A Brief History of Timeslots
The brief trailer at the end of the achingly brilliant The Church on Ruby Road managed to break the hearts of much of Doctor Who's audience by saddling us with the knowledge that the Fifteenth Doctor and Ruby would not be getting back to us until May. That, we all thought, was simply ages and probably something that had had to be worked out with the series' new international broadcaster, Disney +.
That's something that's been confirmed today, when we learned the exact date and timeslot for the series next UK showing. It's going to be 11th May 2024, to coincide with Eurovision. Given the flip back to Saturdays for the show's Tennant trilogy of 60th anniversary specials, only a fool would have bet against Doctor Who returning permanently to what's not so much its natural home as its ancestral seat.
But here's the twist: Doctor Who will premiere on iplayer before it's on television, "dropping" (to use that already dated term) at midnight on 11th, the start of the day, in order to have a simultaneous "drop" of 19:00 Eastern Standard Time on Disney + in the USA. As a decision it arguably reflects the conviction of many working in the medium of television that broadcast TV is itself now an anachronism and international streaming the only game in town. (Although, to be fair, the deliberate aligning with the national TV event that is Eurovision argues against that. Or suggests a production team covering all eventualities.)
The strange irony of this is that Doctor Who as a programme was specifically designed to be part of broadcast schedule. It was created to fill a persistent gap for what was then still BBC Television (there was not yet a BBC 2) and which was brought to the attention of then BBC Head of Drama, Sydney Newman back in March 1963.
Newman had, of course, worked on and/or initiated several series that can be seen as proto-Doctor Who during his time at ABC. There had also been several memos and discussions about future family SF series to be developed for the BBC the year before. But that memo from Donald Wilson about that scheduling gap and the meeting it prompted on 26th March 1963 were arguably what initiated the creation of the series we're all going to stay up until midnight to stream the next episode of sixty years later.
That space that needed filling back in 1963 was an awkward one which existed between the football results, which brought to an end every Saturday edition of BBC Television’s sports flagship Grandstand, and the start of the evening's programming. Which at this point often began with pop picking highlight Juke Box Jury. Right from the start the idea was that Doctor Who was transitional. Transactional. It should be "suitable for all the family" simply by virtue of that place in the schedules between the sport and pop music.
In the end, the first episode of Doctor Who wasn’t scheduled after Grandstand at all. Plans had shifted and the programme was, for its first weeks at least, planned to be transmitted after the puppet based television version of popular radio comedy series The Goons, which came in 15m instalments. An Unearthly Child also had the misfortune to be transmitted, as its obligatory under canon law to point out, the day after the assassination of US President John F Kennedy, in the process being delayed for a little under two minutes for news relating to the President’s death.
The second episode, The Cave of Skulls, was scheduled for 17:15 the next Saturday but was pushed back further, a full fifteen minutes, to 17:30. Doctor Who’s producer Verity Lambert had argued for, and won, an unscheduled repeat broadcast of An Unearthly Child immediately before The Cave of Skulls, with both Grandstand shuffling back and The Telegoons pre-empted to compensate.
The unanticipated shift to 17:30 for one week was, however, appropriate, at least in retrospect. Doctor Who would bounce between 17:15 and 17:30 depending on the exact length of Grandstand, and whether The Telegoons was scheduled before or after it, for much of its first year. (Seeing off ITV’s rival SF, the delightfully entitled, now wiped and forgotten, Emerald Soup in the process.) This period also included the only Doctor Who episode to be broadcast on a 29th of February, The Singing Sands. About time there was another one, in my opinion.
Doctor Who celebrated its first birthday in November 1964 by settling into a more solid 17:40 slot. With The Telegoons now defunct, Doctor Who provided a bridge between Juke Box Jury before it and the hugely popular police series Dixon of Dock Green after it. It is likely this scheduling, as well as the overall quality of Doctor Who in this period that resulted in the series routinely hitting 12 or 13m viewers figures that are amongst the programmes most consistently high number of regular watchers to this day.
After Christmas 1965, and the conclusion of the twelve part Dalek serial that had been running since the Autumn, Doctor Who found itself shuffled back to 17:15 for War of God, the opening episode of a four part serial about sectarian violence in late sixteenth century France
Whether this topic, or the move, or the sudden competition from ITV’s popular variety talent show Thank Your Lucky Stars explains the collapse of the series’ viewers over the following weeks is a matter that’s still open to debate.
With The Celestial Toyroom, the series moved back up to 17:50, clear of Thank Your Lucky Stars, and perhaps not coincidentally saw a notable improvement in its viewing figures. The Dancing Floor, the third episode of this serial, would be last episode to be seen by more than 9m viewers until 1970.
That 17:50 slot would, occasional exceptions aside, be Doctor Who's home until the end of 1967, at which point it went back to 17:25, only to return to its original slot of 17:15 six months later. And there, the odd sport related pre-emption, and a shuffling up to 17:20 due to the sub 20 minute episodes of the story The Mind Robber, it would stay for the rest of the decade.
1970 saw a new Doctor Who (Jon Pertwee), a new series in colour for the first time, and a new format, with Doctor Who now, to borrow a few cliches, a dashing dandy man of action, exiled to earth, denied his ability to travel in time and space, and acting as the unofficial unpaid scientific advisor to his UNIT family while driving a sprightly yellow roadster. (I enjoyed that.)
All change then, except for the time slot. 17:15 for the whole of 1970. Well, I say whole. Two episodes of The Ambassadors of Death were bumped back by a few minutes for sport and / or news related to the near catastrophe of the Apollo 13 moon mission. A juxtaposition you’ll appreciate if you’ve seen The Ambassadors of Death. And if you haven’t, get on that; it’s excellent.
Another big change between 1960s and 1970s Doctor Who was that the programme had, during the earlier decade, essentially run all year, with the odd brief break. Doctor Who’s production blocks were anything up to 52 weeks long. In the 1970s the series would be produced and shown in groups of the mid to high twenties, meaning Doctor Who was off screen for as much of the year as it was on it.
Nevertheless, the traditional 17:15 seems to have been the plan for 1971 as well. But following public discussion of the horror content of Terror of the Autons, the first story of the year (a discussion that, at least according to fan legend, included a question in Parliament) Doctor Who was pushed back by a whole hour, to 18:15 for the rest of the year. Given that the 1971 series ends with The Daemons, a story in which Doctor Who goes full on Folk Horror, and which features a devilish figure being summoned by the Master while pretending to be a Vicar, and climaxes in the destruction of a church, that was probably wise.
The series found a compromise position of around 17:50 for 1972, and in the process managed to be seen by 10m viewers for the first time since that Thank Your Lucky Stars related crash of Christmas 1965. A launch around Christmas in 17:30 to 18:00 slot, with the odd exception for sporting or seasonal reasons, did Doctor Who well for the next four years, to increasingly high ratings.
When the 1975 series started getting 13m viewers, a second 1975 series was commissioned for the Autumn. For the first time since 1968 there were thirty five episodes of Doctor Who that year. 1976 saw Doctor Who move back to an Autumn start and a single series a year, and 1977 it nudged up to just after 18:00, which was probably wise given the series’ increased horror content. Autumn Saturday nights at around 18:00 would be Doctor Who’s home for the rest of the 1970s and into the very early 1980s.
1982, like 1970, was all change for the programme, but in even more ways. Part One of Castrovalva, the first story starring Peter Davison’s Doctor, became the first Doctor Who story to debut on an episode other than a Saturday, making its bow on Monday 4th January at just before 19:00. (That's except for viewers in Wales.) This was also by far the latest slot the series had ever had. The 1980/81 series had seen ratings fall by, at an extreme, around three quarters, from the 1979/80 one, and the change in time slot was a response to that. It has to be accounted a success, with the series routinely hitting 10m viewers during the thirteen weeks of 1982 it was on. Yes, thirteen. Because although Doctor Who made twenty six episodes that year, it was shown twice a week, with Castrovalva Part Two following at 18:55 the next day. That doubling, more than the move to weekday nights, seems to have confused people, with the second episode of the story watched by notably fewer people than the first and third.
If BBC One was looking to confuse Who viewers, then 1983 went about it the right way. The series started off in the same Monday slot, albeit at little earlier at 18:45. But then the second episode followed on Wednesday at the same time. Part Three followed the next Tuesday, again at 18:45. This was the series’ pair of slots for the next ten weeks, plus or minus a few minutes. At the other end of the same year, The Five Doctors started at 19:20. Again, the programme’s latest ever first run start time, with its 90m running time meaning the 20th anniversary celebration of a children’s programme finished only a few minutes before the nine o’clock watershed for adult content. Still, it was a Friday. The first time new Doctor Who had been shown on that day and another one off the list, for anyone keeping score.
The first Friday would be quickly followed by several more. Thursdays and Fridays at 18:40 would be Doctor Who’s home in January to March 1984, for the last of Peter Davison’s three series in the title role, and Colin Baker’s first serial. This meant that Doctor Who had tried out every possible weeknight in a little over two years. Producer John Nathan-Turner thought Doctor Who was being "used" to try and find the best slot of the imminent EastEnders, it being serialised and having a fanbase, and thus a likely candidate to see whether, for example, This Is Your Life or Emmerdale Farm would more likely fold in the face of a new BBC soap.
With the weeknight odyssey over, there was nowhere for Doctor Who to go but home, even if it taken the long way round. Colin Baker’s two full series as Doctor Who, in 1985 and 1986 saw the series at 17:20, as near as dammit where it had started. That was also, however, rather earlier than the midweek timeslots Who had occupied for the previous three years. The production team were, by their own account, unaware of just how early they’d be on while working on most of the season. This resulting in a programme that had deliberately pushed its scary content, violence and horror (including body horror) going out very early, something that - opportunistically or not - was used to attack the programme’s creative direction by those in the BBC not in favour of the two decade old series chalking up many more birthdays.
It was, therefore, not a very happy homecoming. With the ‘cancellation crisis’ hitting the programme mid season in 1985, and a season end facing off against HTV’s Robin of Sherwood, the series didn’t have much luck. In 1986, positioned as part of a BBC One evening line up that featured the disastrous Roland Rat The Series and a Noel Edmonds programme (The Late, Late Breakfast Show) preempted and then cancelled mid season due to a fatality on set, Doctor Who’s prosperity was very much at the mercy of external factors that could be argued to be unconnected to its production or star.
By 1987, Colin was out and Sylvester McCoy was in. Doctor Who’s twenty fourth series, saw the programme scheduled in its latest ever timeslot, even including The Five Doctors, at 19:35. But, in a curious reversal of two years earlier, the 1987 series was bright and breezy and - at least superficially - more closely resembled BBC children’s programming than at any time in its history. Yet here it was, suddenly and unexpectedly a primetime programme at last, and in its dotage.
In this Monday slot, and then for the next two years when it moved to Wednesdays at the same time, the show had a steady lead-in from BBC One’s flagship chat show Wogan, and was usually followed by something light at 8pm, e.g. popular period sitcom Hi-de-Hi. While this slot is usually considered by fans to have been BBC One deliberately letting Doctor Who wither on the vine, it being up against ITV’s then ratings behemoth Coronation Street, from 1987 to 1989 the programme was part of a relatively strong BBC One weeknight line up, and for the first two years it performed, given those conditions, quite well. On the third, it did really very badly, for reasons too complicated to go into here.
When Doctor Who returned for one night only in 1996, it was on a Monday and also in its latest ever timeslot, just as it had been nine years earlier in 1987. 20:30 meant that more than half of the Paul McGann starring Doctor Who TVM aired after the watershed, another first for the programme. The scheduling of the TVM as a Bank Holiday event also anticipated much of the scheduling of the 21st century Doctor Who series, which has often launched over a Bank Holiday weekend.(There are two in May to choose from this year). It's one of the many curious ways that, were you so minded, you could see this brief revival of the series as genuinely bridging the 1989 and 2005 versions.
The Bank Holiday in question in 2005 was Easter, whereas in 1996 it had been the late Spring ("whitsun") one. Although Rose started at 19:00 on the Saturday of the weekend, rather than ninety minutes later on the Bank Holiday Monday itself. 2005’s Doctor Who smashed all before it. Who remembers Celebrity Wrestling now? Except as a punchline related to Doctor Who? Probably not even people who worked on it.
Thus it was Easter Saturday early evening launches for Doctor Who across the eras of the Eccleston and (first) Tennant Doctors, and into the time of Matt Smith. Easter Saturday every year for the next six years. Okay, 2008 launched a couple of weeks later, because Easter was so early that year. But the programme made up for it by launching on Easter Saturday in 2009, when there wasn’t a series. Which is pretty clever if you ask me.
As in the past, the series’s precise start time in this comfortable, successful home would vary over these years, e.g. 2006 two parter Rise of the Cybermen/The Age of Steel showed its first part at 19:25 and its second at 18:35, with the latest start time in this period being 2006’s Gridlock, an outlier at 19:40, while more than a few episodes, including several Christmas specials, starting at 18:00.
Ah, yes. The Christmas Special. The first, The Christmas Invasion, was also the first new episode of Doctor Who transmitted on a Sunday in the UK, finally completing the set for the show. Big tick there.
The splitting of the 2011 production run of Doctor Who into two half seasons, one that ran, as above, from Easter, and another that started on the August Bank Holiday, marked the beginning of a period of change and even inconsistency in Doctor Who’s scheduling. That series (called "6B" by fans or "Series Six Part Two" on the initial DVD) was all on at a comfortable 19:10 or so, but it was Doctor Who’s first new material in August since Terror of the Zygons Part One in 1975, and that had been the first new Doctor Who in August since 1968.
A brief run of five episodes started in September 2012, and due to that month having five Saturdays managed to finish in September 2012 too, with all episodes going out at about 19:35 or so. 2013’s short run of eight episodes returned to the warm embrace of an Easter start and 18:15 to 19:00 start times. At the other end of the year, as in 1983, an anniversary special was waiting. And as in 1983 it would begin rather later than Doctor Who normally did, at 19:50. This obviously didn’t put anyone off, as The Day of the Doctor managed to be the most watched television programme of its week and the most watched television drama of the entire year.
That Christmas special saw Matt Smith hand over to Peter Capaldi, who had already cameoed in The Day of the Doctor itself, and Capaldi’s first proper episode Deep Breath, saw his Doctor Who finding his feet in a new slot. Still Saturdays, but launching at the August Bank Holiday (as in 2011) and at 19:50, as for The Day of the Doctor. That start doesn’t seem to have done the series much good, with routinely later, but inconsistent start times, dependent on the running time of the BBC’s variably lengthed Strictly Come Dancing. 2015 saw the series launch in mid September, but still later in the evening and still at the mercy of “Strictly”. As the kids call it.
That varying, but consistently later time slot, saw several 2014 and 2015 episodes start at 20:20 or 20:30, with one 2014 episode beginning at 20:40, beating the 1996 TVM’s 20:30 after eighteen years. It was a time slot that perhaps suited Doctor Who’s arguably two bleakest ever series, but it also saw the programme up against shows on ITV that are essentially the new century’s version of Thank Your Lucky Stars, and with what might be seen to be similar, if not quite so devestating, results.
A shift back to Saturdays in Spring at around 19:00, sometimes half an hour later, sometimes twenty minutes earlier, beckoned for 2017, after the series took 2016 off, bar a Christmas special. The 2015 and 2016 Christmas episodes, which started at 17:15 and 17:45 respectively and which set a bouncier tone for Doctor Who, seem simultaneously to be both transitional and pathfinding, both creatively and in terms of scheduling.
One of the many changes initiated by show runner Chris Chibnall for the 2018 series of Doctor Who was a move away from the reclaimed Saturday slot to a similar time on Sundays. The series launched at 18:45 to one of Doctor Who's best ever audience figures (10.9m) and then bounced between 18:30 and 19:00 for the rest of the season, sadly to diminishing returns in terms of viewing figures and AI. (Which are not usually considered likely to fall simultaneously, the practice being that an audience that sticks with a declining programme tends to really enjoy it.)
Another change Chibnall initiated was moving the seasonal special from Christmas to New Year. Resolution (of the Daleks) managed slightly fewer viewers (7.1m) than the then last Christmas episode Twice Upon A Time (7.9m). While that's possibly attributable to the slow, attritional decline in television viewership over the year or so between them, neither it is a revival comparable with triumph of The Woman Who Fell To Earth a couple of months before.
The second Chibnall / Whittaker season started a year after the end of the first, rather than a year after its beginning, on 1st January 2020 at 19:00 and then filling the same slot, more or less, for the next ten weeks, eventually starting earlier (18:50) for the extra length series finale, The Timeless Children. Shortly after that, the United Kingdom went into the first of its Covid-19 lockdowns, but thanks to the production team working ahead there was a 70m special already in the can. As production on other programmes halted, and schedulers wondered how hours might be filled a few months from now, Doctor Who looked pretty secure.
Revolution of the Daleks stormed onto screens at 18:45 on 1st January 2021, with a caption announcing it was a year since Resolution. Which presumably means that ether one of them was set in the future or the other in the past. It was the most watched episode for a year (6.3m, compared to Skyfall Part One's 6.8m). Covid production restrictions then caught up with Doctor Who, with the truncated Flux season airing in a 18:15 to 18:30 start slot from Halloween (31st October) to St Nicholas Day (5th December), before the Daleks came back for more in Eve of the Daleks on 1st January 2022 again at 19:00. By far the best of the new year specials, it also rated the worst, at 4.4m viewers.
Legend of the Sea Devils briefly revived the Easter start tradition, although for one night only, 2009 style, airing on Easter Sunday, the 17th April. Its 3.4m viewers sadly under a third of those for The Woman Who Fell To Earth. Like at the end of the 1960s, it was time for another reinvention. Almost. The Power of the Doctor saw out the Chibnall / Whittaker era, airing on Sunday 23rd October 2022, to help celebrate the BBC's centenary and the weird fact that Doctor Who had been around for nearly two thirds of it, and that doesn't look like stopping anytime soon.
But, here's a thought: The simultaneous worldwide "drop" for the next episode means Doctor Who will be on 10th May in the USA and the 11th of May in the UK. That doesn't mean US audiences get to see it first, they get to see it at the same time. The same time which is a different time, and also the day before. Cos time zones. But not the time zones from The War Games.
Time travel series, innit.
Addendum: For those interested, these are the first (new) episodes of Doctor Who shown on each day of the week in the UK.
Monday - Castrovalva Part One (4th January 1982)
Tuesday - Castrovalva Part Two (5th January 1982)
Wednesday - Arc of Infinity Part Three (11 January 1983)
Thursday - Warriors of the Deep Part One (5th January 1984)
Friday - The Five Doctors (25 November 1984)
Saturday - An Unearthly Child (23 November 1963)
Sunday - The Christmas Invasion (25 December 2005)