Idiot's Lantern Overnights

Overnight ratings for The Idiot's Lantern, this season's seventh new episode of Doctor Who, have come in: last night, the series was watched by an average of 6.32 million viewers, with a 32.2% audience share. The episode peaked at 7.78 million viewers in the five-minute breakdown, at the very end of the episode. Of note, while the total TV audience for the evening was down slightly, the ITV broadcast of Soccer Aid at the very same time averaged 6.15 million viewers. Doctor Who was still first in its timeslot by both number of viewers and audience share, with Soccer Aid scoring the number two slot. Compared to the same weekend last year, where the episode "The Doctor Dances" scored 6.17 million viewers (as adjusted by BARB for the final viewing figure), Doctor Who ranked higher this time. It is, however, the lowest audience share of the new series to date, breaking the previous low of 33.9% held by "Aliens of London," again likely due to the Soccer Aid broadcast, which had been expected to beat every other show of the night.

Over on BBC Three, the sixth instalment of Doctor Who Confidential was watched by 432,000 viewers (2.8% audience share), a decline of approximately 170,000 viewers from the previous week. (Thanks to 'Shaun Lyon,' Andy Parish)