April 2005 Archives
Figures seem up a little this week, and as expected the new "competition" - Celebrity Wrestling - is a complete flop with barely half the ratings of Ant & Dec.
The consolidated figures are much as expected this week 720,000 extra viewers for Who, a handful for the wrestling. A position behind Casualty looks like it might be a regular spot in the viewing figures.
Note I've added extra ITV items to show all the shows that had higher viewing figures than Doctor Who as well as its actual competition by timeslot (i.e. Celebrity Wrestling).
The first signs of a slip for episode 4, as 300,000 viewers and 2.1% of the share vanish from the overnights, with Ant & Dec now (barely) leading.
Update: Now the consolidated figures are in and, as expected, Doctor Who pulls ahead again, just. However it is now behind Casualty for the first time.
So to week 3 and the ratings are back up nearly a million, but other than that not much has changed. The audience share is steady at 36%, again it is the top non-soap show on BBC, and Ant & Dec's figures are only up a million as well so still behind.
Interestingly the difference between the overnight average and the final figures (including timeshifting) is decreasing, from nearly a million for episode 1 to half that now.
And so to week 2, the initial curiosity has worn off, and with it nearly 3 million viewers have switched off. However they haven't defected to Ant & Dec - despite their trying to get a lead in by moving their start time to 6:45pm and roping in Tony Blair as the special guest star of the week - as they lose over a million themselves.
So viewing generally is down this week, but Doctor Who is still the top drama on BBC, being beaten only be Eastenders and Match of the Day.
For ease of comparison I'm going to start posting here the Doctor Who ratings that I find. Grows week by week into a complete collection! Ahem, well, there's two sets of results here. The column labelled Consolidated are the official viewing figures from the BARB web site. These include time-shifting viewing and so take over a week to arrive. The other figures are the overnight values which come out on Sunday and I take from wherever I see them first. They include the average viewing figures, the peak audience and the audience share.
I'm listing the top 10 shows for BBC1 and ITV1 plus the competition - wherever it appears.
Lastly there'll be a bit of commentary on the figures from me.
So to the first week figures and the publicity blitz pays dividends with Rose being the seventh highest rated programme on TV that week being beaten only by two episodes of Eastenders and four episodes of Coronation Street (conversely managing to beat 2 episodes of Eastenders, 1 of Corrie and the whole of Emmerdale). The opposition (Ant & Dec) were soundly trounced despite their extra special guest star of David Beckham.
