Some stats from Doctor Who News.

Seems a but unfair on the chart position when we have multiple episodes of the same soaps broadcast each week - surely better to just give each soap a weekly average and let them have one chart position each?

Thanks for this, Isambard. It's novel (to me) to see the chart positions since 1963 used to show how it's doing relative to other TV shows. On the face of it, that method would seem to be a "rough and ready" way to eliminate effects due to changes in the total size of the TV audience as a whole and increased number of channels.

I wonder if it's harder or easier to get into the top ten these days, with greater choice due the multiplicity of channels (and the resulting audience fragmentation) than it was in 1963-1989?

Well I maybe a couple of years behind on this news but I never realised before that the ratings for Doctor Who fell off the cliff during Tom Bakers final years and that they were doing rather well in comparison when the show was 'rested' in 1989.

Yes, Tom's final season was a disaster purely in terms of ratings compared with the highs of season 17, and this was one of the main reasons the show was moved to weekdays, rather than Saturdays, for Davison's tenure.

But Tom Baker's last season is not judged to have been a disaster otherwise - it just proves that looking at ratings on their own is pretty meaningless. Context is everything.

And it's far better, and gives a far clearer picture of how Doctor Who is really doing, when chart positions and audience appreciation figures are shown in context with all the other TV shows. Virtually ALL TV programmes have suffered a marked drop in ratings across every channel, so comparing viewer numbers to those of even five years ago is fairly pointless. Comparing relative positions in top 10s, top 20s etc give a far clearer picture of the success, or otherwise, of any TV show.

"The overnights don't matter anymore, it's the final figures including iPlayer that count.......oops, hold on a sec....."

Think the ratings improved after the novelty of Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century wore off? I was watching that myself, mind! Pre-fan. Still, class is permanent, form is temporary. Think BR was cancelled after 2 series. Sure I was mainly watching it for Wilma...childhood crush. But I saw the light a year later with Season 19, thank heavens.

Eta Sorry, Buck Rogers. Ooh vicar, bet he did, the saucy wisecracking chappie.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but approximately 40% of the audience watched Doctor Who through means other than the initial broadcast, which is a very hefty amount, and even the 60% who watched that includes people using PVR, so... kind of what everybody has been saying all along? :P

I'm not a fan of Baker's final season myself, but despite doing only half as well as Season 17, it seems to generally be the more popular of the two. Season 17 didn't go down very well at all for many and not even the high ratings could save it from that.

Amongst fans yes, Season 18 was far more successful. But not with the general public, as the drastic fall in ratings indicates.

It's usually assumed that the massive change of direction under JNT was to blame - new titles, new look, new sound, getting rid of the Douglas Adams humour - but the first episode of The Leisure Hive was watched by far less people than the previous season, before all these changes would have been known about. So there must have been other factors at work, as people simply didn't switch on in the first place. Michael Eve has mentioned Buck Rogers - this undoubtedly took a big chunk of the traditional schoolboy audience, but this can't have been the whole story. What else might have caused such a huge number of people to simply not come back to Doctor Who in 1980?

Of course the fans loved the new direction. I joined the DWAS in 1979 and I was shocked by the sheer amount of negativity and vitriol aimed at Graham Williams and Douglas Adams. Despite the show getting almost record viewing figures the Appreciation Society really didn't appreciate current Doctor Who at all. JNT was hailed as the saviour of Doctor Who, Chris Bidmead's dry approach and virtually unsayable dialogue was held up as being far more preferable than Douglas Adams' free-wheeling flights of fancy. Yet the public clearly thought very differently and voted with the off switch.

I'd hazard a guess that part of it was the trend begun in 1977 by Star Wars for special effects that actually looked realistic. Nothing like it had been seen before visually, with the possible exception of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968

Around the same time there was a series of big budget, science fiction movies laden with sophisticated special effects (Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek The Motion Picture, Blade Runner), that were hugely successful. The popularity of Star Wars spawned some high production value science fiction TV series in the US. I'm thinking here of Battlestar Galactica (the original, that is) and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. In the UK, only the much earlier live action Gerry Anderson shows UFO and Space: 1999, shot on film, not video, had come anywhere near the visual realism of Star Wars.

Audiences wanted decent sfx and by 1980 were much less forgiving of the kind of wobbly models and sets, men-in-rubber-suit monsters and primitive CSO video effects the BBC could afford for the likes of Blakes 7 and Doctor Who.

It was only Davison's first season (season 19) that did particularly well out of the move to weekdays, bouncing between 8m-10.5m.

By seasons 20 and 21, the viewing figures had evened-out to something between 6m-7.5m.

In fact, Colin Baker's first season - back on Saturday evening for the first time in four years - easily matched those season 20/21 viewing figures.

It was only after the 18 month hiatus that the viewing figures really dropped ranging between 3.5m-5m. They never really covered after that.

I would be very cautious of saying the TV landscape is SO different now that lessons cannot be learnt from the past because I think they still can.

Any theories about why the second part of the series' opener lost 0.8 million viewers in its full week viewing? This is a high percentage , surely? I remember it as probably the best all round story of the season. , missy, a seemingly more likeable Davros, what more could you want?

Fantastic long term stats, thanks.
So in terms of chart positions, the three best eras are early to mid term hartnell (novelty?), and then late Pertwee, early baker and ALL of nu who? Arguably these last three eras represent the best of Who, (and, for Pertwee and baker, and all of nu who, the most relatable companions - Sarah Jane and all /most of the nu who companions, written in a more modern style?)

I've said that here before and been savaged by angry fanbois in denial, telling me I was wrong and the ratings were high, usually just before the bit of their post when they offer excuses for the ratings falling off the cliff it didn't fall off.

Also note that the long term figures on that page are for TV rankings rather than ratings. When I used to visit Outpost Gallifrey years ago, I remember similar graphs based on actual ratings, though they looked similar (perhaps with more of a decline over Troughton's time.)

I can't remember who was responsible for them, or whether they're still buried somewhere on old ratings threads on whatever those forums are called now. Sometimes I think it would be nice to look over old threads from 2003 onwards to see, in retrospect, how the news of a revived series was received, what speculation there was about casting, CGI and production values, and how that first series went down amongst people on the forum - most of whom were old-timers who had stayed with the show through 16 years of voidspace.


Remember when episodes of Dr Who got millions of iPlayer hits rather than thousands? And all things considered, the show is still down 1.5M unique viewers.

I can only assume the whole, "same old same old" feel of the series killed any curiosity borne out of the start of a new series. Most first episodes in a new series get a bit of a spike. Also, I think a lot of people stayed with most of series 8 because once they started they saw it to the end, despite not liking Capaldi and the new feel of the show. Most of them just didn't bother with series 9 whilst the rest gave the first episode a go on the promise that the Doctor had changed - he hadn't.

Still, proves all those who blamed the World Cup were wrong. iPlayer and same-day viewing failed to improve on the second episode too.

I think the main problem is that some fanbois take the show far too seriously and really, really want it to be a proper grown-up serious show for the 50 year olds that they are. But that's not what Doctor Who has ever been about, or what the general UK audience want or expect from it. When it tries to be all dark and adult it alienates the general audience and the less-than-obsessive fans. It's like a few weirdos desperately wanting Eastenders to show graphic shootings and bodies being buried alive in the fresh cement of a Bow flyover by cockney gangsters whilst Ian Beale and Pat Butcher have a full-frontal explicit sex scene. That isn't Eastenders.

"...to average a total of around 6.7 million watching each episode."

When an average of 6.7m viewers is the result of losing viewers, that points to a rather strong show.


I thought I qualified as a fanboi because I enjoy the Moffat era, but I didn't realise you had to be 50 years old.

When did it become "fanbois" rather than "fanboys"?

Is it just that I'm really old??

Your personal information shows you are nowhere near being "really old".

"Fanbois" looks terribly French, doesn't it? I wonder if it's something to do with the Abbot of Fanbois who so nearly made an appearance in The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve.

Phew. Plummeting towards 50 but not there yet and have generally enjoyed the Moffat era...and all previous eras to a greater or lesser extent, so am not a fanboi. So am I a fanboy? Get so confused. Still, at my age, any expression which includes the word 'boy' I'll take. I just really like Doctor Who....

Oh dear. This has turned into another "The show is doomed"' "No it isn't" thread.

Same old same old.


<Sigh>

The Rugby World Cup started seriously clashing with the show for several weeks, starting in week 2 with England vs Wales

Yes, there is catchup available, but a certain amount of "non fan" audience will watch something if it's on, then not bother catching up if they miss it.

That's why scheduling still matters, not everyone watches a programme because they love or hate that show, sometimes people will watch it if there's nothing better to watch on TV at that exact time.

And, to an extent the 2nd episode of series usually shows a drop on the 1st. The 1st episode of any series is always the obvious one to start watching from, and a few people may decide that show isn't for them

The point is that many people were dismissing decreasing overnights by saying that they don't matter anymore, it's the final aggregated figures that count. Well the final figures show a decline from 2014 to 2015 of 1.5m so that excuse doesn't really stand up.

"What more could you want?" How about a decent plot and Daleks that actually did something rather than being there purely for decoration?

The Star Wars and Buck Rogers effect definitely had an impact, but people seem to be forgetting the 1979 ITV strike which led to record figures for City of Death which wouldn't be maintained once ITV was back on air. And it's also a fact that it is previous episodes that are likely to have more of an effect on ratings than the current episodes, e.g. if people thought The Horns of Nimon was cack, they would be less inclined to tune in to The Leisure Hive.