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Doctor Who Viewership is plummeting

It's because those very people running and working for all those companies are the type of people that virtue signal. It's not that they're just trying to appeal to a minority of loud and obnoxious Twitter people but they actually are the minority.

It's like when people get mad at Sweet Baby Incorporated, they should realize those developers chose to work with SBI. They are as much the problem as the consultancy they hire.
They're also old millennials and way behind vibe shifts. The content they put out is 3-5 years behind what cutting edge media is doing. All this white male stuff is so played out. Embarrassing.
 
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Dr.Morris79

Gold Member
There is only one way out...

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Though "add Henry Cavill" doesn't actually pan out that much.
There is one other way..

New 9pm air time. The Dr splits into two again, but oh, it's Tom Hardy.. he turns to the Dr and says..

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Ncuti Gatwa cries and runs away. Tom carries on the jaunts of the Dr and he weirdly finds Karen Gillan wearing the Jumanji outfit (weird right, very odd..)

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Fives seasons later, Dr Who is saved for the next sixty years :messenger_sunglasses:

Put me on the Beeb payroll ffs

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Laptop1991

Member
Not surprised lol, even Russell T Davies recently said DR Who fans won't like this new DR Who and he was right!, we all know that Disney has paid money, so we also know what the stories will be like and the ever recurring theme of the show now lol, i'm not watching that over and over.
 

BlackTron

Member
I love that we are in mid 2024 and companies are still confused why a tried and true product begins to fail when they start virtue signaling.

Or does everyone in the office know but they can't be the one to speak up because they don't want to get cancelled and the owners/CEOs are scared of their employees more than shareholders?
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
Colour me surprised...

It's almost as if audiences respond positively to shows designed to entertain them and not shows designed to antagonise and gloat at them.

I'm amazed 2 million people still have such a lack of taste they can stand it.
 
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Jayjayhd34

Member
Would of thought most are watching it when it gets put on iplayer Any figures with on demand

I have say apart from first episode it's been pretty good
 
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FunkMiller

Member
Debunked, cope harder.

The narrative is now 'but it'll have been popular on Disney Plus!'

It got to 10. For it's massive new launch. Beneath old episodes of Criminal Minds and Desperate Housewives.

This is not what a 100 million dollar investment is supposed to get you.

And it's certainly meant to get far, FAR more than 4 million in the country where it's most popular.

Matt Smith topped out at 13 million.
 
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jason10mm

Gold Member
Maybe they should start making content for straight white males again? Perhaps money will be made?
I don't think Dr. Who was ever for straight white males (as in targeting them specifically) though I suppose the Companion is so often eye candy that would be the concession. But the Doctor himself is almost never a 'dashing suave ladies man' type to serve as a SWM ideal, I think. I don't recall much romantic entanglements with him either, other than he had a lady wife, a bit of flirting with some rando, and there was sometimes some subtext with the companion. But hetero relationships are like 95++% of all relationships, it's just foolish to pretend otherwise, and a sci-fi genre show is gonna be HEAVILY weighted towards males, and no matter what you say the UK (and the other big market, the US) is 80-90+% white, so the Venn diagram of potential market is just overwhelmingly SWM, there simply ISN'T anyone else to market to in any sort of numbers. Chasing women is largely going to require a relationship reworking of the show (just like making Bridgerton appeal directly to men would as well) and there are no minorities in any significant numbers anyway, other than maybe hispanics in America (there you go, give us a Latin Doctor) for the show to do anything other than trend straight downward if they actively turn away the core audience. About all they can really do is try for kids and well.....doing gender fluidity/sexual orientation type stuff is a losing game here was well, I think the bitter pill of that stuff has been passed and the younger generations will actively rebel against it simply because its a few years older than they are and I don't think ANY TV show is ever gonna grab big chunks of them anymore, they just don't care.
 
The issue is that for the last ten years, much of mainstream media writing has been about subverting tropes. "You were expecting that? How about this!" Never mind that tropes tend to be what they are because they work. This is a destructive form of storytelling; the opposite of creativity. It can start of fun and playful but it ends up being cynical. It was cutting-edge and fashionable 20 years ago, but mainstream media, being created by and for the braindead, only caught on relatively recently. All of this stuff is already tired. These subverted stories will age incredibly poorly and, with any luck, be entirely forgotten within a couple of decades.

This is why I called Davies a cultural vandal. He is not creating anything here, just twisting something that already exists into an insulting and offensive shape, because that's all he can do. He wants any reaction, and repulsion is the easiest one to get. Being creative is a joyful and positive thing, and being positive is shameful to these people. They're embarrassed by it.
 
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ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
If you want another (also very rough, but useful) measurement of the franchise's impact, here's the worldwide Google Trends chart since 2004.

That peak is when The Day of the Doctor special came out -- the final hurrah for the old era, a very respectful special for fans of the series which showed Matt Smith and David Tennant's doctors together. It was the end of an era.

After that, it has slid into irrelevance. It had 2 blips recently where Tennant came back and where viewers wanted to see the new doctor, but if you go to a short time-frame view even those are already subsiding back to the dead state.

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What interests me is that the all-time peak was so predictably the end of the Matt Smith's run. The show was endearing and appealed to everyone at that time, and was never antagonistic in the slightest towards fans or towards the normal populace. That changed, and the franchise died.
 
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No different than sports. The vast majority of women's league matches get hardly any viewers. They'd rather watch the pro men's league. The games are better and women want to watch sweaty hunky guys, not chicks.

On the plus side, women's WNBA and hockey leagues will exist for a while as the NBA and NHL subsidize them for years. They both would had already gone bankrupt by now.
I think this is a really underappreciated point.

When men play sports they generally become more manly (stronger, leaner, more aggressive) and therefore more attractive to women.
When women play sports they also become more manly and therefore less attractive to men.

I don't want to watch a bunch of broad shouldered, flat chested butch women kicking a ball around.
Women love watching Cristiano Ronaldo ripping his shirt off when he scores.
 

Lunarorbit

Member
This looks horrible. I've never watched the series but I know they have inventive villians.

This on the other hand is just annoying and honestly completely played out. I can't imagine why everytime there's a gay character on disney it's so over the top.

Can disney just stop with this overly dramatic gay baiting? I grew up a few towns away from Provincetown (which like San Francisco and fire island are gay meccas) and know a tons of gay people. They only seem to get portrayed in these exaggerated productions.

It's all disney knows about gay people. That they are just fabulous all the time. It's such a reductive boring interpretation. Dean Pelton is an excellent lbgt representation in a comedic series that plays with this notion and respects it. These fuckers just pander all day.

It's fucking boring
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
I think this is a really underappreciated point.

When men play sports they generally become more manly (stronger, leaner, more aggressive) and therefore more attractive to women.
When women play sports they also become more manly and therefore less attractive to men.

I don't want to watch a bunch of broad shouldered, flat chested butch women kicking a ball around.
Women love watching Cristiano Ronaldo ripping his shirt off when he scores.
I don't think this is true AT ALL. But athletics is a pure meritocracy, so cute girls gotta compete with non-cute girls and the fastest/strongest/most skilled one wins.

But to say that athletics somehow makes a women 'more manly and less attractive"....whew couldn't be more wrong. Athletics can even make decent chicks more appealing, but nothing is gonna help the uggos.

About the only things I would agree with you would be the extremes of female bodybuilding when they hit that ultra low body fat or something like olympic power lifting which usually emphasizes a physical development physique I don't find appealing. Maybe some crossfit but there's hot ones and non hot ones in that as well. Long distance running perhaps, again the best have such a lean, rangey physique and low body fat they lose a lot of the secondary sex characteristics that define femininity.
 
I don't think this is true AT ALL. But athletics is a pure meritocracy, so cute girls gotta compete with non-cute girls and the fastest/strongest/most skilled one wins.

But to say that athletics somehow makes a women 'more manly and less attractive"....whew couldn't be more wrong. Athletics can even make decent chicks more appealing, but nothing is gonna help the uggos.

About the only things I would agree with you would be the extremes of female bodybuilding when they hit that ultra low body fat or something like olympic power lifting which usually emphasizes a physical development physique I don't find appealing. Maybe some crossfit but there's hot ones and non hot ones in that as well. Long distance running perhaps, again the best have such a lean, rangey physique and low body fat they lose a lot of the secondary sex characteristics that define femininity.
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I'll get you her number if you want?
 

Trilobit

Gold Member
The issue is that for the last ten years, much of mainstream media writing has been about subverting tropes. "You were expecting that? How about this!" Never mind that tropes tend to be what they are because they work. This is a destructive form of storytelling; the opposite of creativity. It can start of fun and playful but it ends up being cynical. It was cutting-edge and fashionable 20 years ago, but mainstream media, being created by and for the braindead, only caught on relatively recently. All of this stuff is already tired. These subverted stories will age incredibly poorly and, with any luck, be entirely forgotten within a couple of decades.

At this point I'm surprised when a story is straighforward and doesn't try to do a metacommentary or subvert. Top Gun Maverick was such a breath of fresh air as it took itself seriously and allowed the men to be men.
 
At this point I'm surprised when a story is straighforward and doesn't try to do a metacommentary or subvert. Top Gun Maverick was such a breath of fresh air as it took itself seriously and allowed the men to be men.
I was thinking of Top Gun as I wrote that post. At the time I thought it was the signal that people wanted to make sincere films again, but I fear it may have been a false dawn.
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
The issue is that for the last ten years, much of mainstream media writing has been about subverting tropes. "You were expecting that? How about this!" Never mind that tropes tend to be what they are because they work. This is a destructive form of storytelling; the opposite of creativity. It can start of fun and playful but it ends up being cynical. It was cutting-edge and fashionable 20 years ago, but mainstream media, being created by and for the braindead, only caught on relatively recently. All of this stuff is already tired. These subverted stories will age incredibly poorly and, with any luck, be entirely forgotten within a couple of decades.

We've now entered a new stage where show runners and writers use subversion in order to appeal primarily to ultra progressive niche audiences and to spite their mainstream audience who they see as chuds.
 
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We've now entered a new stage where show runners and writers use subversion in order to appeal primarily to ultra progressive niche audiences and to spite their mainstream audience who they see as chuds.
Well they are trying to appeal to them because they are very loud.
 

Darkmakaimura

Can You Imagine What SureAI Is Going To Do With Garfield?
I was saying in another thread that I'm glad I'm not a Doctor Who fan but then I'm realizing that another British science fiction franchise I do love is on its way to ruin as well.
 

FunkMiller

Member
What happens when you fall into "The Message" and base your whole writing on it and not good entertainment.

I hope it gets cancelled now.

If it went away for a good five or ten years, and someone else brought it back with a full reboot (cast a younger actor as the first Doctor) then it could be good again. Have him be the fugitive from Gallifrey again. Bring back the TimeLords properly.
 

Madflavor

Gold Member
TV is getting more unwatchable by the day and there's no sign it'll get better.

Thankfully there's a 20 year period of sci-fi greatness in the 90s and 00s that most of this new garbage can be ignored.

Not only that but a lot of shows take 2-3 years now between seasons. I miss the days of waiting only 1 year. We used to get Game of Thrones with it's super high production values once a year. Dunno what changed.
 

lmimmfn

Member
TV is getting more unwatchable by the day and there's no sign it'll get better.

Thankfully there's a 20 year period of sci-fi greatness in the 90s and 00s that most of this new garbage can be ignored.
This, ive stopped watching 99% of recent movies/tv shows as im quite sick of "the message". I watched Dune 2 this year, rest was Rocky movies, Total Recall(not that remake crap), Dumb & Dumber, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels etc. etc. so many excellent moves from 80's - ~2014 to watch. Started watching "A bit of Fry and Laurie" first season last night, lol, excellent.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Streaming.
Sorta. If anything, streaming has TOTALLY broken the "new shows in the fall, big spend for 'sweeps week', exotic miniseries for the holidays, then reruns over summer with a few half season summer shows" rhythm we had for DECADES. Now a show can release just about anytime, a new show might have to be juggled around the ending of another show but otherwise they can come out as soon as they are done

Plus seasons are much shorter with these prestige shows, 8-10 eps now instead of 22-24, youd thinkntbey cohkd cranknthem out twice as fast. But they are often all produced before release, rather than the shows getting done just a few weeks before release throughout the year. This is nice because we can have more serialized consistency, but bad because the show is done, they can't course correct during the season if something isn't working. And the SFX on stuff is crazy now, lots more pre and post production males tv far more movie like with 1-3 year cycles instead of just a few months.

So I don't think streaming is solely responsible for the longer gap between seasons (HBO started it, and it's been that way on the BBC for a long time), it exacerbated the change from cheap episodic shows to fancy serialized content (with reality 'unscripted' trash filling the void)
 
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kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Sorta. If anything, streaming has TOTALLY broken the "new shows in the fall, big spend for 'sweeps week', exotic miniseries for the holidays, then reruns over summer with a few half season summer shows" rhythm we had for DECADES. Now a show can release just about anytime, a new show might have to be juggled around the ending of another show but otherwise they can come out as soon as they are done

Plus seasons are much shorter with these prestige shows, 8-10 eps now instead of 22-24, youd thinkntbey cohkd cranknthem out twice as fast. But they are often all produced before release, rather than the shows getting done just a few weeks before release throughout the year. This is nice because we can have more serialized consistency, but bad because the show is done, they can't course correct during the season if something isn't working. And the SFX on stuff is crazy now, lots more pre and post production males tv far more movie like with 1-3 year cycles instead of just a few months.

So I don't think streaming is solely responsible for the longer gap between seasons (HBO started it, and it's been that way on the BBC for a long time), it exacerbated the change from cheap episodic shows to fancy serialized content (with reality 'unscripted' trash filling the void)

It also has to do with the hesitancy in greenlighting more seasons. To be able to crank out a show each year, a show has to be in full production mode constantly. While S2 is being filmed, the writers have to be working on the S3 scripts. That's not going to work when the go ahead for S3 will only come when the S2 was a major success.

Of course in the past couple of years there was the chaos of the covid year and then the writers/actors' strikes that delayed all Hollywood productions.
 

Krathoon

Gold Member
The show is pretty good, but I am worried that making the Doctor gay and pushing that kind of agenda is going to get it cancelled.

You are taking a character that used to be a straight white man for about 55 years and suddenly making him a woman and a gay black man.

That is going to annoy people.

It is like if they suddenly made Superman gay.
 
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Krathoon

Gold Member
Nothing annoys me more is when a showrunner takes an IP and makes it all about him. RTD is making this his version of Doctor Who.

You don't own Doctor Who, RTD. Have some respect for the source material. Stop being selfish.
 

jason10mm

Gold Member
Nothing annoys me more is when a showrunner takes an IP and makes it all about him. RTD is making this his version of Doctor Who.

You don't own Doctor Who, RTD. Have some respect for the source material. Stop being selfish.
I can't really blame him, he is just doing what he is allowed to do. It's really whomever is "in charge" of the IP and cutting the checks that needs to take a step back and consider the long view.
 
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