given that the total reach is unofficially compiled, it's just the raw data as far as i know.

however, i have to say I think you rather overstate the repeat factor of i player. My understanding is that only 5% or less of repeat views on tv are repeat viewers, I see no reason to assume that those viewing i player would be massively more than that.

Barb are looking to trial the inclusion of iplayer in to the final ratings at some point, which will likely give us some idea of the level of repeat viewings since they will only include one view per person in the data.

Well, 'Egyptian Goddess running riot on the Orient Express in Space' sounds like a fun, rompy episode to me.

But, yes, I agree with what you're saying...

Regards,

Cypher

I doubt it bumps any meaningful figure, other than the raw number of times an episode is streamed/downloaded. They know how to spot repeat watches from the same ip address. I think internally in the BBC what they see is one very keen household. And you bump up their iPlayer rating for the episode by 1. Probably. *waits to be shot down by knowledgeable people.*

You might be helping to keep it near the top of the "most watched" list in the iPlayer menu on screen, I suppose. There would have to be a lot of people doing what you do to drown out the noise of normal people. Sorry, I didn't mean "normal", I meant, er, "normal". You know what I mean.

What I don't think we know for sure, wrt iPlayer "views" is whether they represent someone watching the whole prog or just a part. If someone goes to iPlayer just to see the "fezzes are cool" bit, do they get counted as a single "viewing"?

K

Don't know, tbh, though I doubt that represents a big portion of the figures. At some point we will get more clarity around this, but quite when I don't know.....

I totally agree with you Tim.
I think it to be slightly naive of people to think that the BBC are not concerned about the figures. It costs a good chunk of the drama budget to make Doctor Who and to suggest the bosses are thinking "Hey, the timeshift viewers are OK" is a bit silly.

Why didn't the production team publicise it better? RTD always did. The cliffhanger of the Doctor in the Pandorica was not exciting enough either. We knew he would escape. There are many factors at stake here. Jay Hunt as controller is partly to blame. To allow the schedulers to demote it to 6.05pm is undefendable. The finale could and should have been trailed to the max and shown on Saturday and Sunday last week. It was wrong to sandwich it between two repeats of repeats.

I personally think the BBC will be asking questions. If they see Doctor Who as event TV (which I'm sure they do) they would expect the production team, the schedulers and controller to treat it as such as well. How can they make it "must see" TV again? What should be done to avoid lower audience figures during live broadcasts next year?

So, in honesty, the BBC will want to know that should they keep investing in a TV show that they will get the viewers the money involved should get.

They sure do. All they want is a request that registers their end and thats it. Go do some clicking .

sorry but that isn't true. The cliff hanger was praised by all and sundry as being one where it was impossible to know how it would be resolved. No one guessed that Amy would be in the pandorica. It was a great cliffhanger because it left it with no way out.

The show was publicised as much as it could be given that the whole country was obsessed with football all week.



I think the BBC were in a difficult situation here, I agree the show was damaged somewhat by being between two repeats but the BBC could do very little about that since they did not know they would not be having the England game that evening till two days before. I'm not sure what they could have done at that point to be fair, because in the instance of them not having the coverage you could hardly ask them to pull a new programme out of thin air. I think if you want to blame anyone in that regard, it should be our football team for messing up a very easy group. Even then, till injury time in the US game, England would have been playing on the BBC that evening.

In regards to airing it the prior weekend, as I said yesterday I understand some thought had been given to airing the two parters over the weekend, but then the series would have lasted only 10 weeks as opposed to 13, and that in itself has it's own pros and cons. To just decide to show the second half of the finale the weekend before last would have been silly....again they expected to have the england game, which would have been a boon to DW's ratings had this been the case. It went pear shape but on this occasion it isn't down to Jay Hunt at all.

It was also very heavily trailered. I saw it numerous times in the week even though I was on holiday at Butlins in the week and only home for short periods of the day. On Saturday I saw the trailer twice in one hour.


The BBC are not the same as commercial channels. They encourage and promote alternate options of watching a programme. We have evidence from several sources in this thread evidencing that they consider the total audience not the overnight ratings. I'm certainly not naive by any means, in fact I am logical and pragmatic in my thinking.

Possibly. Probably even. We just don't really know. But a massive rise in iPlayer usage has got to reflect some degree of first time viewer shift to online viewing.


According the BBC's own research, BBC Three repeats are 90 - 95% new/unique viewers. So that's what I do to the repeats to get final reach figures.


Why? The viewers timeshifting are still watching, still showing a keen interest, still justifying the spend on making the show. What does it matter to the BBC if people watch live or via timeshift?

If it did matter to them all that much, they wouldn't have invested so much in iPlayer.

As for what it costs the BBC to make Doctor Who - it gets the same budget per hour as other top level dramas that get recommissioned year after year with final (including timeshift) ratings that are no higher than Doctor Who's average overnight figure.


They are getting the viewers. It really isn't their problem if some people insist that many of those viewers don't count, for some inexplicable reason.

I'm definately not the most knowledgeable person but what I have said I know to be true, if you know what I mean .

Well, although your views are pragmatic, I still have no doubt that the BBC will be concerned by the overnights.

Jay Hunt is "partly" to blame along with everyone else as I said earlier. Whether or not the timeshift viewers are high, there is no getting past that overall some 2-3 million less people will have watched the final episode than previous ones. Incidentally, in the National press it has been suggested that viewers were switching off Saturday due to the plot being too confusing! The BBC also apparently received complaints. (The Sun/Monday).

two or three million? More like 1 - 1.5 million less than series 2 and 3 and actually more than the series 1 finale. And thats without factoring in i player views which will probably indicate more people watched it than series 2 and 3 as well.



That obviously isn't true since the ratings increased throughout the final and the high AI refutes any suggestion the plot was too complex pretty much stone dead. The Sun love to make things up.....ask the families of the Hillsborough victims!

Except that people didn't switch off. As is the norm for Doctor Who, the audience actually rose throughout.

The Audience Appreciation panel gave the episode the highest rating of the series, 89 (representing an average score by panelists of 8.9/10). That's the joint second highest AI rating Doctor Who has ever got (it's only been bettered twice) and only one point less than the point where the AI score is officially regarded as 'exceptional'.

The press, as they have a tendency to do, write bollocks. They place an importance on overnight figures that is absurdly out of date, and make stories out of things that aren't stories.

What a tasteless post.

True, though.

Ignoring the attempt at baiting in the post #1464 I just want to clarify a point: I do not consider the iplayer views more important than overnights and no where have I ever stated this is the case. I consider the final ratings (which are nothing to do with iplayer ratings) the most important. I do think one has to acknowledge the existence of i player data when considering ratings as they represent a legitimate audience in terms of the show.

Using the Hillsborough disaster to back up a point about Doctor Who ratings, and compounding that by using an exclamation mark to trivialise the issue, is the height of bad taste, no baiting required. Still I wouldn't expect any better from you.

Fair enough!

I recognise the importance of iplayer and PVR viewings, but one element I have been struggling with is the fact that there may be many thousands, like me, who watch it live then later watch it again after recording it so that the show can be put onto DVD.

If this is the case then surely taking into consideration that at least many of the PVR viewings may consist of repeat viewings, then the overall viewing figures are considerably less for original viewers. Therefore, while the figures to an extent are legitimate, they can't really be considered as 100% accurate.

well in terms of ratings data that is used officially, only one single viewing per person is counted in official data collected by BARB.

in terms of informal total reaches, there will be a number of repeat views, but it has been found that the number of repeat views is only in the 5% range, that may be higher for iplayer data, but at this time we don't know. Still I doubt it is significantly higher.

As i mentioned up thread, BARB are considering how to run a trial around moinitering i player views as they do TV showings, that is still some way off though.

BARB only count unique views in the final ratings. So if someone watches live, and then watches a recording of what they watched live, they only get counted once.

Of course, even if they didn't do that, the percentage who watch anything more than once in the same week is never going to be significant enough to make much of a difference.

Agreed: The Sun has a pretty dispiriting record...

nyingy

Agreed, they're liars full stop. I've got relatives there who were affected by the tragedy, and they still wouldn't buy that rag even 20 years on because of the crap they published that day.

The Sun has actually had very many articles about Doctor Who in the last six years, mostly positive, and has done a hell of a lot to promote the show (and thereby help increase ratings).

I remember their review of 'The Eleventh Hour' being absolutely glowing, praising Smith to the hilt!

Regards,

Cypher

They are still, however, lying scumbags.