New Earth Overnight Ratings

The first overnight viewing figures are now in for New Earth and it seems to have maintained last year's strong performance: an average of 8.0 million viewers watched the episode, with an average 38.6 per cent audience share. The episode was not only BBC One's top-rated programme on Saturday evening and first in its timeslot, with the main competition - ITV1's Harry Potter movie - being watched by about 4.8m people (23.6%) while Doctor Who was on; it was also Saturday's top-rated television programme, with Casualty second-placed with 7.0m. The start of 'New Earth' saw an increase in BBC One's ratings of 2.1m, from 5.7m (30.9%) to 7.8m (38.5%), rising to a peak of 8.3m (39.0%) for the last fifteen minutes; when the episode finished, 2.9m people switched off BBC One. (This is in line with last year's episodes, when two to three million viewers came and went, specifically for Doctor Who.) These figures are also 1.0 million up on Doctor Who's performance in the overnights on the same Saturday last year ('Aliens of London' on 16 April), when an average of 7.0m (34%) were watching. The ratings success has been reported by BBC News and CBBC News. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon')