Christmas Ratings/AI Report

The final BARB ratings (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) have been released for the Children in Need special that aired last November. The ratings show that the quarter-hour that featured the Children in Need mini-episode gained 10.8m viewers, the highest Doctor Who-related audience since the first broadcast of "Rose" in March. The previous fifteen-minute segment of CiN had 10.1m viewers and the subsequent fifteen minutes saw a drop back down to 10.0m. Note that, as with the overnight ratings previously reported on Outpost Gallifrey, it remains difficult to be exact, since viewers in Scotland saw the special a few minutes later than the rest of the country.

Meanwhile, according to overnight ratings provided by ViewingFigures, 501,700 viewers (2.7% audience share) tuned in for BBC3's repeat of The Christmas Invasion on New Years Day. Though it wasn't in the top ten for the week on the non-terrestrial channels (beaten by episodes of The Simpsons and Little Britain among others), it ranks at or slightly below average from the second-run BBC3 repeats from series one... the difference being that it achieved this score on a holiday. BARB ratings are due very shortly for the original Christmas Day broadcast of "The Christmas Invasion".

Finally, the initial Audience Appreciation Index (AI) figure for "The Christmas Invasion" has now been reported at 84. The figure will likely change for the 'final' version (the final figure usually released two months or so after broadcast, after all figures are taken into account) but the initial version was the second-highest AI ranking on Christmas Day, beaten only by ITV's broadcast of "Creature Comforts". (Thanks to Steve Tribe, Keith Topping)