JRR_Talking said:
Does seem odd to end it if its doing so well? I guess there is no phone in so they dont make money like 'celebrity' shows
Doctor Who has been doing very well indeed, and in fact the success of DW is almost certainly responsible in part for the BBC doing other Saturday night shows of the sort (Robin Hood, the new Merlin series), because it has shown that there
is a market for that sort of the thing, whereas the previous received wisdom was that Saturday TV was a wasteland where no-one watched anyway.
So, the Sun's report is almost certainly wrong. As I said above, the most likely outcome is that RD will resign, and be replaced by another showrunner. The only thing that
might derail that is that is if RD and his entire team resign en-masse... but I very much doubt that that will happen, and even if it did the BBC could well replace everyone. Ultimately, the only people who aren't expendable are the actors playing the Doctor and his companion(s), who can be replaced one at a time, but are difficult to replace all at once.
As for Doctor Who not making money like the 'celebrity' phone-ins, I very much wonder if that's true. While in the short-term shows like DW are very expensive to make, and don't immediately recoup, they have a residual value in sales of DVDs, licensing to other networks, repeats, and so on (and the mere existence of the IP just has value). The phone-in shows basically have none of these - they're cheap fund-raisers for the networks, but once they're done they have no further value.
Maybe Sky should threaten to buy the rights to Dr Who.
I don't think they can. AFAIK, Doctor Who is wholly owned by the BBC. As such, it's theirs to do with as they see fit. That's one of the reasons it was off the air for so long.
)
