Doctor Who is off of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for the Christmas holidays but ratings are now in for the first eight episodes of Series Two. This year the CBC is broadcasting Doctor Who on Monday nights at 8:00pm (8:30pm in Newfoundland and Labrador). Doctor Who is scheduled against different competition in different time zones. Some of the shows Doctor Who has been up against are: Prison Break (Global/FOX), Corner Gas (CTV), regional hockey (SNET) and in many larger markets Battlestar Galactica(CHUM/CITY). The ratings for each episode are as follows:

October 9th - New Earth - 530 000
October 16th - Tooth and Claw - 371 000
October 23th - School Reunion - 493 000
November 6th - The Girl in the Fireplace - 535 000
November 13th - Rise of the Cybermen - 520 000
November 20th - The Age of Steel - 466 000
November 27th - The Idiot's Lantern - 442 000
December 4th - The Impossible Planet - 536 000

Doctor Who was pre-empted on October 30th for part two of the mini-series Above and Beyond. Doctor Who will return to the CBC on January 15th, 2007 with "The Satan Pit".

For discussion of the Canadian broadcasting of Doctor Who, please visit this thread in our forum.

(With thanks to Rod Mammitzsch and DWIN)

For the next five Mondays the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has placed Doctor Whoand most of their regular primetime schedule on a holiday hiatus. During the period holiday programming, movies and other specials will be airing in Doctor Who's Monday night timeslot.

Doctor Who will return to the CBC on Monday January 15th, 2007 at 8:00pm (8:30pm in Newfoundland and Labrador) with the episode "The Satan Pit". This episode concludes the adventure started in "The Impossible Planet" which was broadcast on December 4th, 2006.

Canada's CBC Television online shows Eps 8 - The Impossible Planet (Part 1) scheduled to air on CBC at 8PM EST tonight (December 4th) across Canada. The CBC is airing all of Series 2 every Monday. cbc.ca/doctorwho

Perennial movie and TV website 'Ain't it cool news' has posted an interview with James Strong, Series 2 director of 'The Impossible Planet’ and ‘The Satan Pit.’ In it Strong discusses the issues with working on a SFX heavy set of episodes, and working on 'Who' altogether. Take a look at the interview here.

Doctor Who confirmed its continuing massive popularity with the British public by dominating the National Television Awards for a second year running. The show, where the awards are voted for by the public, won the coveted Most Popular Drama category and David Tennant and Billie Piper took the Most Popular Actor and Actress prizes.

This was a repeat performance of last year's success, the only change being that it was Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor taking the Most Popular Actor award in 2005.

This year's ceremony took place at the Royal Albert Hall where Tennant was presented with his award by Dame Julie Andrews.

Accepting the award he said: "I think if my eight-year-old self could see me at the Royal Albert Hall winning a prize for playing the Doctor on telly, he would need a stiff shot of Irn-Bru."

He added: "I love my job. I'm so chuffed that others seem to love it too.

"Thank you for tuning in, that's why we make it."

Backstage, Tennant said on a television interview: "Thank goodness I didn't let the side down, eh? That would have been a tragedy.

"It's difficult to come into something that's been such a great success. It's a bit daunting, whether you're going to do as good a job as Chris. It means a lot."

Representing the show at the ceremony were Tennant, Piper, Noel Clarke and Camille Coduri.

Online press coverage includes BBC News (with a second article here), The Guardian, ITV News, and the Reuterspress agency.

Tracy-Ann Oberman will be a guest on Thursday's (29 June) edition of This Morning on ITV1 to promote her role as Yvonne Hartman in the forthcoming two-part season finale Army of Ghosts and Doomsday. This Morning airs between 10.30am and 12.30pm.

The final rating released this week by the BARB for Love & Monsters, episode ten of the new seasons, shows that 6.66 million viewers tuned into the episode, an increase of approximately 400,000 viewers as compared to the original overnight ratings reports. This places Doctor Who in fifteenth place for the week behind six World Cup events, five episodes of Coronation Street, EastEnders, Heartbeat and the Thursday night ITV Evening News. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish, Keith Armstrong)

Despite another day of fine weather in the UK, last night's Fear Her saw an increase in audience figures to 6.64 million viewers, up from last week's 6.22 million for "Love & Monsters", according to the unofficial overnights. The episode peaked at 7.1 million in its last quarter of an hour and 7.58 million in its final five minutes, and attracted an average share of 39.7% to comfortably win its timeslot against ITV1's Who Wants to be a Millionaire (3.6m, 21.4%). The end of the episode and the start of the following sports coverage saw 3.37m switch off BBC One. The World Cup football match that followed had an average audience of 8.1m, but its much higher peak audience and extra time appears to have carried over a large audience of 6.9m for the late-running lottery results, leaving Doctor Who in third place for the day. (It's likely that the final BARB figures will discount the lottery show, as it runs for less than 15 minutes, so Doctor Who may achieve second place for the day.) On the currently available overnight figures, "Fear Her" was in 14th place for the week across television; when ratings are in for Sunday's World Cup matches, the show will certainly slip down this chart one or two places, but a top 20 position stil looks very likely. Among under-16s, 61% of children and teenagers watching television in that timeslot were watching Doctor Who, amounting to 1.3m, against 145,000 who were watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

On BBC Three, the eleventh episode of Doctor Who Confidential at 7.45pm was watched by 500,700 (3.8%), making it the top-rated multichannel programme on Saturday, while Totally Doctor Who 11 last Thursday benefitted from the preceding football match to get its highest rating so far of 1.5m.

Meanwhile, television promotion for Army of Ghosts began last night with a 50-second trailer on BBC One at 11.09pm, delayed from 10.45pm by the World Cup. The trailer is a slightly shorter edit of the 'Next time' preview shown at the climax of Fear Her. It can be seen online at the official site by following the 'Video' link at the foot of its homepage. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)

The final rating released this week by the BARB for The Satan Pit, episode nine of the new seasons, stands at 6.08m. This is Doctor Who's lowest consolidated rating since its return last year, although the episode remains in the top 20 for the week at number 19 and was also the week's ninth placed individual programme.

Meanwhile, last Saturday's 6.23 million viewer overnight ratings/38.33% share for Love & Monsters (the detail on the numbers coming from Broadcast magazine) places the episode in 15th place in the week's chart. (This is likely to drop when the BARB figures are released next week, since live football coverage counted as one programme in the overnights will be divided into separate match/pre-match/post-match "programmes" in the final chart.) The BBC3 Sunday repeat of the episode is at No. 4 in the multichannel chart for the week, just behind Saturday's Doctor Who Confidential at No. 3, with the Cut Down Confidential from Sunday appearing at No. 22.

This week's early evening reruns on BBC Three of episodes 6, 7 and 8 were watched by 168,800 (1.2%), 149,500 (1.0%) and 158,500 (1.2%), according to the overnight results. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish, Keith Armstrong)

Official promotion for the end of Series Two has begun, though on a small scale, with the BBC Press Office issuing Programme Information for Week 28 today and the previous two weeks over the past few days. Curiously, there have been no feature articles for the last three episodes, though they have been "highlights for the week" from BBC Television. The following are the three short blurbs for the final three episodes of Series Two.