Doctor Who Breaks ABC Online Rating Record

The ABC's move to fast-track its hit show Doctor Who to their online platform iview ahead of broadcast has paid off.

Last week the ABC announced that the show would be delivered online, one week ahead of its broadcast date, directly after airing in the UK.

The debut episode of the new Doctor Who series went live on iview at 5.10am yesterday morning and the ABC today reported that it attracted 75,900 plays on its first day.

An ABC statement claimed, "This is the highest ever daily plays of a program on iview."

The move to premiere the show online (only the second time the ABC has done this) was seen as a way to combat pirating of the series although some pundits claimed it did not go far enough. One Gizmodo writer claimed that iview's quality is too low to stop fans wanting to torrent higher quality versions.

However the ABC intend to continue making this season's Doctor Who available every Sunday at 5.10am and leaving them online for 14 days.

The episodes will be broadcast six days later on Saturdays at 7.30pm on ABC1.