Every year there is speculation on which show will top the British TV ratings on Christmas Day. Fans and media commentators also speculate how well Doctor Who will fare against other festive programmes.

This year, the odds given by online betting company Skybet place Doctor Who as coming in second place at 6/4, with the top spot expected to be Eastenders with its usual 'explosive' Christmas storyline, at 4/6. Third place is given to the other perennial soap Coronation Street, at 12/1.

Most popular programme of the year (so far!) has been the ITV juggernaut The X-Factor, which saw a peak of some 19m+ viewers tune in to the final last weekend. In terms of average ratings for the entire programme, the final Britain's Got Talent, also on ITV1, in May, is currently the top-rated show of 2009.





Tune in for The End of Time part one on Christmas Day, BBC1/HD, 6:00pm!

The Doctor Who themed edition of Never Mind The Buzzcocks got an audience of 2.9 million viewers according to unofficial overnight figures. The programme, which was presented by David Tennant, and starred Bernard Cribbins and Catherine Tate, got a share of 14% or the total audience.

The rating is much higher than usual for the programme, which, this series, has averaged around 2.1 million viewers per programme. It is the highest rating for the programme since November 2007.

Never Mind The Buzzcocks is repeated on BBC Two next Tuesday and is available in the UK on the BBC i-Player.

The BBC Press Office have released information on the number of viewers that have used the red button facility on digital television, and revealed that the animated adventure Dreamland was watched by almost one million people.


"Traditional" broadcasting ratings are reported here.

Final Ratings Data is now available for the entire run of Series Three of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The final two episodes of the series got a rating of 0.95 million for Part One of The Gift and 0.89 million for Part Two. The audience share for both episodes was 7%.

The ratings were once again much higher than the average for BBC One at this time of day with the programmes reaching three times as many viewers as is usual for the timeslot. The audience profile was consistent with this time of day suggesting that The Sarah Jane Adventures was being seen by a substantial number of its target audience on CBBC.

A comparison with other new CBBC shows transmitted at this time shows just how well the show is doing with The Sarah Jane Adventures getting more than double the average achieved by other programmes.

The highest rated episodes of the series were the two parts of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, which saw David Tennant guest starring as the Doctor. This episode also scored the highest AI figure for the series with a score of 89.


Full Audience data is available on Gallifrey Base.

The animated adventure Dreamland was watched by an estimated 0.45 million viewers on BBC Two for its first television broadcast. The six episodes have been available for UK viewers to watch online, but this is the first time the complete programme has been available.

The audience share was 6.5% and the programme was the second highest-rated in its timeslot, getting double the audience of CITV.

The HD audience was below the threshold for accurate analaysis.

An additional 695,000 viewers watched the BBC Three repeat of The Waters of Mars, according to official figures issued by BARB this week. The programme rated as the 4th highest watched on the channel for the week.

Over 550,000 have now watched the programme on the BBC iPlayer. When all ratings are added together The Waters of Mars has now been watched by 11.5 million people.

Full Ratings data and Audience analysis for the Specials can be found in Gallifrey Base.

Final figures now available for story five of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Mona Lisa's Revenge, give Part One an official audience of 1.12 million , with Part Two getting 0.92 million viewers.

The figures are almost identical to those achieved by the previous week's episodes and triple the average achieved by CBBC in this timeslot. Full ratings data and Audience profile can be found here.

Even though Series Three has now finished its run on BBC One, Sarah Jane continues to rate well with repeats of Series One getting ratings of around 0.6 million in the same slot.
Follow the Doctor Who News Page on

Final figures issued by BARB show the UK premiere of The Waters of Mars was watched by 10.32 million people.

On BBC1 the programme got 9.94 million watching, making it the second most watched programme of the week on the channel, just behind Strictly Come Dancing. However an additional 376,000 watched the simulcast on BBC HD. If these figures are combined then the rating is pushed above ten million and makes the programme the 5th most watched on British Television for the week. It got higher ratings than all the Soaps and was only beaten by the ratings juggernauts The X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing and I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here.

If the HD figures are included in the total then the rating makes The Waters of Mars one of only 9 out of 754 episodes of Doctor Who to have made the top five programmes for the week. In terms of raw ratings, it is the episode with the 95th highest rating on first showing. Since the series returned in 2005 only four episodes have beaten this rating.

On Multichannel Television the HD showing is the biggest audience ever achieved by BBC HD, nearly 100,000 higher than the second placed programme. On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential was watched by 0.63 million with an additional 100,000 watching on BBC HD. This gave the episode a total rating of 0.73 million and made it the 19th most watched programme on Multi Channel TV for the week.

The third series of The Sarah Jane Adventures ended on a high with Episode One of The Gift getting an AI score of 84 and Episode 2 receiving a score of 87.

The scores are once more way above the average for Children's Television, which is 72.

Final figures now available for story four, The Eternity Trap give Part One an audience of 1.14 million with Part Two getting 0.93 million viewers, an increase of 200,000 viewers over the initially reported overnights.

Over 12 million tuned into BBC One to see the 3 minute preview of The End of Time on Children in Need last night.

The quarter hour beginning at 8pm had an average audience of 11.9 million viewers on BBC One, the highest peak of the evening on any of the channels. The share was 49.5%. Once the Doctor Who clip had been shown the audience dropped off by 2 million with some viewers switching to ITV1 for Coronation Street. Overall the first section of Children In Need had an average audience of 9.8 million. An additional 260,00 viewers watched the Doctor Who clip on BBC HD, taking the total above 12 million.

Meanwhile the final part of The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Gift, finished its strong run with an audience of 0.8 million and a share of 6.4%, far above the average for the channel at this time.