"The Snowmen" - BARB Ratings

"The Snowmen" had an official Xmas Day rating of 9.87m - this figure is purely those who watched it live or recorded and watched later.  It does not include online viewings such as iplayer and does not include the repeat figures from BBC3.

The BBC3 repeats gained an additional 915,000 viewers which, when added to the 9.87m, brings the total so far to 10.79m.  Iplayer viewings for "Doctor Who" tend to average around 1.6m but increase during the Christmas period to around 1.9m.  If indeed the show manages another 1.9m via iplayer then we're looking at around 12.69m (personally, I think it could well be more).

As usual with figures (and I work in accounts!), it's all a matter of perspective - you can make them show what you want.  You can manipulate them in order to support your own viewpoint - I'm sure, for instance, that there will be cries of "ohh woe...the Christmas ratings aren't as good as they used to be".  Being brutally honest, "The Snowmen" DID beat "The Christmas Invasion" but "The End of Time part 1" achieved 12.04m and "Voyage of the Damned" managed 13.31m.  The early timeslot of 5.15pm did the show no favours at all - it'll be interesting to see what the highest rating ever achieved in that timeslot is because I bet "The Snowmen" either came very close to it or overtook it.

I think the bigger picture needs to be taken into account - and this is the fact that viewing habits have changed enormously.  Iplayer viewings NEED to be included - it's now an essential way of viewing shows.  It's almost criminal that they are not included - not to mention the hoops you have to go through to access iplayer viewing figures (normally they're buried in the BBC's monthly reports and I've spent many a long hour searching through them for the iplayer figures I needed).

Our viewing habits have changed - why hasn't the way we calculate viewing figures changed as well?  I will be posting the iplayer viewing figures as soon as I have them - I feel the correct way to look at viewing figures overall is to include repeats and online viewings.  Obviously some will feel differently and therefore I've broken it down above and shown the BBC3 repeats as a separate figure.

Update - as pointed out by Tom Spilsbury (DWM Editor) 5.75m watched "The Snowmen" live - it added 4.12m viewers to it's live number and therefore it becomes THE most recorded TV programme ever, beating the previous record holder, "The Impossible Astronaut" which had 4.11m recordings.

Thanks to TVRatingsUK and CameronYardeJnr for the official ratings and BBC3 repeat ratings.