BBC1's decision to play out Doctor Who at the earlier time of 6.20pm on Saturday looks to have paid off as the start of the new series picked up an average audience of 8.4m (39.4%), 200,000 more than last year's launch.

The 50 minute sci-fi drama began with 8.4m (40%), grew to 8.7m (40.2%) at 6.45pm before dipping down to 7.5m (34.1%) at 7pm.

The show's executive producer Russell T Davies had accused the channel's schedulers of “cocking up” the transmission time, saying the earlier time of 6.20pm would lose 1.5m viewers.

The show though picked up more viewers than the opening show last year when 8.2m (39.7%) watched on 31 March in a 7pm slot. Overall, the 13-part series averaged 7.1m (37.6%).

Saturday's show also gained a larger proportion of both the key demographics of upmarket and younger viewers.

Nearly 41% - 40.8% - of last year's audience was made up of ABC1 viewers but Saturday's show comprised of 44.3% of ABC1 viewers. Likewise, viewers aged between 16 and 34 made up 20% of Saturday's show compared with 17.3% of last year's run.

ITV1's hour-long You've Been Framed! couldn't really compete with 4.7m (22.3%).

The corporation's search-for-a-star format I'd Do Anything received a boost at 7.10pm thanks to Doctor Who with 6.8m (30.3%) watching for 80 minutes. Last week's show, at 6.50pm, averaged 6.2m (27.9%).

The commercial network failed to hit the 4m mark whilst the BBC1 show was on. Harry Hill's TV Burp at 7.20pm amused 5.5m (24.8%) for half an hour which was followed by the final edition of Duel with 3.6m (18.7%) for 65 minutes.

BBC1 continued to pile on the pressure at 8.30pm with Casualty hitting 7.1m (30.8%) for 50 minutes. ITV1's news at 8.55pm informed 3.6m (15.7%).

ITV1 finally gained the upper hand over BBC1 at 9.15pm as its live boxing coverage averaged 4.4m (21%). BBC1's comedy Love Soup at 9.20pm appealed to 3.5m (15.8%).

The remaining terrestrial channels once again struggled to make much of an impression.

Channel 4's ER at 8.15pm interested just 753,000 (3.3%) although the channel's situation improved slightly at 9.15pm as its film Big Momma's House drew 1.3m (6.8%).

In the early part of peaktime Five's film Return of the Magnificent Seven at 6.40pm drew 939,000 (4.2%) although later on CSI: NY at 9.20pm was watched by 2.4m (11.4%).

An age-old repeat of Dad's Army was BBC2's biggest peaktime show with 2.3m (10.2%) at 7.25pm. Its film, The Shipping News, picked up 1.6m (8.4%) at 9.30pm.

Predictably, BBC1 scored a huge daytime hit with its live coverage of The Grand National. Between 2.30pm and 5pm a sizeable 5.2m (39.9%) tuned in, well above the slot average of 2m (20.2%).

All hours shares for Saturday 5 April 2008: BBC1 - 29.8%, ITV1 - 14%, BBC2 - 6.8%, C4 - 5.4%, Five - 5.1%, multichannel - 38.9%.

Peaktime (6pm to 10.30pm) shares: BBC1 - 28.9%, ITV1 - 19.6%, BBC1 - 8.1%, Five - 6.5%, C4 - 5.6%, multichannel - 31.3%.

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