It is now traditional for the Doctor to entertain us on Christmas Day - and for Doctor Who News to run its Christmas Ratings Competition!



This year, The Snowmen will be broadcast at 5:15pm, and will be facing ITV1's New You've Been Framed (5:00pm), Emmerdale (5:30pm), and Paul O'Grady: For the Love of Dogs (6:00pm). Other programmes include films The Fellowship of the Ring (Channel 4 from 5:40pm) and The Santa Incident (Channel 5 from 5:25pm), and a documentary Sister Wendy and the Art of the Gospel (BBC2, from 5:25pm).

The Prize:

We are delighted to be able to invite the winner to a recording of a Big Finish audio adventure - the recording, which will feature Sylvester McCoy as the Doctor, will take place on 21st January 2013 (see terms and conditions below).

An alternative prize will be available to the winner should they be unable to attend the recording.

Entering The Competition:

To enter the competition, please send the following details to xmas-competition@doctorwhonews.net:

• Your name and email address
• Your country (full address will only be requested if you are a winner)
• An alternative contact number (in case we cannot reach you through email)
• Confirmation of being able to attend the Big Finish recording (see terms and conditions)
• Where you read about this competition
• And of course ... your guess for the final viewing figure!

Previous Ratings / Current Odds:

For comparison, the ratings for the previous Christmas Day episodes in recent years are as follows: The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe (10.77m), A Christmas Carol (12.11m), The End Of Time: Part One (12.04m), The Next Doctor (13.10m), Voyage of the Damned (13.31m), The Runaway Bride (9.30m), The Christmas Invasion (9.84m).

The Snowmen is currently considered to be the second-most favourite to top the Christmas TV ratings, according to William Hill. Odds given at the time of writing are 4/1 (up from 5/1 earlier in the week), with the runaway favourite being EastEnders at 1/2. Downton Abbey is third at 5/1, with the other major soap Coronation Street at 8/1. Other shows expected to do well are The Royle Family (10/1) and Call the Midwife (14/1). For the ITV1 programmes in direct opposition to Doctor Who, New You've Been Framed is 100/1, Emmerdale is 40/1, and Paul O'Grady is 50/1.

Terms And Conditions:

• The competition closes at 6:15pm, 25th December 2012
• Only one entry will be accepted per person.
• The competition is open worldwide - however, please note Big Finish details below.
• BARB figures are expected in early January; we will contact the winner once they have been published.
• In the event of a tie, the winner will be chosen from random from out of our fez.
  
  
• The Big Finish recording will take place at their studio near Hammersmith, London - however, travel and accommodation is not included. You must confirm in your competition entry whether you are able to attend the recording or not - an alternative prize will be offered instead should you be a winner.
• Entrants under the age of 16 must be accompanied by an adult.
• If you do confirm you will be attending, you are also agreeing to keep the confidentiality of any plot details or other information unveiled by Big Finish or the cast.

Since 1998, This Week in Doctor Who has provided a valuable record of Doctor Who transmissions from around world.

Creator and maintainer Benjamin F. Elliott stepped down from compiling the list earlier this year, and Doctor Who News would like to keep his work going by providing a detailed list of where and when you can watch Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

To do so we need the help of contributors who would be willing to update our database on a regular basis. We are looking for people who would be willing to take on responsibility for updating a particular channel, especially in countries where we are not represented at present. In return you will get a name credit on the TWIDW page.

 If you would like to help please end us an email to twidw@doctorwhonews.net stating which channel you would be able to update and in which country you live.

Last week we launched a competition to win a copy of the soundtrack to A Christmas Carol by Murray Gold. This is just a reminder to say that you have until Wednesday 6th April to get your entries in.

We have six copies of the CD up for grabs courtesy of Silva Screen Records. To be in for a chance of winning the competition, simply answer this question:

In A Christmas Carol, what is the name of the device that Abigail sings into so that the space liner can land safely?

Send your answer with your name, address and email to us at acc-competition@doctorwhonews.net, with the subject line A Christmas Carol CD Competition.

We have successfully completed our migration to our new home for the Doctor Who News Page, doctorwhonews.net!


The site can now be bookmarked under it's new identity, www.doctorwhonews.net, though any references to the old domain should redirect automatically to the new one (including those that still refer to doctorwhonews.com).


As noted in our original announcement, the news feed address has now changed, too. You can pick the new feed up directly from here, or by using the "Subscribe" button on the sidebar. The feed is populated with our most recent articles.


The only known issue at present is the news search facility which may not pick up new articles for a few days. We believe that all other facilities are functioning okay - however, if you do find anything else that isn't working on the site then please let us know through our feedback address.

(please note previous article recommendation links have reset due to the change of domain - feel free to re-recommend your favourite articles!)

The Doctor Who News Page is to undergo a "regeneration" this coming weekend, moving from our existing blogspot identity to our new doctorwhonews.net domain.

This has been in progress for a few weeks now, with our other sub-sites Doctor Who in the Media and This Week in Doctor Who having already moved under the new naming scheme. Being that the update to the main news site may have a wider effect on readership, we've decided to announce what will happen with the change beforehand.

We do not expect anybody visiting the site to be impacted in any way, as the old address will automatically redirect to the new one. This will include news articles themselves, so any bookmarks should continue to function as before - we would recommend that these links to us are updated in the future, but this is not a high priority.

However, some news applications that utilise our feed may have to be reconfigured to point to the new feed address after the change; whilst Blogger will handle redirection for the feed, some applications may not recognise this and will no longer see articles. The easiest way will be to simply re-subscribe to the new address via our "Subscribe" option on the sidebar after the change has taken place in order to continue receiving the news feed.

We also expect the search facility may suffer some problems until Google catches up with our new indexing, but this should be resolved within a few days after the change.

The switchover to doctorwhonews.net is expected to be made during this coming Saturday morning. As noted above, this should be seamless to those visiting the News Page, but please note that there may be some unforeseen issues that requires us to take the site offline for a little while.

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As part of the new launch, we've introduced two new sections to the news site.

The Competitions section will cater for prizes that can be won, including those offered by the Doctor Who News Page - our latest competition to win a copy of K9 Series One Volume One is now online to enter!

We have also created a Reviews page, which we aim to populate with reviews of new and recently releases merchandise, kicking off with a review of the Doctor Who DVD Meglos.


In addition, we have updated our Events section to give a full guide to Doctor Who events around the world, and welcome submissions to the page at the new address events@doctorwhonews.net.

News items may now be sent to us via submissions@doctorwhonews.net, and links to media coverage can be reported via media@doctorwhonews.net.

A number of news-sites (including ourselves) had reported in the last day or so that the transmission date for the forthcoming Torchwood has been revealed for BBC1 in the UK and Starz in the US.

BBC Marketing have informed us, however, that the "Torchwood" Facebook Page and Twitter feed which purported to 'announce' the series premier date is not an official site as claimed, and has no links to the BBC itself.

It's Christmas Day, and after a day of celebration evening draws in and its time to settle down to ...



See how the Doctors celebrated their own Christmas back in 2005 ...



And a Happy Christmas to all of you at home, from the Doctor Who News Team!

The Doctor Who News Page is offering readers a chance to win the Eleventh Doctor Christmas Adventure Set which is released next week, in our Christmas Competition.

The set includes two 5-inch action figures: The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond with police uniform and also features a non-electronic TARDIS with opening front doors.

Five Gift sets are up for grabs.

To be in with a chance of winning, simply tell us your prediction for the total BBC One audience, to the nearest 10,000 viewers, for the Christmas Day showing of A Christmas Carol.

Just to clarify, we are looking for the final confirmed audience as published by BARB in January. This figure includes those who record the programme and watch it within one week and it includes those watching on BBC One HD. It does not include those watching on iPlayer.

Please also give your estimate for the final figure for the BBC Three/BBC HD Christmas Day showing of Doctor Who Confidential. This figure will be used as a tie breaker in the event of a draw for the prize. In the event of a further draw the winner will be chosen at random.

To help you estimate the figure, ratings for the previous episodes of Doctor Who transmitted on Christmas Day were:

1965 - 5.50pm - The Feast of Steven - 7.90 million
2005 - 7.00pm - The Christmas Invasion - 9.84 million
2006 - 7.00pm - The Runaway Bride - 9.30 million
2007 - 6.50pm - Voyage of the Damned - 13.31 million
2008 - 6.00pm - The Next Doctor - 13.10 million
2009 - 6.00pm - The End of Time Part One - 12.04 million

Entries should be sent to the Doctor Who News Page at doctorwhocompetitions@gmail.com - please include your answers, name, address and daytime contact number.

Only one entry is allowed per person.

Entries must be received by 6pm, 25th December 2010 UK Time.

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In the meantime, there are a number of other Doctor Who related competitions online that you might also wish to enter, listed below:

Site	Closing Date	Competition
Toxic Magazine	15th Dec	Win a Nintendo DS and a copy of Evacuation Earth, with the game for five runners up. Registration required, and restricted to under-18s
National Geographic	15th Dec	Win Evacuation Earth with a DSi. This one is open to under 16s
Radio Times	21st Dec	Win a Nintendo Wii console, and a copy of Return to Earh; simply answer 15 questions on television trivia
Love Offers	22nd Dec	Win a sonic screwdriver from Doctor Who
Fortean Times	22nd Dec	Win one of three sonic-screwdrivers
DrWho Online	31st Dec	Win one of three copies of The Complete Series Five boxed set to win.
Eye of Horus	10th Jan	Win one of ten copies of Meglos.
Love Offers	12th Jan	Win one of five copies of Return to Earth.
Webuser	12th Jan	Win one of five copies of Return to Earth Wii games to win.
Whovian Net	n/a	Win one of three copies of the official 2011 Calendar when they reach 1000 Twitter Followers
Eye of Horus	31st Jan	Win one of ten copies of The Mutants.

 

Due to a problem with one of our providers the photo gallery and pop-out enlarged photo function is currently inoperative; this also caused some people to have problems accessing the site earlier in the week. We have implemented a temporary solution and are working on resolving the outstanding issues, and hope to have full functionality back soon - in the meantime you can still click on photos to see the full-sized versions.

We aplogise for any inconvenience caused.
The News Team

Just a quick reminder of our competition to win tickets to the Fantom Films convention Utopia is still open until midday, Sunday - full details here!