The Grand Moff has dismissed the low overnight ratings of the recent series of Doctor Who as unimportant.
Moffat made the comments in a video posted on YouTube by his son Joshua (posting as ‘armytedd’) who filmed his family as they prepared to watch last Saturdays finale The Big Bang.
The overnight ratings for this fantastic episode suggest that it had underperformed but when collated with the timeshift data, the show has been higher than before.
Moffat believes the way people are watching television is changing;
“That is something that’s becoming very, very important to television. Everything in television used to be about the overnight and the ratings the following morning, the rating that we’ll hear tomorrow morning used to be so important and now it isn’t because so many people are watching on iPlayer, so many are catching it up later.
“They no long think they have to watch when we tell them so if it’s hot outside like it is now – damn you! – then people stand there with their barbecue forks and say, ‘Ah, let’s toss some more hamburgers and we’ll watch it later,’ and quite right too.â€
As a viewer Moffat added that he prefers to watch each episode as it airs and ‘gets very grumpy’ when he’s interrupted (who doesn’t?)
See Moffat grilled by his own mini Paxman.
I think this debate needs killing. I was not the biggest fan of series 5 but that is down to my tastes rather because it was bad or anything-far from it. People are watching and enjoying the show differently and thats it. The ratings seem extremely healthy so really what is the issue? The BBC seem and and I hope to continue to treat the show on a level with only two other prgrammes, EastEnders and Strictly.As far as I can see, it has a bright future.
I get so annoyed at these reports. Matt Smith is an excellent Doctor.
I just looked at the ratings for series 4, in total it got 7.27 million overall.
So far Series 5 (and consider we have not got the final figures yet for episodes 12 & 13) stands at 7.45 million.
Now it would seem to me that Dr Who has done well
Yes the specials of last year got overall 10.92. Think about the time of year they were shown? Easter, Autumn, Christmas and New Year.
So I say to those in the press that want to cause trouble or anyone “you are the weakest link, GOODBYE”!
wish you could take into account the amount of people who download it off torrent sites in this country and right across the world because it is easily one of the most popular british shows globally. I hang out on deviantart from time to time for example and there’s loads of fan-art of Who from even relatively obscure countries I never thought would have even heard of the show or at least the new stuff. Is like he’s known everywhere.
I find it rather interesting that the main stirrer of the pot in this instance is the Daily Mail, who are very anti-BBC. Let’s put it this way– the next step will be for the Mail to run a critical story on the size of Doctor Who’s budget set against dwindling audience figures.