BBC Refuses To Acknowledge Terrible ‘Doctor Who’ Ratings, Instead Boasts That Series Is Their “Top Drama For Under-35s This Year”
Even though the numbers clearly prove the fact, the BBC is refusing to acknowledge that showrunner Russell T Davies’ latest run on Doctor Who was an absolute ratings disaster.
To the surprise of very few, the decision by the its cast and crew to use the British sci-fi series as a vehicle for overtly sociopolitical messaging was not, to say the least, a winning one.
As catalogued by UK television analytics firm Barb, across its eight total episodes, The 15th Doctor’s debut season only pulled in an objectively terrible average of 2 million overnight viewers / 3.5 million seven-day consolidated – the worst in the franchise’s entire history:
- Episode 1 – Space Babies: 2.6 million overnight / 4.01 million seven-day consolidated
- Episode 2 – The Devil’s Chord: 2.2 million / 3.91 million
- Episode 3 – Boom: 2.04 million / 3.57 million
- Episode 4 – 73 Yards: 2.62 million / 4.058 million
- Episode 5 – Dot and Bubble: 2.12 million / 3.38 million
- Episode 6 – Rogue: 2.11 million / 3.521 million
- Episode 7 – The Legend of Ruby Sunday: 2.02 million / 3.495 million
- Episode 8 – Empire of Death: 2.25 million / Not yet reported
RELATED: For Second Time This Season, ‘Doctor Who’ Posts Worst Overnight Numbers In Franchise History
Yet, despite it performing worse than the original series’ Season 26 – whose ratings were so bad that it led to Doctor Who being put on ice for almost a full sixteen years (The Eighth Doctor’s 1996 television film being the franchise’s only official screen production during that time), the latest Doctor Who season continues to receive the full support of the BBC’s PR machine.
Asked by UK news outlet The Times if they had any comment on the franchise’s less-than-stellar ratings performance, a spokesperson for the state broadcaster asserted, “Overnight ratings no longer provide an accurate picture of all those who watch drama in an on-demand world.”
“This season of Doctor Who premiered on iPlayer nearly 24 hours before broadcast, and episode one has already been viewed by nearly six million viewers and continues to grow,” they added. “Doctor Who remains one of the most watched programmes on iPlayer and is the BBC’s top drama for under-35s this year, making it one of the biggest programmes for the demographic across all streamers and broadcasters.”
Notably, the BBC’s comments regarding Doctor Who’s poor ratings echo those previously made on the subject by the aforementioned Davies.
Met with the topic of the series’ struggling performance while speaking to UK entertainment magazine Radio Times, the showrunner affirmed, “I’m very proud of [the season thus far]! You know, they might not be the ratings we’d love. We always want higher. But they are building over the 28-day period. Episode 1, Space Babies, is already up to 5.6 million and counting. So it is getting there.”
“I was brought back in to bring in a youthful audience,” he further noted. “That’s been massively successful.”
Continuing, Davies then posited, “The audience no one ever gets are the under-30s.”
“They just don’t watch television anymore,” he concluded. “But those figures are astronomic for Doctor Who, it’s their top programme in that bracket.”
At current, per Davies himself, whether or not The Doctor returns for another adventure is “still up in the air“.
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