Doctor Who and Scheduling

It looks likely that, in terms of viewers, Doctor Who had its worst opening night since the show came back on Saturday. Still streets ahead of the last season of the classic show, mind. That struggled to breach the four million mark way back when Battlefield began.

Of course, there are a number of different reasons why the viewing figures might be down (but remain far from catastrophic). The warm weather will have meant that some (in my completely biased opinion) utterly mental people may have rather stayed in the garden that coming indoors to watch Doctor Who live. Plus, the way we watch things has changed. The vast majority of TV I watch is watched online, and I think this may impact of the ratings for pretty much everything bar live contests (like The X Factor) and live sporting events where, if you don't see the live transmission, you run the risk of someone telling you the result and thus having the whole thing ruined for you.

But there is something the production team can do to get better ratings. Something relatively simple (even if achieving it is not). And that's get the transmission time moved back to 7pm. I always got the impression that RTD fought tooth and claw to get the show on at 7pm, and he was exactly right about that. 6pm is too early - it's too late to be the afternoon, but too early to be the evening. Furthermore, many people who work on a Saturday are only just heading home at 6pm, meaning they miss the initial transition. By 7pm many of them will be home, and ready to start watching.

So if the producers want more people to watch then they should have that battle with the BBC and get the show on at 7pm. Forget the weather and the use of internet TV; decent scheduling is as much a part of the popularity of the show now as it has ever been.