It's to do with the changing nature of how people watch tv. We are moving to an era where more and more people will watch what they want when they want to, it;s happening across the board, but it's more pronounced with DW because it has a more sophisticated audience, in terms of them knowing the range of ways of watching the show and how to access them/

I for one would like to see Dr Who moved to a teatime slot in October/November, I Think the show would be perfect autumnal viewing and think ratings would improve as well.

three aired at 6.25, one aired at 6.20, one aired at 6.30. I don;t think one can quibble about five minutes here or there.

people may believe that but there isn't really any evidence to back up this idea. I don't think the BBC are going to take such a big gamble when they know it gets good ratings this time of year. It's just pie in the sky, like the people who think it'll get millions more viewers than average at 7pm.

5 mins makes a big difference when organising families and dinners and bedtimes I suspect

I seriously doubt it.

and i know plenty about the subject.

I suspect the new, more fairytale, feel to the show and the new way it is being shot/different colour pallet etc would be more suited to not being shown on lovely bright early evenings and suited more to the darker earlier nights.

I agree. I've always thought DW was the perfect curtains-closed, huddled-round-the-fire type programme.

Such a move would involve there being no Doctor Who for a year and a half. If the BBC had an interest in doing it, it would have happened this year. Since it didn't, take it as read it won't be happening.

The BBC are delighted to have a show in the early evening slot that brings in good viewing figures this time of year. They already have shows in the autumn that do the same. Why would they want to put all their eggs in one basket?

The BBC have a lot more to consider than Doctor Who. hard to believe I know, but there you go...

Perhaps its about time they got back to making 26 episodes of Doctor Who a year then

lol now that really will never happen!

Then it would be stuck with X Factor and being pushed all over the place. As things stand January -following on from the Christmas special would be ideal imo. At the end of the day, playing out this kind of "hide behind the sofa" family drama is lost when its 25C outside. Tennants charisma maintained an audience even in the hottest temps, but Im not sure Matt Smith can carry things in the same way. Overnight ratings less than 6 million are treading dangerous ground with an expensive show like this and if these figures carry on questions will be asked behind closed doors.

Overnight ratings are in decline across the board because there are so many ways to view a programme these days. Doctor Who this year is time shifting amazingly well, People really do need to stop just looking at overnight ratings, they become less and less meaningful. If the timeshifts are in line with this series to date, last nights episode will have maybe 7 - 7.2 million, well in line with comparable episodes in past series - higher than some in fact.

And you know, the BBC are more interested in final ratings and total reach than overnights in spite of what you might think.

Oh and thanks to crazzy for reminding me the lowest overnight share actually belongs to Silence in the library, with 25.4%

Some one already posted something about the BBC not being worried about the ratings last week didn't they? And if they weren't worried last week...they certianly won't be this week....

trouble is people lose perspective when it comes to this show. It gets an overnight rating that most drama series would die for and people make out like it's some kind of epic disaster.

It was the 3rd most watched show on TV, for goodness sake people!!!

What people need to remember is that DW remains (almost every week) the most popular Drama Series on Television (Continuing Drama is obviously a different genre strand.) After 6 years that is a pretty impressive track record by anyone's reckoning.

In my opinion, the only real way to gauge falling popularity is to wait until the Viewer Voted awards season comes round again - once DW fails to make the shortlists for nominations, then it will probably start to ring alarm bells at the BBC but that shows no sign of happening in the foreseeable future.

i'm not really sure i agree with that!

I think we can gauge popularity at the end of the series by looking at the AI's and ratings across the series, something like winning an award or not is rather arbitrary.....I mean surely there will be a push for A2A in a lot of category's this next awards season, and if it does take a lot of prizes that would be less a reflection on DW than on the affection people have for several years of one programme that won;t be around any more!

Undoubtedly, but most Mags and the NTA have viewer voted shortlists - DW can't win everytime but it still makes the shortlists.

oh yes i agree there i am sure.

It could feasibly work in an autumn slot. Merlin seems to get good viewing figures in the early evening slot as it's shown before SCD. However, considering the BBC keep clashing SCD with the X-Factor it could be a problem but with darker and colder nights it might get better viewers. It certainly did with the classic series.

so why would they want to move Doctor Who then? The BBC have a lot more to think about than one tv show.

Oh I'm not saying it should be moved. I was speculating on the other poster's view that it could be moved to autumn. I was just pointing out in my last post the pros and cons of such a move but as you say, it would probably be best to keep it where it is. Otherwise we'd have a long time to wait each year for a new series, it was agony waiting for Easter this year!

I don't know what the writers have got planned but a series of six Sat/Sun two parters might be good, the two parter we have just seen was really good at building tension in part one and then the major action in part two, imagine that over two nights, times six, could be a winner?

there was a rumour going around that the two parters might be over a weekend this series, but I think that was just because some people seemed to think (wrongly) that it wouldn't be possible to avoid DW going up against Englands world cup matches otherwise. Mind you given how miserably the team have played the lat couple of games god knows why anyone thinks they have a shot at progressing to the latter stages.

I tend to think the 13 week format is liable to be pretty set in stone from a production perspective though.