Overnight ratings for The Satan Pit, the season's ninth new Doctor Who episode of Doctor Who, are in: the episode was watched by 5.5 million viewers with a 35.6% audience share. Though the ratings are down from last week's series low (5.94 million), the audience share is still high and the show is relatively strong given the rest of the day's numbers: on this summer Saturday, Doctor Who was third overall on the Top 30 Programs by Audience on all UK networks, behind "World Cup Match of the Day Live" and "Casualty", and second overall for today by audience share totals, behind the World Cup program (which had enormous share/ratings numbers for UK programming).

Also tonight: the ninth episode of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC Three scored 445,200 viewers, with a 3.6% audience share (number two for the day's non-terrestrial channels). More details later. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)

Final viewing figures are in from the BARB for The Idiot's Lantern, the seventh episode of the new season, broadcast on 27 May: 6.76 million viewers are said to have tuned into the broadcast, including time-shifted viewers. The episode was seventh highest on the list of total television shows (adjusted for multiple episodes, behind episodes of "Coronation Street," "EastEnders," "New Tricks," "Emmerdale" and "Heartbeat" and the special "Full Length and Fabulous: The Beckham World Cup Party") and eighteenth on the list of the week's total broadcasts. However, the episode only scored a bit less than 2% of a smaller viewing audience than the corresponding episode the previous season, "The Doctor Dances".

Some other BARB final ratings figures are now available. The original broadcast of Doctor Who Confidential on the same night as "The Idiot's Lantern" scored, according to the BARB, 453,000 viewers; the Sunday night repeat of Doctor Who on BBC3 (28 May) had 642,000 viewers, placing it #14 in the list of the top twenty non-terrestrial broadcasts for the week. Also, the repeat of the prior episode, The Age of Steel the night before the next, Friday 26 May, had a total of 394,000 viewers.

Meanwhile, for this past weekend's broadcasts, the Sunday night repeat of The Impossible Planet, the eighth episode of the season, on BBC3 was watched by 662,000 viewers (3.8% audience share) and "Doctor Who Confidential Cut Down," the reduced repeat version, had 421,000 viewers (2.1% share). Doctor Who was the most watched programme on BBC3 on Sunday. Additionally, the night before the broadcast of "The Impossible Planet," Friday night's (2 June) repeat of "The Idiot's Lantern," was watched by 407,500 viewers (2.6% share) while the repeat of "Confidential" originally broadcast with that episode was watched by 212,800 viewers (8.3% share). These figures are overnights reported by Viewingfigures (as opposed to BARB final ratings, which will be available next week.)

Finally, another piece of news regarding "The Impossible Planet": Preliminary figures indicate that it achieved an AI (audience appreciation index) figure of 85, while the AI figure for the broadcast of "Doctor Who Confidential" the same night had an AI figure of 83. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)

Ratings for the twelfth episode of the first season of the new series, Bad Wolf, on US television on the Sci Fi Channel, have come in: the telecast dropped a bit to a 1.02 household rating with an average of 1.3 million viewers, down from the previous broadcast ("Boom Town") two weeks before and the smallest average audience to date for a Doctor Who original this season. The show was on a week-long hiatus, with viewers possibly tuning out after the lack of a broadcast the week before. Season-to-date, Sci Fi reports that Doctor Who is currently averaging a 1.27 household rating and an average audience of 1.5 million viewers for the season. The season finale airs this Friday, June 9.

Overnight ratings for The Impossible Planet, this season's eighth new episode of Doctor Who, show that the episode was viewed by 5.94 million viewers. While the average numbers are down, the lowest single rating for the new series to date (though by a slim margin), the episode scored a 39.8% audience share, a significant boost from the previous weekend. The discrepancy: the total television audience at 7pm was also the lowest since the show began (only 12.4 million viewers watching at that time). The episode itself peaked at 6.78 million viewers in its final quarter-hour. Doctor Who was #2 on the top thirty by audience and top thirty by share lists, beaten only in actual numbers by an episode of Casualty at 8.15 (which itself only scored 6.5 million viewers).

Meanwhile, on BBC Three, the sixth instalment of Doctor Who Confidential was watched by 542,100 viewers (4.7% audience share), an increase from the prior week. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)

BARB today released the final ratings for week ending 21 May, which see the BBC One transmission of The Age of Steel rising from its overnight figure of 6.93 million to a consolidated final ratings figure of 7.63 million viewers. The episode's timeshift figure of 0.7m is the highest of the week, with various episodes of Coronation Street, EastEnders, New Tricks and The Bill all getting a timeshift of 0.4m. The episode remains second in the chart for Saturday 20 May, behind the annual Eurovision Song Contest, seventh for the week on BBC One, fifteenth for the week across UK television, and the eighth most watched show of the week; the programme's earlier timeslot for that week left it trailing several episodes of ITV1's Emmerdale for the first time this year. On BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential on 21 May heads the BARB chart with 0.63m viewers, with the Sunday repeat of The Age of Steel in second place with 0.62m viewers.

The final figure for The Age of Steel represents a year-on-year increase of 0.52m on the 7.11m achieved by The Empty Child on the same weekend in 2005. This continues Series Two's almost unbroken track record of increased viewing figures against last year's episodes, with only Dalek performing significantly better for Series One. Yesterday's article in Media Guardian suggesting that viewers are disappearing from Doctor Who has been picked up by several other UK news media, most of which repeat various errors in that original article. In fact, this year's episodes have seen audiences increase against last year, from an average across the six weeks of 7.90m to a 2006 average of 8.49m. This year's episodes have also - so far - performed as well as or better than last year's in terms of chart positions.


Final figures are not yet available for the episode that provoked Media Guardian's article, The Idiot's Lantern, although its bank holiday weekend overnights (6.32m, 1st/19th) were also higher than last year's overnights (also on a bank holiday weekend) for "The Doctor Dances" (6.17m, 1st/18th). The pattern established by Series One is continuing, with the ratings dips following the same trends as last year but with smaller actual dips. BBC Three's repeat ratings continue to show an upwards trend whenever the BBC One debut has a lower audience, suggesting that the story Media Guardian may have missed is that a similar-sized total audience is making use of digital reruns and home recording each week to maintain an average total weekly audience of, currently, c.9.47m. (The same - widely ignored - pattern can generally be observed whenever one of the main soaps performs disappointingly in its main showing.) All of which is a roundabout way of saying that Doctor Who's UK success actually seems to be continuing, and suggestions that viewers are tiring of it are somewhat exaggerated...

Meanwhile, The Idiot's Lantern has also continued the series' consistent run of very strong AI figures, with the episode scoring an excellent 84 on Saturday, still among the higher AIs since the series' return, beaten by only three of 2005's episodes, though not as high as the 86 scored by both episodes of the preceding Cybermen story.

Overnight ratings for The Idiot's Lantern, this season's seventh new episode of Doctor Who, have come in: last night, the series was watched by an average of 6.32 million viewers, with a 32.2% audience share. The episode peaked at 7.78 million viewers in the five-minute breakdown, at the very end of the episode. Of note, while the total TV audience for the evening was down slightly, the ITV broadcast of Soccer Aid at the very same time averaged 6.15 million viewers. Doctor Who was still first in its timeslot by both number of viewers and audience share, with Soccer Aid scoring the number two slot. Compared to the same weekend last year, where the episode "The Doctor Dances" scored 6.17 million viewers (as adjusted by BARB for the final viewing figure), Doctor Who ranked higher this time. It is, however, the lowest audience share of the new series to date, breaking the previous low of 33.9% held by "Aliens of London," again likely due to the Soccer Aid broadcast, which had been expected to beat every other show of the night.

Over on BBC Three, the sixth instalment of Doctor Who Confidential was watched by 432,000 viewers (2.8% audience share), a decline of approximately 170,000 viewers from the previous week. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)

Sunday evening's BBC Three repeat of The Age of Steel was watched by 606,800 viewers, placing it first in its multichannel timeslot and fourth for the day, according to overnight viewing figures. The average overnight rating for the Sunday repeats has been 574,000 so far this series, with only New Earth achieving a comparatively low 0.4m in its final rating. The multichannel audience share has ranged from 2.5% to 4.1%. The AI in this slot has tended to be a little higher than for the Saturday night first showings, with scores as high as 89 for School Reunion.

The Friday peaktime repeats have reached a smaller number of viewers, an average of 284,000, and an audience share of 1.7% to 2.8%, with Rise of the Cybermen being seen last Friday by 309,100 (1.7%) in a hotly contested timeslot. While the Sunday audience seems fairly consistent so far, Friday's audience seems to fluctuate more, and largely in line with the ratings for Saturday nights - the higher the Saturday figure, the fewer people watch on Friday.

This means that the first five episodes of Series Two have achieved a remarkably consistent first-week audience, drawn from Saturday and timeshift viewers, and Sunday or Friday repeat audiences. While the series' Saturday overnight average stands at 7.9m (up from 7.3m in the same period last year), the series actually seems to have an average total audience of 9.6m (up from 8.6m the same period in 2005), with less variation - so far - between episodes. The variation in these approximate figures across the five weeks is only a half-million either side of the average figure (while a programme like EastEnders can have greater fluctuation across a single week):


The first three weekday evening repeats this week have attracted a steady audience of about a quarter of a million each night: New Earth 237,000 (1.2%); Tooth and Claw 253,000 (1.7%); School Reunion 267,000 (1.6%).

Ratings for the tenth episode of the first season of the new series, Boom Town, on US television on the Sci Fi Channel, have come in: the telecast dropped a bit to a 1.03 with an average of 1.2 million viewers, down approximately 200,000 viewers from the previous week. Season-to-date, Sci Fi reports that Doctor Who is currently averaging a 1.28 household rating and an average audience of 1.5 million viewers for the season. The show will not air this Friday due to the US Memorial Day weekend holiday, but will return on Friday, June 2.

The official audience ratings for Rise of the Cybermen today show a consolidated figure of 9.22 million viwers (including timeshifted viewings), up 0.6 million from the unofficial overnight figure of 8.6 million. The episode was BBC One's second most-watched programme of the week, behind only one edition of EastEnders, and is at number 6 in the chart of the week's highest-rating programmes, the series highest placing since its return last year. It is also Doctor Who's highest chart position since an episode of The Ark in Space reached number 5 in 1975.