The Space Channel, the Canadian broadcaster of Doctor Who, has given Doctor Who News an update on the final ratings for Series 9.


While Doctor Who has remained their most watched program, the average viewership has gone down over the final few episodes. In November Doctor Who News reported that an average of 731,000 people watched per episode. All ratings only cover traditional television viewers including PVR, not those who watched via apps or online.

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.

The Husbands of River Song has debuted in Australia, averaging 575,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. The story was the highest rating ABC drama of the day and the tenth highest rating program of the day overall. These ratings do not include iview, regional or time-shifted 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.

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.

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.

Doctor Who: Hell Bent 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 most appreciated programme on Saturday evening was the BBC two repeat of the comedy Dad's Army, which scored 88

Hell Bent has debuted in Australia, averaging 534,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. The story was the highest rating ABC drama of the day and the tenth highest rating program of the day overall. These ratings do not include iview, regional or time-shifted viewers.

Meanwhile, including time-shifted viewers, Face The Raven averaged 657,000 consolidated viewers in the five major capital cities. With 175,000 extra viewers it was the highest time-shifted program of the day (the second highest time-shifted program only had 135,000 extra viewers) and the tenth highest rating program of the day overall. These ratings do not include iview or regional viewers.

4.8 million viewers watched the series nine finale, Doctor Who: Hell Bent, according to unofficial overnight viewing figures.

The episode had a 21.5% share of the total Television audience.

Doctor Who's figure was slightly inflated by the late running of Strictly Come Dancing which was top for the day with 10.5 million watching. ITV managed 7.7 million for I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! which was ahead of The X Factor which had 6.8.million viewers.

On the overnight figures, Doctor Who was 5th for the day, behind Pointless Celebrities which had 5.5 million.

Final figures will be released next week based on the exact running time of the episode and the number watching within one week.