When we get the final figures for THE, all the "panic" over the overnights will fall in the Crack

Oh well i didn't panic over those, because i could see the share was still much the same. But I think I will be a bit nervous till we get the ratings for tomorrow in. I hope they will be back up around the 6 million mark for oversights.

I'm very interested to see the kind of ratings we get for the next episode - i assume given the cast and writer there will be a far amount of promotion in the run up to the episode and that the media will talk about it a lot this week, plus the story of Van Gogh is likely to appeal to casual viewers rather like the Chrisite one did I think.

5.7 million last night. Improved rating, but reduced share - (27.2% which may be the lowest nu who share I think)

Still I guess it's a decent recovery from last week, given that a lot of people may not have seen the last episode.

I hope that lays to rest the idea that millions more will tune in at 7pm..

Glad the figure increased but shame about the share and the later timeslot not "magically" healing the ratings...

In my view the days that 7pm was seen as the slot for DW with the wider audience is gone - they are looking at it start a good 45 minutes earlier now. On twitter last night many people were asking where was DW from 6.15pm onwards!

But the ratings for this week will be fine once we get the final ratings - 5.7 + 1.5 = 7.2 million. I'd say at least 7 million, which is actually pretty much in line with the final figures most epispdes are getting at this stage in the series.

As I said, I feel we will be back over 6 million next week. This weeks episode had a lot of ground to make up, probably was asking a bit too much of it to be straight back to normal given some people may not have seen part 1.

stunned it didnt do better at the 7pm slot

It's a big improvement on last weeks episode, It's on it's way back up again. This is a good thing. But as I have been saying for an awful long time, this idea that 7pm is the holy grail time slot for DW was always a myth. As I said, on twitter the expectation seemed to be that the show belongs earlier in the evening, when I expect it would have gotten the same viewing figure but a higher share.

27.2? ouch is that the lowest audience percentage since it cam back?

What can be done to rectify this? perhaps give it a coupls of weeks for people to get used to it being back in the 7pm slot? Here's hoping it picks up again next week.

The only reason I thought a later slot would have helped last week is because the weather was so hot. I thought more people would be out and about and a start of 6pm(ish) would make it harder for more families to get home in time for it.

Over all, I don't think a 7pm slot makes a difference though.

It isn't on at 7pm next week, it's on a 6.40pm. It's on at 6.40pm to avoid a direct clash with the BGT final!

I don't really think there is anything that major that needs to be done to "rectify" things. It pulled back 1.2 million viewers from the prior week. Thats pretty good going. I think next week will see another increase in viewers since it will be a fresh story.

What people have to realise is that every series to date has seen a dip in viewers at some point for one reason or another. It's good we seem to be coming out the other side now.

And over all, there hasn't been a slow trend downwards either - last week was a 'blip' and I am sure the complete figures for last week will be between 6m-7m. Over all, this series is doing very well.

At most it might have added 400-500k to the overnights, a lot of which will have come off the time shift. (Thats based on the share the episode got and the extra number of viewers at 7pm last week, not just a figure plucked out of the aire, btw! )

I think it's quite interesting psychologically to see how people react to figures. Had we gotten 300k more this week no one would have been fussed by the share I don't think, I just think people feel that unless the show hits 6 million on overnights it has failed in some way. I think we need to adjust our thinking a bit more and except that we really need to wait till we get final ratings in these days to judge the success or otherwise of an episode!

yes the drop off last week was pretty damn massive. Thats why I think we have to realise the weather was a big factor in that, in relation to that we had a decent recovery this week, but I can imagine there will have been some casual viewers that decided not to watch the second part as they missed part one. Not a huge number, bit significant nonetheless.

I feel next weeks overnights will be the test really. If, as I think, it will see ratings back over 6 million, there really is no need to stress about anything.

I've just been reading back through the thread - can someone explain what this means?? For some reason I can't decide whether it means Merlin is doing badly, so DW for one week was doing AS badly, or that Merlin's figures sometimes start low but usually shift a lot by the time the final numbers come in.

Merlin was a pretty solid show ratings wise for the BBC, especially given it had an earlier start time than DW quite often. I think the point was that for one week DW performances was kind of on par with a solid early evening drama rather than being far ahead of them (at least on overnights).

I still feel that whether its on at 6.15 or 6.45 or 7pm, it needs to be consistant scheduling for the whole 13 episdoes, people develop habits around watching programmes and moving Who around the Saturday night schedules like the BBC has done this series does not help build a regular audience. I think the increase in those watching on iplayer and the likes reflect this issue.

Actually I think the way they have treated the scheduling of what is one of their flagship shows has been pretty lousy so for a new series that needed to re-establish itself with so many changes.

Ah ha! Thank you That makes more sense that way. I quite like Merlin actually, and didn't think it had been doing too badly for its slot (it's getting another series anyway), but I know Doctor Who is the big Saturday teatime show so it's usually a good million ahead!

Thanks for clarifying!

thing is though that people seem to forget that other than series 1 the show hasn't ever really had a stable slot, and indeed the nature of Saturday evening TV tends to mean that getting the same slot week on week is pretty uncommon, this is due to the fluctuating nature of the schedule during the day - e.g live sport - and the changing running times of some shows of an evening - eg Over The Rainbow. Even DW itself has had somewhat variable running times this series.

I'd also point to the fact that series 1 didn't actually manage to retain it's audience being in the same slot every week bar one, so it doesn't really strengthen your argument.

You said earlier, the 7pm slot didn't make a difference, then you just said that it did 1.2m better than last week? The 1m ish figure is what was recognised as the difference the 45 minutes earlier start time makes.

The conclusion seems obvious to me, but not to you.

It got more viewers at 7pm this week but a lower share. It also got lower viewing figures than every other episode this series bar last weeks in a later slot. These factors do disprove the notion that being on at 7pm brings in millions of viewers that wouldn't have otherwise watched it.

Last weeks ratings were not the normal overnight ratings the show gets, they were down due to the extremely hot weather. Your basic point of comparison is highly flawed, you need to look at the average overnight ratings this year, not cherry pick the atypical result.

I dunno, my personal viewing habits, I know that for long running series they are on at a set time on a set day each week, then you know that if it's something you plan to watch all/most of then you can mentally plan your day around it.

Common sense would suggest that moving a show around the schedule a lot will mean some viewers will find it too much hassle to stick with it every week and some will miss a few episodes and give up!

Mind you, doesn't matter to me as I live on the other side of the globe these days, and Prime managed to show Doctor Who is on at the same time every Sunday, if only the Beeb could treat it with the same respect

Out of interest, which series of the new series has been moved around the scheuldes the most??

But the viewing figures the show has generally got over the last few seasons tends to disprove this though, whatever common sense might tell you...

Hmm lets see

series 2

earliest start time: 6.40
latest start time: 7.25

series 3:

earlies start time: 6.45
latest start time: 7.15

series 4:

earliest start time: 6.20
latest start time: 7.15

series 5:

earliest start time: 6:00
latest start time: 7:00

I guess in terms of the range, you'd say this series has marginally the widest, however, thats slightly unfair because apart from the one 6pm and one 7pm episode, the others have all aired within 20 minutes of each other.

I added the bit at the bottom of my last post, do you know, roughly, which of the series has had its episodes shifted around most on its broadcast time?

What do you think the increase in the iplayer etc viewers is due to this season?

So how many have episodes have actually aired at the same time on subequent weeks? Is it getting a chance to build up the audience ina regular slot or not?