Good? Bad? Just how popular is a time lord anyway?

Well, I know the show has a lot of buzz in cult fandom circles. Add that to SciFi's recent original-drama success, and...not sure. It looks like it'll be running multiple episodes the first few Fridays at least:

Friday, 3/17:

9pm EST: Rose
10pm EST: The End of the World

...and repeating from 11pm-1am.

Friday: 3/24:

8pm EST: The End of the World
9pm EST: The Unquiet Dead
10pm EST: (SGA repeat)

So it's technically replacing both SGA and BSG in the first couple of weeks. I'm guessing those are Skiffy's highest-rated original shows (?), so presumably those'll be the numbers to compare to. How is BSG doing this season anyway?

This is jumping WAYYYY ahead, but I'm curious if the US audience will ever get the bridge story in the Children in Need special. Will they tag it onto the Christmas Invasion? Or is that only to be seen by those who look for it?

Children In Need would be a good thing for Sci-Fi to have on their website right before the Second Series starts showing over here in the U.S. It could be something they could give away for free in iTunes, should the BBC let them. It is well worth watching.

adhonus writes:


Exactly. As a matter of fact, since "The Christmas Invasion" ran sixty minutes instead of the usual 40-43, Sci-Fi might also want to try running it just prior to the teaser (or even editing it into the special somehow), and running the whole shebang in a ninety-minute slot.

The Children in Need scene ran 6 minutes, and The Christmas Invasion ran 60, for a total of 66. If the Children in Need scene is available to them (and it might not be given its charitable nature), then SciFi could stick the two together, and with their normal commercial load over a period of 90 minutes that would just about it fill it... they'd be about 3-4 minutes short is all. I'm sure they could find a way to plug that hole.

Here is a filtered Doctor Who link to SciFi's Schedulebot.

I bookmark and check it often. They typically update the schedule at the end of the month.

http://www.scifi.com/schedulebot/index.php...text=doctor+who

Actually, CBC figured a way to run Christmas Invasion as an hour and a half, so you never know. Sci-Fi may figure that it's already long enough.

Did CBC run the Children in Need vidlet? I thought that it was only shown in the UK?

The CBC never ran CiN, as far as I saw. Unfortunately, my tape of Christmas Invasion from the CBC got eaten by my VCR on my second viewing, so I can't confirm 100%, but I'm 99% postive they didn't show it.

AFAIK it wasn't shown on CBC (I'm 99% sure I'd have heard). Canadian fans did get to see it, though, as it hosted on the BBC's official site for about two weeks after the event before being taken down.

Has anyone heard anything on when Season Two starts on the BBC. I'd heard March mentioned as the month when it would kick off, but we're a week into the month already and there haven't been any ads or teasers for it yet as far as I can tell, so I wonder whether it may be April now instead?

The BBC only announce finalized schedules 3 weeks in advance, but all the clues point to April 15th.

>The want ads for jobs on the Totally Doctor Who support show said it would be running from 'mid April'
>Images of the toys of characters appearing in S2 have been embargoed by the manufacturer until dates that make sense for an April 15th start.
>The new kids' magazine Doctor Who Adventures has its first issue on April 5th and the second on April 19th.
>April 15th is Easter Saturday, the same holiday they used to launch the first series on last year.
>The Next Issue Box in this month's Doctor Who Magazine says that the issue covering March 30th-April 26th will contain previews of 2.1 and 2.2.
>UKTV Gold, the cable channel with rerun rights for the series have suddenly moved their "Doctor Who Weekend" special event to show the whole of the first series on April 8th and 9th.

Just in case anyone wondered, SciFi's add a lot of repeats of Doctor Who to their schedule the first couple weeks. You can get updated info at SciFi's ScheduleBot http://www.scifi.com/schedulebot/index.php...text=doctor+who

Repeats are on: Sunday night (11:30pm), Monday morning (10am), Thursday night (midnight). This in addition to the Friday late night repeats (11pm and midnight).

The BBC have just announced that there will be a media launch for Season Two on March 28th. This means that that's when the trailers will start being broadcast, the cast will be made available to the press, preview tapes of the first couple of episodes will be given out to the media etc.

And, crucially, that's when they're going to announced the transmission date for the new series. Although, based on last year, there's an 18 day gap between launch and transmission so this all but confirms the rumoured April 15th date.

So any ratings news for the premeire night (etc) yet? (I don't really know where to look for this kind of info.)

Nothing yet. The best place would probably be SciFi's own website or Outpost Gallifrey. There's been some speculation that Sci Fi might keep the figures under wraps for purposes of negotiations.

Another good place to check would be Gateworld. Although it's a Stargate fansite, they've been posting the ratings for the entire Friday night block. Odds are when they post the ratings for the first week of reruns, they'll throw in Who's number as well. The only problem is that lately they've been falling behind on ratings info, so if you see nothing for a week, they'll probably have it up by then (hopefully).

I was under the impression that Nielsen was holding up the cable ratings and GateWorld was posting the info once they received it? At any rate, the ratings for Sci-Fi's March 3rd line up weren't released until March 20th, which means, by my calculation, the ratings for the DW premiere won't be released until April 3rd.

Just posted on Outpost Gallifrey:

Nielsen ratings:

Friday, 3/17
9pm- "Rose" 1.58 million
10pm- "The End of the World" 1.61 million

11pm- "Rose" repeat .78 million
12am- "The End of the World" repeat .78 million

That means that viewership went up for TEOTW. So much for people turning off after "Rose."

It also means the repeat of "Rose" held its complete audience into TEOTW.

Not bad. Word of mouth will only increase the ratings, IMHO.

Sounds pretty good, especially with high ratings past 10.

How does this compare with other Sci-Fi shows? (Although perhaps that won't be so telling if, as an import show, their expectations are lower too).

The other Sci Fi shows tend to get between 1.8-2.1. But this is just the beginning for new Who in the USA.

Besides, the show is costing Sci Fi a fraction of what their original programming costs, so we may already be at a sweet spot as far as Sci Fi is concerned.

Time will tell.

I'm still waiting on the share numbers, for a better comparison. These appear only to be total households.

You're correct, cutecouple. I neglected to say that in my initial post. Frack.

S'ok, the original poster wasn't entirely clear either, and seemed to assume everyone knew. As long as it's at least as good as Stargate's ratings, I'm OK.

In what I have to assume is a vote of confidence, SciFi increased the number of airings for 1-03 "The Unquiet Dead" from 4 to 6. Late Wednesday March 29 at 1AM and Friday March 31 at 3PM. The new showings appeared on the Schedulebot today. All times Eastern on East Feed:

Thursday March 23 Midnight - Rose (previously scheduled extra airing)
Thursday March 23 1AM - The End Of The World (previously scheduled extra airing)
Friday March 24 8PM - The End Of The World (previously scheduled extra airing)
Friday March 24 9PM - The Unquiet Dead (1st showing)
Friday March 24 Midnight - The Unquiet Dead
Saturday March 26 12:30AM - The Unquiet Dead (Sunday time would be 11PM but a movie is running long)
Wednesday March 29 1AM - The Unquiet Dead (newly listed)
Thursday March 30 10AM - The Unquiet Dead (previously scheduled extra airing)
Friday March 31 3PM - The Unquiet Dead (newly listed)

At the moment all episodes from Aliens Of London onward premiere Fridays at 9PM, repeat Fridays at Midnight and Sundays at 11PM. SciFi has tweaked the schedule each week, though, so this could change.

Barring any additional revisions, Rose will end up airing 5 times, while The End Of The World and The Unquiet Dead will end up airing 6 times each.

HHs and Adults 18-49 and 25-54 all garnered a 2 share -- Sci-Fi didn't separate "Rose" and "The End of the World," so it's an average for both hours.

Interestingly, share was stable compared to the season average of previous time period occupant, "Battlestar Galactica," but ratings were down sharply among Adults 18-34 -- over 50%. I guess DW has an "older" appeal than BSG -- which is to be expected.

EolivetB where do you get your numbers from?

We've heard from an OG source that the numbers where

SG-1 Repeat: 1.2
ROSE: 1.6
TEOTW: 1.6

Just interested in getting the correct numbers.

Thanks,

Or that a lot the 18-34s were out for St. Patrick's Day... :D

Is this good...?

Seems to be lower than Sci-Fi's American shows such as SG-1 and BSG but higher than their reruns. I guess it just depends how much they're paying for the show as to whether they'd see it as a good deal or not.

Rumor is that SciFi hopes to pair series 2 with BSG when the latter returns in October, so they might be happy if the ratings are basically similar.

Wow. Talk about chalk and cheese.

8PM. "Doctor Who" -- Keep living! Life is great!
9PM. "Battlestar Galactica" -- Second thoughts? Don't bother. Life is hell!

I guess Sci-Fi is reaching out to the manic depressive demographic.

Don't get me wrong, it would be cool to see it paired up with a big hitter like BSG. But, you know... whiplash!

Rumor is that SciFi hopes to kill my ass dead? Is that what you just said to me?

Actually, that would be really awesome. What a fun night.

Originally the rumor was that series 2 would be a summer release, but Sci-Fi has another series, Eureka, that should be ready to go when Stargates come back. It looks like a quirky fun show, nothing like BSG.

And American Idol is going to be on five nights a week.

It's confirmed in Doctor Who Magazine that series 2 will start in the UK on April 15th and there'll be a press launch tomorrow.

Anyone heard anything about when the CBC will be carrying series 2 in Canada?

Hey, BSG is fun and quirky! Well, once in a blue moon when Ellen Tigh shows up.

But I digress....hey, when is Series 3 starting in the UK?

Awesome. I've been seeing this date all over the place so it's nice to have it officially confirmed.

Well, there's be the 2006 Christmas Special on December 25th - that's going to be filmed as part of Series 3. But the main block of Series 3 will almost certainly start on April 7th 2007. I'm not sure about the US, but in the UK and Ireland Easter Weekend is a big Sweeps type period and the BBC seem to have decided to use Doctor Who to make their mark on it. Both S1 and S2 started, or will start, on Easter Saturday so it's a safe bet they'll do the same next year.

The timing of sweeps is a little different (Feb and May instead of March/April), but it sound exactly like something that broadcasters do in the US.

From Outpost Gallifrey:

Well, the demographic increase is good, but the decrease in overall household rating and total viewers is not good (although it was to be expected). However, if the loss was entirely among people above the age of 54 then the advertisers won't care one jot. (I don't agree with that at all, but that's the way it is. Ugh.) Hopefully the demos will continue to increase in future weeks.

Without being able to see what the actual number among men 18-49 and viewers 18-49 is, and how it compares to the Stargates and BSG, and the usual demo numbers for those programs, a comparison is difficult, since those are the key demos (along with men 25-54 and men 18-34).

As for households, the Stargates in recent weeks were getting a 1.5-1.9 rating for new eps (roughly 1.8-2.5 million viewers?), and BSG was getting a 1.6-1.9 rating (roughly 2.0-2.6 million?). However at this time DW is just displacing reruns of the Stargates which would get something like 0.9-1.2 ratings points -- but they also wouldn't cost much, if anything. And "The Unquiet Dead" almost certainly got one of their highest household ratings for the week, perhaps the highest.

(Sigh.) If only Sci-Fi had bothered with a real advertising campaign... I hate seeing ads for "My Gym Partner's a Monkey" (which airs at the same time on another cable channel) everywhere here in NYC and nothing for DW.

Yes but the UK does not have any actual sweeps, if I understand correctly. Sweeps in the U.S. is the time when ad rates are set. The BBC doesn't even have commercial breaks. In the UK there's just an informal network interest in airing special programming on holidays since for some reason lots of UKers are watching TV then (unlike the U.S.). However, overall viewership is down in the spring and summer with longer daylight hours, more people spending time outside, etc., so this has led to speculation that season three might be delayed until fall 2007 when more people are up for grabs, and also because season three will supposedly switch from film-ized video recording to recording the episodes in HD video and this would allow more time for switching over to that format. This is all just speculation though. Nothing official.

ETA: clarification of ratings points vs. millions of viewers.

Wow...I don't know the Nielsen source where OG gets its data, but that's not what I have at all. I have "The Unquiet Dead" posting a 0.97 HH rating, with a 1.62 share. And that's only at 9PM, because apparently, Sci-Fi is airing two eps, back to back? A rerun at 8PM, maybe? It's just titled "Doctor Who" for 120 minutes, so that's what I'd assume.

Compared to last week's two-hour premiere, I have a 22% decline in HHs, and only an 8% increase in Adults 18-49, though a 52% increase among Adults 18-34 (so maybe they really were all out partying for St. Patrick's Day ;) The declines aren't that bad, considering most network shows traditionally lose 20% of their audience in the second week anyway. I also have DW posting higher ratings than Stargate at 11PM across HHs and adult demos.

Sounds like you'd probably rather go with OG's numbers...though I'm curious as to how Nielsen data is pulling such different results...

From Shaun Lyon at Outpost Gallifrey, at his request while his account is being validated here:

"In reply to the TWoP poster (hello!) who wonders where Outpost Gallifrey got its information from, I wanted to note that my information comes directly from a contact at the Sci Fi Channel. According to the data I received, "Doctor Who (9P-10P) on Sci-Fi delivered a 1.27 HH/ 1.14 M18-49/ .86 P18-49 rating with an audience of 1.55 million viewers. Compared to last week's episodes, the latest episode was up +13% with M18-49 & +12% with P18-49, but down -20% with HH & -13% with P2+. On Sci-Fi, it is currently averaging a 1.49 HH/ 1.06 M18-49/ .80 P18-49 rating with an audience of 1.70 million viewers, a 64% male skew and a median age of 47." I don't know why the ratings data EolivetB received differs from mine but I would definitely be interested in finding out... Shaun Lyon, editor, Outpost Gallifrey www.gallifreyone.com"

It wouldn't surprise me to discover that it's the difference between the second hour by itself, and the whole 120 minutes together.

Aww, hello! :)

Ah, so the source works at the network. I'm getting my information from Nielsen overnight ratings. To get the 9PM-10PM data, I pulled a time period average for Sci-Fi during the hour. I wonder if the network ratings are cume ratings -- i.e., adding up all of the viewers who watched DW during the hour vs. an average rating (which is what Nielsen provides). Given the network source, it's likely they'd try and spin the numbers to look as attractive as possible. Neither is wrong, per se -- it's just two different ways of looking at the info. :)

And since OG's source makes the ratings sound much better, it's probably best to go with them. My apologies if I offended anyone at OG.

Please read the thread before posting.

Please don't talk about the boards on the boards.

What are HH, M18-49, P18-49 etc?