How BBC handled the thirteenth doctor announcement, how it could have been better
BBC
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This weekend, the announcement for the thirteenth Doctor was made. It was a great announcement in terms of how it was presented — a filmed television commercial that shocked us all.
Well. Some of us. The BBC had the good intentioned idea to play the commercial after the Wimbledon Men’s Final. Except for the fact that it was only played on BBC One, leaving a good portion of the audience stuck and unable to watch it, unless they streamed it.
And then, to make matters harder — though admittedly, the BBC can’t control this — the match ended hours early. What was supposed to be an announcement around 1:30 PM EST was actually made around 11:30 AM.
Why is this an issue?
Many people will say that Britain deserved to have the announcement first, and I agree…to a point. While maybe people from the UK should have access to the reveal of the thirteenth Doctor easily, we shouldn’t leave other countries out in the rain.
In 2013 when Peter Capaldi was announced, there was a 30-minute live show to celebrate the new Doctor. It was played throughout different countries and different stations to give everyone the opportunity to know at the same time.
The question is…why wasn’t this implemented this time? It could have brought even higher ratings to Wimbledon, the BBC, Doctor Who, or whatever show they were trying to bring high ratings to. Leaving it to a commercial after the Wimbledon finals on a specific channel that is only able to be watched in Britain made it extremely hard for anyone in the US, Canada, or any other country to watch.
This isn’t the first time that a Doctor Who announcement was tied to sports. Pearl Mackie, the new companion, was announced during a football match, once again making it difficult. Why has the BBC started relying on sport matches to relay big news? Is it to bring views to the match, or the other way around?
BBCA
The fallout
The fallout from doing the announcement this way was that many fans had no idea the Doctor had been announced. I’m still seeing people three days later just learning about the news. There seemed to be no real thought as to how this would affect other fans.
I, someone who likes to sleep a little later on the weekends, woke up to a complete shock to the fact I had missed the announcement.
I’m still confused as to why they ever did it this way. This is a huge announcement for any Doctor Who fan, despite the inevitable backlash. It still should have been announced worldwide, like in 2013.
To be honest, it feels like the BBC really miscalculated. It really should have been an easy thing – make use of social media and only do it that way, do a live show, anything that can get fans the news quickly. Instead, they focused too much on Wimbledon finals.
This may seem like a few days late, but I didn’t want to distract from the announcement. Now that it’s died down, or people are over the news, I felt it was finally time to talk about the utter lack of thinking by the BBC in this case.