Final ratings data for the week ending 2nd September 2012 have now been released by the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board or BARB, putting Doctor Who as the sixth most-watched programme of the week on British television.

Asylum of the Daleks was the third most-watched programme on BBC television for the week, with the crime series New Tricks taking top place followed by EastEnders. ITV had two episodes of Coronation Street and one of The X Factor in the list above the Doctor. While BBC One BARB listings include those watching on BBC One HD, ITV listings do not include ITV HD or ITV+1 which need to be added to the main channel statistics in order to compare like for like.

The chart position of 6th is equal to last year's series opener The Impossible Astronaut.

In the long history of Doctor Who only 14 of the 785 episodes broadcast achieved a higher chart position.

The final ratings figure does not include those watching on iPlayer where over 600,000 people accessed the episode in the first three days.

Asylum of the Daleks has debuted in Australia to good ratings. The series debut averaged 549,000 viewers in the five major capital cities. Up against the football finals, it was the top-rating drama of the day and the eighth highest rating programme of the day overall. These figures follow the episode setting a daily viewer record for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation iView internet TV service, recording 75,900 plays on its first day. All episodes of series 7 will debut on iView immediately after their broadcast in the UK.

Fans have noted that when the weekly episode is on made available to viewers on Sundays via ABC iView, it is at approximately 5am or 6am local time - making it very close to the transmission time in the UK!


Media Links: TV Tonight, Sydney Morning Herald

Doctor Who: Dinosaurs on a Spaceship had an Appreciation Index or AI score of 87 - one of the highest scores on Saturday night.

The score is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the episode and is based on a survey of 5000 people. The score of 87 puts the programme into the excellent category.

Doctor Who scored higher than most Saturday evening shows, being beaten by the music spectacular Last Night Of The Proms, which scored 90, and Paralympics London 2012, with 88. NCIS on Channel Five also scored highly, albeit with a much lower audience.

With Sunday's overnight rating figures now available, Doctor Who finished 18th for the week, being pushed down by Sunday's X Factor and the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games. Final figures will be released next week and should see the programme much higher in the final chart once those time-shifting the drama are factored in.

Asylum of the Daleks had a final consolidated rating of 8.33 million viewers.

The final figure includes all those who recorded the programme and watched it within 7 days of transmission. It is a large increase on the initially estimated figure and gives the show a 34.4% share of the total TV Audience.

The figure does not include those watching on iPlayer.

A full report of the week, giving Doctor Who's place in the top ten, should be issued by BARB tomorrow.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship had an overnight audience of 5.5 million viewers, a share of 26.2% of the total TV audience.

The rating was the highest on BBC One for the day, and second overall, with ITV1's The X Factor once more winning the night with 8.2 million watching. Ratings across the evening were down on the previous week with Ant and Dec's Red or Black? taking 3rd and 4th place, achieving 3.4 million viewers against The Doctor.

The summer of music at the Royal Albert Hall concluded with The Last Night of the Proms which had 3.2 million watching.

The rating compares with last year's second story of the autumn, Night Terrors, which also had 5.5 million watching, but had a slightly lower audience share and lost out to Red or Black?

The rating for Doctor Who puts it at 15th place for the week, with Sunday's ratings still to come, although final consolidated figures, which will be available next week, should see this position rise.

Meanwhile Friday's BBC Three repeat of Asylum of the Daleks had 0.40 million watching.

The viewing figure for last Saturday's premiere of Asylum of the Daleks on BBC America has been released, indicating that over 1.5 million tuned in to watch the Doctor's latest adventure with his arch-enemy - giving the episode the highest audience for Doctor Who on the channel so far!

BBC America reported:

The figure comfortably overtook the previous highest rating of 1.268m achieved by last year's series opener, The Impossible Astronaut.

Canadian broadcaster SPACE have announced that as well as being the highest rated programme for its timeslot on Canadian television last Saturday, season opener Asylum of the Daleks also become the second-highest rated episode in the show's history on the channel!

The channel's press release said:

The highest rated episode (so far) is last year's Let's Kill Hitler, which managed 834,000 viewers, with a peak of 977,000 and some 1.2m unique viewers in all.

Doctor Who: Asylum of the Daleks had an Appreciation Index score of 89 - the highest score by far on either of the main two channels on Saturday night.

The score is a measure of how much the audience enjoyed the episode. It is based of a survey of 5000 people. The score of 89 is the highest achieved by Doctor Who since The Big Bang in 2010. It is the highest ever AI score for a season opener.

Asylum of the Daleks had an overnight audience of 6.4 million viewers, a share of 29.3% of the total TV audience.

The audience was steady throughout the show after inheriting 2.5 million viewers from Total Wipeout. The show following Doctor Who, The National Lottery, had 3.1 million watching.

Doctor Who won the time-slot, beating Ant and Dec's game show, Red or Black?, which got a rating of 3.5 million and was 6th for the day. Winner of the day was The X Factor, which had an audience of 8.6 million and a 36.8% share of the audience, making Doctor Who second in the charts for the day.

Casualty was third with 4.2 million watching. Channel 4 achieved 9th place with their coverage of Paralympic Games 2012, while BBC Two peaked in 17th place with Dad's Army. Channel Five achieved 23rd place with Celebrity Big Brother.

Last year's Autumn season opener, Let's Kill Hitler, achieved 6.2m viewers (28.7% share) on overnight figures, later revised to 8.1 million on final figures. Night Terrors, shown the first weekend in September, had an overnight figure of 5.5m (25.9% share) and a final of 7.07m.

The only other episode to be transmitted on 1st September was the first episode of the 1979 story Destiny of the Daleks which had 13.00 million viewers, albeit in an environment where there were only three Television channels available, and one of those, ITV, was locked into a bitter strike which had blacked out screens since 10th August.

Overnight figures are an estimate of those who watched the programme live, or before 2am the following day. Final figures will include all those who watch the porgramme within a week and will be available early next week.

With one day to come, Doctor Who is currently 10th for the week.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour has finally lost its position as the most accessed programme on the BBC iPlayer since the launch of the service in 2007.

Matt Smith's debut episode as the Doctor had clung to the top of the list since May 2010, shortly after it was shown on BBC One. The episode has seen off attempts by other dramas such as Sherlock, comedies such as Come Fly with Me and documentaries like Frozen Planet to dislodge it from the top spot, to retain the title of the most popular programme on iPlayer, ever.

The two year reign at the top came to an end a couple of weeks ago when BBC Sport claimed the crown with the Opening Ceremonies of London 2012 which has been accessed around 3.4 million times, overtaking The Eleventh Hour which currently stands at 2.85 million requests.

Doctor Who still retains the second place in the table, comfortably ahead of the third placed Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia.