Doctor Who "The Impossible Astronaut" Most Recorded UK Show Ever

Stick that in your pipe, Daily Mail , and choke on it

While the tabloids were falling over themselves to report how Doctor Who ’s overnight ratings were falling when the new series returned four weeks ago, they seem to have gone strangely silent following this press release from Kantar (the company that analyses ratings figures in the UK) about the show’s audience figures.

It’s official – “The Impossible Astronaut”, the first episode of the season, is the most recorded show in UK TV history.

4.1 million viewers chose to time-shift the show by watching a recording of the show either later that day or in the following week. The figure easily beat the previous record holder, the 2010 Christmas day episode of Come Fly With Me (3.29 million).

Dalia Gereis, commercial director at Kantar Media Audiences, said: “With the continued growth of hard drive recording devices like Sky+, it's no surprise that all the episodes of these top 10 recorded shows come from the last three years. Increasingly viewers are using their own ‘time travel’ abilities to watch TV shows when they want them – this particularly applies to dramas and ‘must see’ reality shows. Given that these figures do not include data from online catch-up services like BBC iPlayer and ITVplayer, it is clear that judging a show’s performance just by looking at it's overnight viewing figures is unlikely to give the full picture.”

And, as we pointed out in this article, people who record the show or watch it on services like iPlayer are making a conscious decision to watch the show, rather than just watching it because there’s nothing better on the other side, so these “time-shifted” figures are arguably a far more important indication of a show’s popularity.

So, come on Daily Mail , report this (we’ve just checked the website – zilch).