Warning: maaaaaaajor geekery ahead! A closer look at Doctor Who ratings
OK so I like math. Although I'm not a statistician, I am pretty good with math (which is lucky for anyone in the USA haha bc in a few short months I will be using said math to prepare intravenous drug compounds for hospitalized patients... tl;dr if I sucked at this, it would suck WAAAY worse to be you bwahahah XD)
ANYWAY! It should not have escaped ( Read more... )
1) Overall ratings for TV has gone down. If only Doctor's Who's ratings had gone down it wouldn't be winning its time slot nor would it still be one of the BBC's top performing shows.
2)The rise of Iplayer and downloading. People are watching less and less live TV. I know from personal experience that more and more people are missing the show live, especially with the earlier time slot. For instance my dad goes to football almost every Saturday, sometimes he gets back in time, other weeks I have to download it for him because he misses it. It's harder to add his view to the figures because he doesn't watch live. I also wouldn't be surprised with the way British summers have been the last couple of years (basically they happen in May), people are taking every chance they get to do summery things meaning they aren't in when the show is on.
3) The generation of kids that got into show back in 2005 are now older teens or adults. Meaning if their friends want to go out, they'll catch up with the show later. This started to happen at the end of RTD's run, I used to have to delay going out (because I was dedicated, others who watched the show, not so much), so I could see the show. Those who have the biggest problem are uni students. Most of whom don't have television licenses and have to catch up online. My sister's been at uni the last 3 years and has to catch up online. When she's at home she'll watch it live but most of the time it's on Iplayer or streaming elsewhere.
I'm not denying people have stopped watching the show, I know people that have. I'm not delusional, figures have gone down not just because of the reasons above but because some people aren't into the show anymore.
However the show is still bringing in more viewers than most drama shows on TV, and more importantly it's still bringing in enough money. Tickets for the Doctor Who BBC Proms went on sale on Saturday morning, for 3 performances at the Royal Albert Hall which according to Wikipedia has space for 5000 people and a lot of people were left disappointed as they couldn't get seats (just have a look at the BBC Proms facebook page) and the tickets weren't that cheap either!
With the BBC's problems at the moment, Doctor Who is in one of the best positions. It's sales abroad and merchandise is bringing in more money than probably any other program, which right now is what the BBC is more focused on with the cuts to their budget.
I feel sorry for people who don't enjoy the show as much with Moffat in charge and therefore don't watch the show(I have issues with some of his writing, although I had equally problems with RTD but I can still enjoy the show luckily). I would be incredibly surprised if Moffat doesn't move on soon, I wouldn't be surprised if his next season is his last. Which hopefully will mean those who haven't watched while he's been on it will start enjoying it again. I doubt there will be much of a jump in figures though.
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Interesting point about those who age with the show and then end up doing more on Saturdays.
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1) Overall ratings for SOME things have gone down. Other shows (Broadchurch, Downton) are still very hot and pulling in nearly twice what Doctor Who is.
2) The fatal flaw with iPlayer is that it doesn't measure unique viewers. It measures TOTAL views. It's no better than YouTube. Have a connection problem and reload the video ten times? Congratulations, you are "ten viewers!" Watch most of the show on TV, but the phone rings so you miss a scene, and you go back to watch 30 seconds of the episode on iPlayer? Congratulations, you are now TWO viewers - and your 30 seconds of view time isn't differentiated from someone who watched the whole show. iPlayer stats are crap and I wish people would stop talking about them because they measure N O T H I N G >.<
Good point about people aging out of the show though ...
I wouldn't be surprised if his next season is his last. Which hopefully will mean those who haven't watched while he's been on it will start enjoying it again. I doubt there will be much of a jump in figures though.
I would be amazed if he's still around at the end of 2014. In fact, I'd be moderately surprised if he's around at the beginning of it. Agreed that figures won't jump - the show has hit critical mass imo.
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Both Broadchurch and Downton are rare examples new must watch shows due to heightened media attention, Sherlock is another example. I would not be surprised if they go on much longer their figures will drop as well. Also not really shows that whole families will watch. A lot of other shows, including the likes of Eastenders figures have dropped. I'm pretty sure even the likes of X Factor and BGT have dropped as well. Which maybe hints that families are watching tv together less?
2) The fatal flaw with iPlayer is that it doesn't measure unique viewers. It measures TOTAL views. It's no better than YouTube. Have a connection problem and reload the video ten times? Congratulations, you are "ten viewers!" Watch most of the show on TV, but the phone rings so you miss a scene, and you go back to watch 30 seconds of the episode on iPlayer? Congratulations, you are now TWO viewers - and your 30 seconds of view time isn't differentiated from someone who watched the whole show. iPlayer stats are crap and I wish people would stop talking about them because they measure N O T H I N G >.<
I'm not denying it's hard to get exact figures but to completely discount them is completely stupid. Iplayer and the like is an extremely popular way of watching TV in the UK now. Getting exact figures is impossible but it does count for a fair proportion, especially now as the show is barely repeated on tv. There's also people who will download the episode illegally, again they cannot be counted properly but to say that they don't matter is stupid. Just because you can't get an exact figure doesn't mean those viewers don't count.
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There is literally no data to support this. And Eastenders ratings droppings hardly constitutes a major trend particularly when other, stronger shows are still able to maintain must-see status. The only people I ever hear this argument from is Doctor Who fans trying to justify the ratings.
I'm not denying it's hard to get exact figures but to completely discount them is completely stupid. Iplayer and the like is an extremely popular way of watching TV in the UK now. Getting exact figures is impossible but it does count for a fair proportion, especially now as the show is barely repeated on tv. There's also people who will download the episode illegally, again they cannot be counted properly but to say that they don't matter is stupid. Just because you can't get an exact figure doesn't mean those viewers don't count.
Wow. It takes a really special kind of person to come onto someone's personal journal - where they've actually posted REASONS (no unique views, no parsing by IP, no equivalent of AI, et al ad nauseum), and offer literally no proof -- and yet call the person WITH proof 'stupid' twice in the same paragraph. Again, there is literally no data to support this. If I were so inclined I could spam the video feed for Nightmare in Silver right now and you'd see the "viewer" count go up significantly in the span of less than a minute. Sorry to confuse your wishful thinking with the facts.
Bye.
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