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Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?
Simon Brew
The ratings are in for last weekend's excellent Doctor Who episode. And it seems most of Britain wanted Ant and Dec instead...
Ready to be depressed? Last Saturday night, the BBC broadcast a terrific slice of science fiction television, and by common consensus, the best episode of Doctor Who thus far this year. Silence In The Library – and you can read our thoughts on it here – was everything you could realistically want from the best part of an hour on a Saturday night.
Silence In The Library also gave Doctor Who its worst ratings of the year, as the programme – for the first time since it returned to the airwaves in 2005 – wasn’t even the most popular programme at the time it was being shown. 5.4 million viewers tuned in to see the programme, just over a quarter of the viewing audience at the time.
So what was everyone watching instead? What programmes were on that could have possibly eclipsed Doctor Who for quality, entertainment and Saturday night joy?
Britain’s Got fecking Talent.
ITV’s juggernaut hit 13 million viewers at its peak, and easily won the battle to be the most popular programme of the night. Also competing against the BBC’s own vacuous talent contest, I’d Do Anything, Doctor Who came in fifth for the day, and just scraped into the top 30 for the week.
If that’s what people choose to watch, then perhaps the schedules should just be a rolling programme of Coronation Street, EastEnders, Holby and reality TV shows. Oh, hang on…
Users Comments
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?It will be interesting to see what Sunday's BBC3 repeat does for that week. I reckon with the Eurovision-enforced week off the previous weekend, people simply forgot to tune in, and went for the Sunday repeat instead. | |
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?Welcome to the future of television. | |
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?We all know that people with brains watch stuff like Discovery, History etc, and in their spare time, Doctor Who. We also know that bad people watch the majority of programes that ITV has to offer.
We also know that I watch Doctor Who, and it was awesome. It really got me to thinking, best episode of who in the past 4 seasons? [I say specifically new who because I've not seen anything previous] | |
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?The good news being, of course, that this episode got an Ai of 89%! AND the viewing figures for the BBC repeat were much larger than normal. | |
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?B.G.T. has been murdering 'Who all season; isn't that why they moved it back to 7pm, or started it early? I can't remember which. | |
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?Concurrance from me. I just don't get the talent shows, especially the early rounds. For example, the early eps of American Idol are just an exercise in sado-masochism.
And it was such a good episode, how could someone choose Cowell over a Steve Moffat episode? | |
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?Be interested to see what the combined viewing figures the show plus the Sunday and Friday repeats. I suspect some people simply decided to watch the other side knowing they could see it either the following day or Friday or watch it online. The availability of repeats does rather make a mockery of ratings. | |
Re: Doctor Who Silence in the Library: a ratings flop?It was a good episode. Although I had to watch it through less than legal means since the BBC player doesn't work outside of England. Thanks BBC!! >: P
But when it comes to CBC I'll make sure to turn the lights down low and get spooked all over again. And then again when it comes out on DVD. | |
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