Doctor Who "The Snowmen" Final Viewing Figures

The final consolidated viewing figure for the Doctor Who Christmas special, “The Snowmen”, has been revealed – 9.87 million. That’s a massive increase of over 2 million on the overnight figure of 7.59 million.

The consolidated figure includes people who recorded the show and watched it within the first week. It does not include iPlayer requests, though Doctor Who was number one for two days in iPlayer’s “most requested” chart.

In terms of raw figures, the 2012 special did solidly if not spectacularly. You could blame it on the early scheduling (it managed a million or so extra viewers over the shows shown in the same time slot for the previous two years). You could point out that nothing did spectacularly on Christmas Day this year – even Downton Abbey , which Who beat on overnights (and on final figures, depending on how you interpret them). Christmas Eve and Boxing Day saw the really impressive figures from Miranda (9.5 million on overnights) and Mrs Brown’s Boys (8.8 and 9 million on overnights) – maybe viewing patterns are changing? Who wants to bet there’ll be a fan campaign in some quarters to get the show moved to Christmas Eve next year?

But there’s no real science to these things. More importantly, 2.3 million people were dedicated enough to want to record it. And many hundreds of thousands more caught up on iPlayer. The audience share was HUGE! And the AI (audience appreciation index) was 87, the joint-highest for a Who Christmas special (along with “The End Of Time, Part One”).

The Christmas Specials so far…

2005 “The Christmas Invasion” – 9.84 million
2006 “The Runaway Bride” – 9.35 million
2007 “Voyage Of The Damned” – 13.31 million
2008 “The Next Doctor” – 13.10 million
2009 “The End Of Time Part One” – 12.04 million
2010 “ A Christmas Carol” - 12.11 million
2011 “The Doctor The Widow And The Wardrobe” – 10.77
2012 “The Snowmen” – 9.87 million

2012 Christmas Day Consolidated Ratings

So Doctor Who came fourth or sixth for the day, depending on how you’re counting…

1 11.31m (34.3%) - EastEnders
2 10.18m (33.9%) - Call The Midwife
3 9.90m (32.0%) - The Royale Family
4 9.87m (38.8%) - Doctor Who
5 9.84m (32.2%) - Coronation Street - 10.16m (33.3%) inc +1
6 9.69m (29.8%) - Downton Abbey - 10.28m (31.6%) inc +1
7 9.17m (35.7%) - Strictly Come Dancing

The last ever episode of Merlin , meanwhile, had a final consolidated viewing figure of 7.8 million . A very decent figure, but down from the 8.45 million who watched the penultimate episode the previous Saturday. The finale was slightly scuppered by being up against The Snowman And The Snowdog , which just happened to be the fourth most watched show on Channel 4 in 2012, with over 6 million viewers.