The Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff have announced themes and events that will take place over the course of the Bank Holiday week (Saturday 28th May through to Saturday 4th June):

• The costume worn by new sidekick Bill, as played by Pearl Mackie in the special introduction broadcast in April will be on display for a limited time.
• The TARDIS memorial for Clara created by Rigsy, seen in the closing moments of Face The Raven, will also be on display.
• The original Davros prop from his premiere story Genesis of the Daleks has been restored, and is presented with details from visual and model effects designer Mike Tucker who undertook the restoration (including the unearthing of the earliest head casts).
• Millennium FX will be on-hand to part-transform visitors into Zygons! (31st May/1st June)
• Visitors are encouraged to cosplay as their favourite companion in order to celebrate the exhibition's Companion Week (and share through social media via @DW_Experience and #BeTheCompanion

For full details visit the Doctor Who Experience website.

Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song, had an official rating of 7.69 million viewers.

The final rating includes those who watched the programme within one week of transmission. It is an increase of nearly 2 million on the initially reported figure.

Christmas Day saw some impressive timeshift figures. The top programme of the week was the final episode of ITV's Downton Abbey, which increased its audience by four million to finish with an official audience of 10.92 million.

A substantial timeshift was also achieved by the BBC's highest rated programme, Mrs Brown's Boys, which finished with 9.49 million watching. Other BBC programmes doing well included Call the Midwife with 9.3 million, Stick Man with 9.28 million, and Strictly Come Dancing with 8.54 million. The Boxing Day showing of the Agatha Christie mystery And Then There Were None also scored highly with 8.61 million viewers.

The Queen's Christmas Broadcast to the Commonwealth had 6.35 million watching on BBC One but, once ITV's figures were added, it just edged above Doctor Who with 7.76 million viewers.

Doctor Who was 8th for the week and 7th for Christmas Day. It achieved higher ratings than the ubiquitous soaps Coronation Street, EastEnders and Emmerdale.

Since the series returned in 2005 there have been eleven Christmas day episodes, the most successful being the 2007 episode starring Kylie Minogue, Voyage of the Damned.

In the United States The Husbands of River Song achieved a 1.242m Live+ SD Rating on BBC America.

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The BBC Four repeat of the 1977 story The Face of Evil, had mixed fortunes according to unofficial overnight viewing figures.

Part one on Monday had an average of 141,000 viewers, above the timeslot average of 79,000. Part Two, which followed directly had an average of 183,000 watching, below the timeslot average of 268,000.

However just 56,000 tuned in for Part Three on Tuesday evening, rising to 88,000 for the story's conclusion.

Final figures will be released next week, and will include those who recorded the programme and watched it later.

Parts one and Two had an Appreciation Index score of 84 with Parts Three and Four scoring 83.

Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song had an Audience Appreciation or AI score of 82.

The Appreciation Index or AI is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. The score, out of a hundred, is compiled by a specially selected panel of around 5,000 people who go online and rate and comment on programmes.

The BBC's highest score of the evening went to Call the Midwife on BBC One which scored 88.

On BBC Three, the Boxing Day repeat of Doctor Who was watched by 0.26 million viewers.

5.77 million viewers watched the christmas special, Doctor Who: The Husbands of River Song, according to unofficial overnight viewing figures.

The episode had a 29.4% share of the total Television audience.

The most watched programme on Christmas Day was the final instalment of Downton Abbey, with 6.9 million watching, giving ITV the top spot.

The BBC's highest offering was the Christmas edition of Strictly Come Dancing, which had 6.5 million viewers. Mrs Brown's Boys and Stick Man also did well as did Coronation Street and Call the Midwife, making Doctor Who the 7th most watched programme of the day, just above EastEnders.

Official figures will be released in 9 days time.

It's time for our traditional "Predict the Ratings" competition, and this year you will be in with a chance to win The Husbands of River Song on Blu-ray or DVD ... alongside the latest adventures of the twelfth Doctor when The Complete Ninth Series is released next year!


Last year ratings on television were down across the board, with none of the Christmas Day shows managing to break the 10 million mark - Last Christmas ended up in sixth place with 8.28m viewers. In previous years, you can view the final ratings for The Christmas Invasion, The Runaway Bride, Voyage of the Damned, The Next Doctor, The End of Time part one, A Christmas Carol, The Doctor, The Widow and The Wardrobe, The Snowmen and The Time of the Doctor via This Week in Doctor Who.

The show's best position occured in 2009 when The End Of Time (part one) arguably achieved the top spot with 12.05m viewers (11.57m on BBC One and 0.47m on BBC HD). However, it was the 2007 special, Voyage of the Damned that achieved the best rating in the decade of specials, reaching 13.31m viewers (but pipped at the post by Eastenders at 14.38m!).



To enter the competition, please send the following details to comp-ratings@doctorwhonews.net:

• Your name and preferred email address
• Your country of entry (full details will be requested only if you are the winner)
• Your guess at the final rating to the nearest 10,000 (eg.9.99m)
• Tie breaker: also send your guess as to what the final rating for the BBC3 repeat on Boxing Day might be - this figure will only be used in the event of a tie!

Terms and Conditions:

• The competition closes at 08:30 GMT, 26th December 2015.
• Only one entry will be accepted per person.
• The competition is open worldwide.
• BARB final figures are expected in early 2016; we will contact the winner once they have been published.
• The winner will be able to confirm the region and format of the boxed set they'd like nearer release date.

Odds on Who

At the time of writing, the (average) betting odds for the main channels are as follows:

Time       BBC One                                Odds    ITV                                Odds 
 3:00pm    The Queen                                                                         34/1
 3:10pm    Brave                                  69/1    Cameraman to the Queen               -
 4:10pm                                                   Countrywise Winter Wonderland     100/1
 4:35pm    BBC News and Weather                     -
 4:45pm    Stick Man                             100/1
 5:00pm                                                   For The Love Of Dogs              130/1
 5:15pm    Doctor Who                             28/1
 6:00pm                                                   ITV Evening News                     -
 6:15pm    Strictly Come Dancing                   9/1    You've Been Framed With Bells On  100/1
 6:45pm                                                   Emmerdale                         109/1
 7:30pm    Call The Midwife                       14/1 
 7:45pm                                                   Coronation Street                  77/2
 8:45pm    Eastenders                              9/2    Downton Abbey                       9/2
 9:45pm    Mrs Browns Boys                         7/10
10:45pm    Michael McIntyre's Big Christmas Show  62/1    Our Cilla                          91/1

Having been in the top spot three years running, Mrs Brown's Boys remains the favourite for this year. Eastenders, which topped the charts in 2010 and 2011, and the final episode of Downton Abbey are currently joint second, followed by Strictly Come Dancing and Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Hell Bent had an official consolidated rating of 6.17 million viewers.

The rating issued by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, or BARB, includes all those who watched the programme within one week of transmission. It does not include those watching online via iPlayer

Doctor Who was the 10th most watched programme on BBC Television, and 4th overall on Saturday, again overtaking Pointless Celebrities.

The episode finished at 29th in the weekly chart.

Strictly Come Dancing topped the ratings for the week with 11.93 million viewers. Once again the top ten was dominated by the latest series of I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here taking seven of the top ten places.

Live +7 Figures are now available for the first half of Series Nine.

The Live+7 figure is calculated by the BBC to try to get an accurate estimate of the total unique audience for an episode of a programme. Unlike official BARB figures the Live+7 uses data to include those who watched one of the broadcast repeats of the episode and those who watched the episode on iPlayer all within 7 days of the original transmission.

The figures show an average of 60% of the audience watch Doctor Who on the day of transmission, either as a Live broadcast or as a delayed viewing via a PVR. A further 26.8% of the audience watch the programme, via a recording, within 7 days of the original transmission. 11.9% now watch on iPlayer, up from an average of 9% last year.

The number watching a scheduled repeat has dropped sharply this year, from an average of 4% last year, to an average of just 1.3% this year. With on demand services now so readily available, the audience no longer needs to seek out a scheduled repeat to catch up with the programme. The decline of the audience watching on BBC Three caused the BBC to cancel the regular repeat on BBC Three from episode four onwards. The only repeat was the late night. signed version on BBC Two, which had an average of 40,000 viewers.

Overall Doctor Who's total Live +7 ratings are down around 1.5 million on the 2014 figures, to average a total of around 6.8 million watching each episode.

Further analysis of the Appreciation Index figures are available, with a marked difference in appreciation between different age groups. The 16-34 age group appeared to enjoy the series far more than the over 55 group. While there have been small differences in AI figures previous years, the contrast this year is quite large, with the lower age group scoring the series around 5 points higher than the older viewers.

The most marked difference was for the penultimate episode featuring just the Doctor, Heaven Sent, which scored an AI figure of 85 for viewers aged 16-34, but only 76 for those aged over 55.

The female viewers rated the series slightly higher than the male viewers, although the programme is now watched by slightly more male viewers than female with an average of 52% of the audience being male, in contrast to a 50/50 split in past years.

The AI panel is also asked questions on how they see the series, with around 59% thinking it is high quality and 50% felt it was fresh and new. Around 20% of the audience felt the initial stories were thought provoking, with the figure rising to over 30% near the end of the series. 1% found them offensive.

The Christmas double edition of the Radio Times is now generally available, containing all the programming details of the main UK channels for the festive period - including of course the premiere of The Husbands of River Song on Christmas Day itself at 5:15pm, which features as one of "the very best of TV, Film and Radio this Christmas".

The magazine also features a two page interview with Peter Capaldi, during which he talks about the departure of Jenna Coleman this year:

As well as this Christmas's new episode, Doctor Who continues to be available to watch on other digital channels/ After a short break Watch returns with a daily dose of the tenth Doctor from the 20th December leading up to a double dose of Christmas specials on the day itself as he encounters The Next Doctor through to The End of Time; post-Christmas it's the turn of the eleventh Doctor to dominate the afternoon schedules. Meanwhile, Horror Channel continue their latest run though the 'classic' era, with Christmas Day seeing the fourth Doctor end up dealing with the Horror of Fang Rock.

However, there's more fourth Doctor action on BBC4 on the 28th/29th December as the channel broadcasts The Face of Evil! As Patrick Mulkern observes in the Radio Times:

Odds on Who

With the Christmas Day scheduled firmly locked down, bets are firmly in the running as to how those shows will fare with viewers. Here are the average odds across the various agencies at the time of writing:

Time        BBC One                              Odds     ITV                                Odds   
 3:00pm     The Queen                                                                        32/1
 3:10pm     Brave                                  -      Cameraman to the Queen               -
 4:10pm                                                   Countrywise Winter Wonderland        -
 4:35pm     BBC News and Weather                   -
 4:45pm     Stick Man                              -
 5:00pm                                                   For The Love Of Dogs              100/1
 5:15pm     Doctor Who                            24/1
 6:00pm                                                   ITV Evening News                     -
 6:15pm     Strictly Come Dancing                 14/1    You've Been Framed With Bells On     -
 6:45pm                                                   Emmerdale                         115/1
 7:30pm     Call The Midwife                      26/1 
 7:45pm                                                   Coronation Street                  27/1
 8:45pm     Eastenders                            11/2    Downton Abbey                       3/1
 9:45pm     Mrs Browns Boys                       evens
10:45pm     Michael McIntyre's Big Christmas Show   -     Our Cilla                          71/1

Mrs Brown's Boys is the runaway favourite at present which is unsurprising as it has been the highest rated show three years in a row, with second placed Eastenders topping the chart in 2010 and 2011. The odds currently place Doctor Who as the fifth most likely to top the chart: in 2009 The End Of Time (part one) arguably achieved the top spot on Christmas Day, when the combined viewers on BBC One (11.57m) and the simulcast BBC HD (0.47m) made a total of 12.05m versus The Royle Family's combined total of 11.92m and Eastenders of 11.67m.

Last year none of the Christmas shows managed to break the 10 million mark, with Doctor Who ending up in sixth place with its 8.28m viewers. Could Alex Kingston's return in The Husbands of River Song lead to the crown once again being in the show's grasp once the consolidated ratings are known? It won't be too long to find out, and in the meantime readers can watch out for the launch of our annual Guess the ratings competition soon!

Doctor Who: Heaven Sent had an official consolidated rating of 6.19 million viewers.

The rating issued by the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board, or BARB, includes all those who watched the programme within one week of transmission. It does not include those watching online via iPlayer

Doctor Who was the 7th most watched programme on BBC Television, and 4th overall on Saturday, overtaking Pointless Celebrities which was ahead in the overnight reports.

The episode finished at 27th in the chart.

Strictly Come Dancing topped the ratings for the week with 11.55 million viewers. Once again the top ten was dominated by the latest series of I'm a Celebrity, Get me Out of Here taking seven of the top ten places.