The Impossible Astronaut had a final consolidated audience figure of 8.86 million viewers, a 43.3% share of the total TV audience, according to figures released by Barb.

The number includes those who recorded the programme for viewing within 7 days of its initial showing. The figure is over two million higher than the initial overnight reported rating. A full report for the week, which will reveal the shows position in the weekly charts will be released by Barb on Tuesday.

The figures do not include those watching on iPlayer, where over 300,000 accessed the programme within the first two days following transmission.

The Impossible Astronaut had roughly the same final audience as other new series openers, excluding those with a new Doctor. New Earth had 8.6 million, Smith And Jones 8.7m and Partners In Crime 9.1 million.

An additional 0.47 million watched the BBC Three repeat on Friday.

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Meanwhile in Australia the show was the fourth watched programme of the day with around 0.86 million viewers in the five capital cities. The rating similar to that achieved by A Christmas Carol, shown on Boxing Day. It was only outranked by news programmes.

Both the US broadcast on BBC America and the Australian broadcast on ABC1 of the new series of Doctor Who have included an additional introduction before the main opening titles. This has been presented in a form of a reprise through the eyes of Amy of her adventures with the Doctor to date.


(with thanks to Anthony Swan

5.4 million viewers tuned in to watch Day of the Moon in the UK yesterday, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The rating is a drop of a million on the series opener, not helped by the early timeslot and the sunny weather across the UK for the Bank Holiday weekend. However Doctor Who was still the second most watched programme on British television Saturday Night, with Britain's Got Talent once more topping the charts with 9.5 million. Nothing else on Saturday night achieved more then 5.0 million viewers.

Up against Doctor Who, New People Do the Funniest Things on ITV1 was watched by 1.9 million, up half a million on the programme shown last week.

Doctor Who inherited just 1.7 million viewers from its predecessor, Don't Scare the Hare, which, with an average of just 1.4 million viewers has lost a quarter of its viewers since last week, not surprisingly as the premier show achieved one of the poorest AI scores of all time. Doctor Who's audience peaked at 5.7 million for the last 15 minutes, with the BBC One audience dropping to 2.9 million as the programme finished.

Od the audience, 0.67 million watched on BBCOne HD.

Doctor Who is currently 35th for the week. although this position should change substantially when final figures are released and a top twenty place is still possible.

On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential had 0.36 million viewers, with an additional 32,000 watching on BBC HD, a drop of 200,000 on last week, not helped by the gap between the end of Doctor Who on BBC One and the start of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three.

As reported earlier in the week, the BBC have now released a "prequel" for next week's episode, The Curse of the Black Spot, featuring a journal entry from the Captain of the good ship Fancy (played by Hugh Bonneville):



In addition, the episode trailer is now available to watch, alongside the "Next Time" trailer from this week's episode, Day of the Moon:

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The Curse of the Black Spot will premiere on BBC1/BBC1HD at 6:15pm, 7th May in the United Kingdom; then follows on SPACE in Canada at 8:00pm ET, BBC America in the United States at 9:00pm ET, and on ABC1 in Australia at 7:30pm on the 14th May.


 

The BBC have released a small clip from tonight's Doctor Who Confidential which features Matt Smith demonstrating his prowess with a portable camera!



Doctor Who Confidential is on tonight on BBC Three and BBC HD at 7:00pm.

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Meanwhile, BBC America released the fifth in their series of online behind-the-scenes features; this edition of Doctor Who Insider is entitled On The Set:

Following on from the first "prequel" for The Impossible Astronaut, the BBC have announced the second of their mini-episode preludes, this time providing an introduction to episode three, The Curse of the Black Spot, due to be broadcast on 7th May.

The full prequel will be available from here and the BBC website on 6:45pm Saturday, straight after the conclusion to Day of the Moon.

The BBC have released press details for episode four of the current series, The Doctor's Wife, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Richard Clark

The programme is due to be broadcast in the UK on Saturday 14th May at a time to be confirmed next week.

Meanwhile it has been confirmed that the UK Broadcast of Episode Three: The Curse of the Black Spot will be at the slightly later time of 6.15pm. It will again be sandwiched between Don't Scare the Hare and So You think You Can Dance. ITV1 will show New People Do the Funniest Things.

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut, scored an Appreciation Index figure of 88, one of the highest figures of the weekend.

The Appreciation Index, or AI figures is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the programme. It is a score out of 100 based on responses from a 5,000 strong panel.

The score is the joint highest ever received for a series opener, Smith and Jones also scored 88. Last year only two episodes managed a score of 88 or above. Only Lewis on ITV1 scored higher over the weekend, with the show preceding Doctor Who, Don't Scare the Hare receiving one of the lowest scores on record, 46.

In a measure of how successful Doctor Who was over the weekend, no programme on Sunday managed to get more than 6 million watching, including Coronation Street which had 5.9 million viewers; this means Doctor Who remains in 13th position for the week, one which will rise when final figures are released.

David Tennant's performance in United had an audience of 3.2 million on BBC Two/BBC HD.

BBC Worldwide have revealed that the series premier of Doctor Who broke new records for BBC America giving the channel its highest-rated, most-watched telecast ever in Live + Same Day ratings.

Altogether Doctor Who delivered almost 1.3 million viewers in the states, a rise of 71,000 viewers over last season’s opening episode The Eleventh Hour.

The channel also notes

• Viewership across all of BBC America's Doctor Who YouTube content reached an all-time high of 3.5 million views.
• The official debut of Doctor Who on Tumblr reached over 10,000 followers in two weeks.
• Doctor Who is currently the number 1 TV series on the iTunes store.
• BBCAmerica.com pulled in its largest traffic ever. On its best day, Saturday, April 23, 74% of users were new visitors to the site.

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Meanwhile across the border on SPACE, a record 538,000 total viewers watched the premier in Canada, up 3% over the previous most-watched Doctor Who episode, making The Impossible Astronaut the most-watched SPACE broadcast this year.

The premiere also broke records among several key demographics including Adults 18-49 (up 7% with 292,000 viewers); Women 25-54 (up 50% with 111,000 viewers); and Women 18-49 (up 62% with 114,000 viewers).

Doctor Who: The Impossible Astronaut was watched by 6.5 million viewers, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The programme which has a share of 37% of the total audience, was the highest rated show on BBC One for the day, a remarkable achievement given the early timeslot and the excellent bank holiday weather across the UK. It was more than two million viewers ahead of the next programme on BBC One, Casualty.

Overall it was the second highest rated programme on all TV with Britain's Got Talent on ITV1 taking the top slot with 9.5 million watching. Against Doctor Who, March of the Dinosaurs had an average audience of just 1.3 million watching.

To show what a draw Doctor Who is, the programme preceding it had just 1.9 million watching. The BBC One audience jumped from 2.2 to 6.0 million as Doctor Who began, with the audience growing throughout the programme and an average of 7 million watching the final fifteen minutes. At the end of the show, over half of the viewers left BBC One, with the channel seeing its audience plunge from 7.0 million to 3.2 million.

Of the 6.5million viewers watching Doctor Who, 0.76 million watched on BBC HD.

On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential had 0.55 million viewers, with an additional 40,000 watching on BBC HD.

On CBBC 0.71 million tuned in for the tribute to Elisabeth Sladen, My Sarah Jane, a 4.1% share of the total audience.

Doctor Who is currently the 13th highest rated show for the week. Final figures, including those who recorded the show and watched it later, will be released next week.