Doctor Who Sets Ratings Record For BBC America

“The Impossible Astronaut” pulls in the biggest audience ever for the North American channel

The first episode of new Doctor Who ’s sixth series, “The Impossible Astronaut” has given BBC America its biggest audience ever.

The episode, which aired on the channel mere hours after its UK premiere, delivered almost 1.3 million viewers, up 71,000 viewers from the previous record, held by Matt Smith’s first full episode as the Doctor, “The Eleventh Hour”, which aired on BBC America in April last year.

The show’s return has also helped BBC America in other areas:

• Viewership across all of BBC America’s Doctor Who YouTube content reached an all-time high of 3.5 million views.
• The official debut of Doctor Who on Tumblr reached over 10,000 followers in two weeks.
• Doctor Who is currently the #1 TV series on the iTunes store.
• BBCAMERICA.com pulled in its largest traffic ever – on its best day, Saturday, April 23, 74% of users were new visitors to the site.