
10 - Journey's End (4.13, 10.6m)

...and you can see how interpreting it as viewer share, and interpreting it as viewing figures can lead to vastly different lists of episodes. All but two of the top ten in the figures list are specials of some description. The RTD era only narrowly holds a majority in the top ten, which reflects the fact that the show has only seen a minor decline in the ratings overall... that's at least one thing the mainstream-oriented audiences the Christmas specials appeal to is helpful in figuring out. With that in mind, when you rank the Christmas specials to assess the strength of that mainstream audience you see the following results for viewer share...

1 - The Next Doctor (10Si, 52.1%)
2 - Voyage of the Damned (4X, 51.6%)
3 - The End of Time: Part One (10Siv, 44.7%)
4 - The Christmas Invasion (2X, 43.5%)
5 - A Christmas Carol (6X, 41.8%)
6 - The Snowmen (7Xii, 38.8%)
7 - The Runaway Bride (3X, 37.9%)
8 - The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (7Xi, 37.3%)
9 - The Time of the Doctor (11Sii, 35.3%)
10 - Last Christmas (8X, 31.6%)

and for viewing figures...

1 - Voyage of the Damned (4X, 13.3m)
2 - The Next Doctor (10Si, 13.1m)
3 - A Christmas Carol (6X, 12.1m)
4 - The End of Time: Part One (10Siv, 12.0m)
5 - The Time of the Doctor (11Sii, 11.1m)
6 - The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (7Xi, 10.8m)
7 - The Snowmen (7Xii, 9.87m)
8 - The Christmas Invasion (2X, 9.84m)
9 - The Runaway Bride (3X, 9.38m)
10 - Last Christmas (8X, 8.28m)

Again, you can see how interpreting the audience differently can lead to episodes shifting two whole spots in a closed list of ten episodes. You can also see that whilst the most recent Christmas special, Last Christmas, is at the bottom of both lists both times and also the only episode not to move around the list it only has a viewer share that is less than 4% lower than the next episode up, The Runaway Bride. This may feel pretty big, but then at the same time, The Next Doctor has a viewer share that is more than a whopping 7% higher than the supposedly revered Tennant-exit story The End of Time: Part Two - and without confounding this too much with opinion, it can generally be agreed that neither The Next Doctor or Voyage of the Damned which top these Christmas lists are episodes the rest of the show has aspired to, nor has either gone down as a classic.

Speaking in broader terms, if we use these Christmas specials as an effective means to gauge the popularity of the show amongst its mainstream viewership, there is indisputable proof that less mainstream viewers watched Last Christmas than any Christmas special before it. That has not translated as poor viewing figures as such, but simply complies with the notion that a show in its tenth consecutive year is going to face some signs of decline as a result of fatigue.

As another observation, all episodes since The Caretaker but excluding the Christmas special and the opening two episodes of Series 9 have been broadcast after 20:00, the vast majority averaging 20:30. It seems no small coincidence then that The Caretaker was also the first episode to drop below 27% viewer share, with all but the Series 8 finale episodes remaining below this viewer share figure and those episodes themselves struggling to rise above it very much at all. It should also be noted that prior to this, the share had not dropped lower than 29% at all since Nightmare in Silver back in 2013, and that the entire first half of Series 8 delivered consistent viewing figures that match with what came before. It may imply that Capaldi's Doctor, and the show in its current guise has a dedicated following and still generates relative interest, even from the mainstream audience - as per the minor hike in viewership around the Series 8 finale in spite of the late timeslot AND it being Halloween weekend (whilst Smith's finales were more in line with the series averages). It is all suggestive that the later slot in the schedules has been the most detrimental factor to the show's success.


Here's my awful Excel skills to put all the stats into a bit more of an accessible image...

This chart shows the Viewer Share and the Viewing Figures plotted on the same chart. The yellow line gives a vague idea of how the show has gone up and down in terms of millions of viewers between 2005 and 2015. The chart itself represents the total number of people watching television at the same time as Doctor Who is broadcast, with the light blue area representing how many of those people are choosing to watch Doctor Who rather than anything else. The viewer share highlights how the overnight viewings are declining for Doctor Who, as is true of many shows with the rise of on-demand. And whilst Series 9 takes a slight dip at the end, it's not by any means a 'crisis' dip, and early suggestions show that it is still managing to maintain a consistent viewership rather than facing constant decline.

This chart gives an Episode-by-Episode look at Viewer Share, complete with trend line. As with any show, Doctor Who shows a decline across the decade but it's incredibly gradual.

*Under the Lake is not included in the charts, as the final figures are not in for Before the Flood.

All viewer share figures are of course based on on-the-night viewership. All viewing figures are in millions, and based on the figures released after 7 days.

Well overnight ratings for Call the Midwife and Doc Martin are also good,despite range of viewing habits. So many dramas do have high overnight ratings,despite changing habits. Dr Who does not fit that trend however.

It doesnt matter anyway. Shows get renewed with pathetic ratings....like Vicious.
Dr Who is an institution that will last forever. It might benefit from a year off though. Everything benefits from a break.So far this series feels stale and repetitive with a sense of going through the motions.

Also i feel that there is a sense of summarising as if Moffat might be considering a change and is summarising plotlines/characters in preparation for that.

Call the Midwife and Doc Martin both skew older in their demographics, and are placed in safe peak primetime slots. That does wonders for overnight audiences, while being in a variable Saturday night slot, opposite a show that attracts exactly the audience you're after, doesn't.

There's no reason to suppose that was the case. The high rating blip is easily explained by the other factors. The Age of Steel fits the general pattern of the ratings slide for that year perfectly.


Something of a myth, I'm afraid. While Series 2 did slide for a while, no series has seen a consistent pattern, never mind a consistent drop.

Series 3, for example, bounces up and down throughout, with Blink surrounded by episodes with ratings at the higher end of the spread for the series.

Series 4, meanwhile, has a short early slide, but then recovers fast and spends the rest of the run at the high end of Who ratings. With Silence being an exception, due to the BGT finale.

Other series saw other patterns.

The problem is the show has already had a break when we lost the 2013 season. In fact, you could argue it has been on hiatus a number of times since 2010 but with all of the gaps disguised as mid-season breaks or the decision to move the show from spring to the autumn.

I hate to say it, because I love Colin Baker's sixth Doctor, but when the show was put on an 18 month hiatus in the mid-eighties it returned with a new season which felt extremely stale (Trial of a Timelord). It had the same cast and production team/producer. Nothing had really changed except the theme tune (which was awful) and the number of episodes (halved!).

I cannot see a benefit to resting the show again unless it comes back with a fresh team. Simply giving Steven Moffat yet more time off to go and do other things would simply mean the show will return with more of the same.

This is a real mix of evidence. Some of it is anecdotal which I can dismiss by saying I know more people who talk about and watch Who than ever, it's still as much of a buzzword as ever (of course my personal experience means nothing but the point is that just because your social circles like it less means very little) since for me the 'watercooler' moments are more discussed than ever.

Some evidence is simply non-existent, since you don't know that the repeats have been going down. Most likely, as CD93 pointed out on another thread where you asked, we don't know. Yog probably didn't see and doesn't have time to trawl through this thread for specific requests very often.

Yes, the show has lost viewers, but the whole point of this thread is that there's a multitude of reasons for that to be the case, and we're evaluating them, so the simple fact that the show has lost viewers says absolutely nothing conclusive about Capaldi.

And your last paragraph is purely your own opinion, not a shred of "evidence" in it.


Thanks a lot Abomination, that made for a really interesting read, there's some fascinating factors at play there. It'd be interesting to see how things like Sky becoming more mainstream affected the share as well as the opposition Who faced when dropping its share.

Wow, that's great work there, Abomination. Thanks very much for pulling all those figures together.
Fascinating to see that really there's very few patterns and definitive conclusions that can be drawn, other than Doctor Who is simply a very successful show, across all fields and all audiences!

What I did find interesting is that the drop off in the viewer share figures seems to be directly related to the later time slots. This is presumably something that would be worrying the BBC a little, and would, to my mind at least, indicate that Doctor Who ought to be broadcast earlier.
This clearly isn't possible in the autumn as Strictly won't be giving up that slot without a fight, so it seems to me to be a fairly compelling reason to switch Who back to a Spring transmission, either starting at Easter or - my preferred option - starting in January.

I think it works better in a later time slot. I'm not ready for scary TV when it's still light outside. Let them have Strictly Come Dancing nonsense at that time.

Ratings aren't everything.

Thing is, on an October evening, it's dark by what half 6? So there's no reason to have it as late as half 8.

There's a middle ground and I think that having Who between 7 and 8, not too late but not too early, is the ideal slot, but unfortunately because of Strictly's timing, there's no room in this slot.

Actually, I'd go so far as to blame Pointless Celebrities for it's continued success. If that wasn't around, Strictly could be a little earlier, but since Pointless is somewhat of a revelation for what it is, it's holding down its own slot, forcing Strictly a little later, and hence Who.

Certain days of the weeks suit certain shows. Call the Midwife is classic Sunday evening TV for example, while Bake Off and other such cookery programmes (like Masterchef) are always midweek.

To me Doctor Who needs to be in the same slot as Strictly, which is currently 6:20, as it's early enough for young children to watch live. Further, as it would be over by just after 7, some people would then be able to watch it live before going out.

With rumours that after 2016 ITV, who now own the company who makes The Voice will take it, that leaves a nice early springtime gap in the early evening Saturday schedule that will need filling...

5:30 is too early for Strictly, lots of people aren't in by then it's never been on that early.

It's the sort of time when you air mindless entertainment like Total Wipeout really! Kid friendly stuff.

I don't get this "it needs to be dark outside to watch Doctor Who" argument, as that's what curtains/blinds are for

But nothing here supports your assertion that Doctor Who is unpopular because of Capaldi. You have no way of linking gradually falling ratings to Capaldi himself and your own personal experience isn't necessarily indicative of the sentiments of the general public as a whole.


This isn't evidence of anything. This is your opinion.

I will ask you again to provide evidence to support your assertion that Doctor Who is unpopular because of Capaldi. Something more substantial that "my colleagues don't like him" would be appreciated.

My Viewing Figure Graph 2005-2015 updated to include the past two episodes: http://prntscr.com/8qt9da

Why is there no reason to suppose that was the case? Return of a classic enemy, heavily advertised, Radio Times cover, lots and lots of PR. If the ratings didn't improve that week then advertising doesn't work