> Only 6.8 million folks tuned in to Peter Capaldi's debut, far from the > 9.9M that welcomed Eccleston or the 7.7M that saw Matt Smith... the > Variety > <http://variety.com/2014/tv/news/doctor-who-season-opener-starring-peter-capaldi-grabs-33-share-in-u-k-1201289236/> > > (link) writer noted it's a holiday weekend in the UK, not a good thing for > anyone's ratings... >
This is overstating things a bit, to be honest. It's been referred to here as "lowest rated Doctor debut since 2005" but there are mitigating circumstances for that. Eccleston's was the first episode for a decade and Tennant was on Christmas Day where everything gets enormous audiences. I noticed one article the other day using the figure for Tennant's final episode as Smith's debut, which is a bit off. The only fair comparison is with Smith's debut in April 2010, but that was before iPlayer and catch-up viewing ballooned to massive levels, some episodes of Doctor Who in the last few years have increased their ratings by nearly two million when they're all included. Yes, it was a holiday weekend - but the weather was awful in most places. One other mitigating factor was that the episode started at 7.50 and ran until after nine o'clock. That's the latest Doctor Who has ever been shown in the modern era (the TV Movie in 1996 ran to 10pm, but that's it) and I'm sure that must have had some impact because it's got an enormous child audience and there must have been more recording than usual. The good news from Who's perspective is that it was the highest rated show of the night by absolutely miles and one of the highest rated of the week and the demographics would have been absolutely fabulous. No chance of it being in any kind of danger of the axe. And it was brilliant as well, of course. Even my dad managed to last five minutes before falling asleep, which is praise indeed by his standards. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
