Cold War has debuted in Australia, averaging 728,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It was the ABC's top-rating drama of the day and the tenth highest rating program of the day overall. These ratings do not include regional or time-shifted viewers.

Based on these final figures, Bells was the top rating drama of the day, the top-rating ABC program of the day and the fourth highest rating program of the day overall (this compares to it being the eighth highest rating program based on its overnight figures of 757,000 viewers). These ratings do not include regional viewers.

The Rings of Akhaten has debuted in Australia, averaging 725,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's top-rating drama of the day and the tenth highest rating program of the day overall. These ratings do not include regional or time-shifted viewers.

A documentary on BBC Radio 4 next Sunday will see cast and crew from 1960s Doctor Who recounting the early days of the show.

In The Reunion - billed as a series that "reunites a group of people intimately involved in a moment of modern history" - presenter Sue MacGregor brings together director Waris Hussein, actors Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, and Jeremy Young, plus actor-turned-presenter Peter Purves to look back at "the triumphs and disasters" of Doctor Who's formative period.

The 45-minute show airs on Sunday 7th April at 11.15am and should be available to listen to worldwide via the BBC iPlayer. It has been made by Whistledown, which has previously reunited Paul McGann and Richard E Grant, among others, for a special edition of the programme, broadcast in May 2008, centring on the cult film Withnail And I.

The Bells of Saint John has debuted in Australia, averaging 757,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. It was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's top-rating program of the day and the eighth highest rating programme of the day overall. It was also the fifth highest rating program in the free-to-air 18-49 and 25-54 demographics. These ratings do not include regional or time-shifted viewers.

Classic-era companion actors Carole Anne Ford and Frazer Hines will be joining Graham Norton on his BBC Radio 2 show on Saturday 6th April.

They will be talking about the Destiny of the Doctor CDs, and radio show producer Malcolm Prince told Doctor Who News that the actors will be the first of many Doctor Who-related guests on Norton's radio programme this year to mark Doctor Who's 50th anniversary.

Destiny of the Doctor is a year-long series of new audio dramas from BBC AudioGo being produced by Big Finish as part of the anniversary celebrations. Each Doctor will have his own story in the run-up to the anniversary itself in November.

In the AudioGo dramas, Hines, who played Jamie McCrimmon alongside the Second Doctor, stars in Shadow of Death, which was released last month, while Ford, who portrayed the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, is in Hunters of Earth, released in January.

Questions to the duo can be submitted via graham.norton@bbc.co.uk

The show runs from 10am to 1pm and they are scheduled to be on air at 11.30am, but please note that running orders are subject to change.

It should be available to listen to worldwide via the BBC iPlayer. A clip of the interview will be posted on the radio show's site afterwards, along with the weekly podcast.

Tonight sees an evening celebrating the spiritual home of BBC Television, Television Centre at White City, London.

The schedule will see what is expected to be the final programmes to be made at TVC, which closes at the end of the month after some 53 years of broadcasting. Events include an attempt to recreate the record-breaking tap dance originally made by Roy Castle in 1977, plus a live hour performance by band Madness on the Centre forecourt. The evening's centrepiece will be the broadcast of Goodbye, Television Centre, a 90 minute programme presented by a name well known to Doctor Who fandom, former BBC1 Controller and Chairman Michael Grade, and featuring a host of celebrities long-associated with broadcasting from TVC including Michael Parkinson, David Attenborough, David Jason, Penelope Keith and Ronnie Corbett. Finally, musician Richard Thompson performs a one-off concert from Studio 8.

• 7:00pm, BBC One, The One Show
• 7:30pm, BBC Four, Madness Live
• 8:30pm, BBC Four, Goodbye Television Centre
• 10:25pm, BBC Four, Richard Thompson BBC Four Session

Sadly absent from the evening is the more informal documentary, Tales of Television Centre, broadcast last May on BBC Four. The programme took audiences on a nostalgic journey through TVC's history, featuring clips and reflections by many who worked there, including Doctor Who actors Peter Davison, Katy Manning, Louise Jameson, and Janet Fielding.

For Doctor Who fans, TVC will also be remembered as the 'home' of the series during its initial production run. The first episode to be recorded here was The Warriors of Death in 1964, but it wasn't until the tail end of the Troughton era when it was to become the 'permanent' studio complex for recording (barring the occasional story). TVC itself became a location as the exterior of the World Ecology Bureau in The Seeds of Doom, and will feature prominently as its 1960s self in the 50th Anniversary drama An Adventure in Space and Time.

A brief history of TVC:

Although of interest to Doctor Who fans, who tend to have greater interest in the production history of their programme than more casual viewers, BBC Television Centre has transcended fandom of any kind to become a recognised icon of British popular culture. It is indelibly associated with BBC Television in the minds of many of the British public, even those who have no interest at all in the history of television or how it is produced.

The land where Television Centre – always ‘TVC’ for short – now stands was originally part of the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition; it was purchased by the BBC in 1949, although construction did not begin until the 1950s. Its unique question-mark shaped design allegedly came from a flash of inspiration on the part of architect Graham Dawbarn, who was wrestling with how to fit the requisite number of studios and other buildings onto the triangular piece of land the BBC had bought. Popular legend says that he doodled the question mark shape onto an envelope, and this was how the problem was solved.

Although designed as the first purpose-built television studio complex in the world, it took until 1960 for Television Centre to open, by which time Granada Television’s custom-built Quay Street studios in Manchester were already open and producing programmes. However, over the following decades, BBC Television Centre became undeniably the most famous television production centre in Britain, and perhaps one of the most famous in the world – to some British viewers it seemed, in the words of Steven Moffat in Doctor Who Confidential, “more Hollywood than Hollywood”.

From the centre’s official opening in 1960s up until the 1990s, the studios were home to every conceivable genre of television programming – drama, sitcom, light entertainment, discussion, news, current affairs, lifestyle, chat show and more. Television Centre was a broadcasting factory, pumping out the core of the BBC’s output, serviced by on-site production departments creating costumes, sets, special effects for every imaginable situation and setting on Earth – or of course, as Doctor Who fans know, beyond.

Television Centre was never the sole home of the BBC’s television output, even in London, but its frequent on-screen presence in many of the Corporation’s programmes meant it came to be seen as the home of BBC Television. However, into the 1990s the style and nature of television began to change. Drama in particular left the Centre – outside of soap operas, dramas were no longer being made in the old multi-camera studio style. The last drama to be made in the old Doctor Who multi-camera fashion was BBC One Sunday night period piece The House of Eliott, which came to an end in 1994.

With BBC producers now having free rein to make their programmes in whatever studios were the most economic, and many of the Corporation’s programmes now being made by independent production companies, programmes could be, and were, made anywhere. There were also conscious efforts to de-centralise the BBC’s London-based output, with major production centres in the 21st century being in such sites as Cardiff, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow.

With all of this, and other political considerations, the BBC took the decision to sell off Television Centre to developers. The closure of TVC this month, after 53 years as the flagship of the Corporation’s television broadcasting, brings to an end an era when the BBC operated an in-house production line of television that was, from conception to production to screen, not unlike a grand Hollywood studio system of the old days. And it leaves behind one of the few pieces of broadcasting architecture ever to achieve recognition outside of its industry.

The Future:

After closure, Stanhope will begin its plans for the metamorphosis of the site into a range facilities; the company announced earlier this year:
Further details outlined in the plan include the conversion of the 'horseshoe' carpark into a public square, and a new cycle route will run through the site to link up with the adjacent Hammersmith Park. Studios 1, 2 and 3 will be retained for recording, but 4-7 will be demolished in favour of residential flats. The North and South Halls will become entrances for the flat and for a new luxury hotel that will occupy the existing central ring offices facing Wood Lane. Stages 4 and 5 will become "The Television Factory", an office complex aimed at small media companies and also for commercial outlets on the ground floor. Stage 6 will become the home of BBC Worldwide.

How much of TVC will still be recognisable after the redevelopment remains to be seen!

Television Centre to live on via Google:

In February Google visited TVC in order to make a "snapshot" of how the iconic building looked before closure and partial demolition. Bill Thompson, head of Partnership Development, reflected:

In the Media:

• BBC TV Centre: Goodbye to the 'dream factory' (BBC News)
• BBC Television Centre: Farewell to the Dream Factory (The Independent)
• Farewell London W12 8QT (The Sun)
• The question mark over the BBC's finest hours (Express)
• A farewell to TVC (BBC)
• Angela Rippon revisits old TV studio [video] (BBC News)
• In praise of ... Television Centre (Guardian)
  
  
• Michael Grade: 'BBC Television Centre was state of the art but it's way past its sell-by date' (Independent)
• Television Centre sale draws fire from BBC stars in tribute programme (Guardian)
• BBC stars lament end of TV Centre (Express)
• Madness to play BBC Television Centre farewell gig (BBC)
• Dance on tap for final show from TV Centre (Brighouse Echo)
• BBC Club appoints Pitman’s People for The Television Centre’s Closing Party Celebrations (Event Industry News)

BBC Worldwide have released a demonstration of how Doctor Who is broadcast in other languages from around the world as part of the promotion of the show at this year's BBC Worldwide Showcase, currently taking place in Liverpool.

The video shows a clip from The Wedding of River Song in English, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German and Italian.


As recently reported, episodes of the show will be available to watch in the Middle East via Al Jazeera's JCC channel, and in Poland, South Africa, Burma and Indonesia via BBC Entertainment.

Al Jazeera has bought Series 5 to 7 of Doctor Who, it was announced today.

The episodes were snapped up at the BBC Worldwide Showcase 2013 event and will be shown on the satellite TV broadcaster's pan-Arabic children's channel JCC, which launched in 2005 and is based in Qatar.

The showcase is a four-day international TV market being held at ACC Liverpool. It started yesterday and is welcoming some 700 TV buyers from around the globe.

Paola Tonella, BBC Worldwide's sales and distribution territory manager for the Middle East and Africa, said: Among the star names at yesterday's gala opening were Eve Myles and Mark Williams.

The showcase will also be hosting special events to both celebrate the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who and to spotlight the natural-history documentary series Africa.

Steve Macallister, the president and managing director of sales and distribution at BBC Worldwide, said: