Doctor Who, Ratings and Success

One of the sticks that those who like their Doctor Who to be anondyne and without any complexity have been using to bash the Steven Moffat era is that the ratings were down. The fact that just 6.52 million people watched The Impossible Astronaut is, according to them, a damning indictment of that story. Of course, it is worth pointing out that (1) people couldn't have known that the story was going to be complicated before watching it, so surely that can't account for the dip in ratings and (2) the number of people watching a programme is no indication of its quality. Around double of the number of people watched Attack of the Cybermen on its first broadcast than watched Ghost Light on its first broadcast; doesn't stop the latter from being a little piece of genius and the former being, well, not that good.

But all of that is predicated on the assumption that the ratings for The Impossible Astronaut were, in some way, disappointing. Actually, the consolidated ratings put the episode at 8.86 million - the second highest rated programme of the day, and sixth overall for the week. On BBC America, it got 1.3 million viewers - making it the most watched programme in that channel's history. And then we get the news that 4.11 million people recorded the programme - making it the most recorded programme in TV history. To me, this is not evidence of a TV programme struggling to find viewers, but rather of a show in rude health.

The reality is that people are watching TV in increasingly different ways. When you can record things and watch them online, the need to watch them on their initial broadcast diminishes. Of course, if Doctor Who's production team want more people to watch that initial broadcast, they could push it to later in the day's schedule - but that's another story...