Doctor Who: Season 2 (Series 15)

[darrellmaclaine]

Originally Posted by CouncilSpectre

The BBC should never have got themselves into a position of the show being heavily dependent on external funding. A big budget is not the be-all-and-end-all.

The part of this that people overlook too is that the Disney deal effectively voids the international sales because this Disney money isn't the magical, no-catch cash injection people talk of it as, it's a flat advance buyout on the overseas broadcast deals that are all now severed and which used to bring in a reasonable, significant yield on their own. It's taken real return on the series, speculated it on increased production values which haven't made any difference at all to audience engagement, and created an irreversible mistake that's killed a show that I think still had a chance in 2022.

The biggest killer though has been the arrogance in the editorial/creative side. A show on the bones of its arse, and instead of going into 'how do we get the audience back?' emergency recovery mode, it fell in the 'how do we annoy all the right people?' trap that's murdering franchises left, right and centre. An obsession with defeating random people you don't like on the internet - over trying to bring in and enchant as many people as possible - never, ever works. That's why the audience, who did tentatively come back in 2023, switched off. People don't like being alienated and purity-tested, regardless of what their politics or beliefs are. You've got a big show, you are going to have to meet halfway a lot of audience demographics you might not like if you met them personally. Tough, it's their money too, and your job.