Return of Doctor Who sees audiences drop on 50th anniversary episode

The return of Doctor Who with Peter Capaldi taking on the lead role saw 148,000 people tune in for the live simulcast with the UK broadcast at 4.50am, and a further 710,000 watching the repeat at 7.40pm on ABC, according to OzTam Overnight Metro ratings.

Those numbers were down on the special 50th anniversary Day of the Doctor episode broadcast last November, which had 424,000 viewers for the simulcast at the later time of 6.50am, and then 922,000 for the repeat that evening.

Sunday night’s TV saw audiences generally down with Nine’s The Block topping the night with a metropolitan audience of 1.64m, on the back of a controversy over contestants Simon and Shannon secretly recording the judges’ comments.