More popular worldwide: Trek or Doctor Who?

I've heard that Doctor Who is more popular in Britain than Star Trek is in America, so I was wondering which show is more popular worldwide.

 

Whats the definition of popularity?

In my country Star Trek is on cable at least 3 times a day while Dr Who is not (maybe twice a week).
Then again Dr Who is showing on free-to-air channels because it is currently being made.
OK and Star Trek is being shown on free-to-air secondary channels.

Is hard to tell. I see more Dr Who marchandise in shops. I see Star Trek merchandise only on occasion.

 

Well given the fact that DW is a British show it is to be somewhat expected that it would be popular in the UK.

Bu if you want to go by ratings when you account for difference in population size between the UK and the US, ST was pulling in similiar numbers. i.e. Enterprise had viewing figures in the region of 3-4m viewers in the US and in the UK 500k-750k (on a subscription channel) as the US has a population around 4.5x more than the UK those numbers getting fairly similar.

As for which is on air more. DW (2005-) is re-run on at least two channels stripped mon-fri. And just about every ST show is being aired on one channel or other if not more than one channel.

 

As Journey to the Stars, Star Trek plays in a large number of countries. It was semi-popular in Brazil when I lived there as a child, and I have friends from different Latin American countries who knew of the show prior to coming to American.

Doctor Who does not seem to be "worldwide."

 

In Australia, Doctor Who, I would guess is the bigger of the two.

It's difficult to compare : Who is shown on the non-commercial ABC and has been an after-school staple for generations of Australian kids. Since the re-launch several years ago it screens on weekends at night, and has never been taken off due to lack of interest.

On the other hand, all the Star Trek series have run on commercial stations here, and none managed to find a big enough audience to make them viable as a prime time option, so all were banished to late nights. You would need to go back 35 years to when Star Trek (TOS) was on during primetime here.

It's hard to compare revenues as well. This year Star Trek Into Darkness made about $470m USD worldwide. Last year BBC Worldwide (which you would suspect earns about half its revenue from Doctor Who), made $1,808m USD.

In terms of shelf space, Doctor Who wins here, no contest, there is aisles of merchandise. There is a lot of buzz around the 50th anniversary at the moment as well.

Anyway, it's hard to say, but my guess is Doctor Who would win the popularity contest here, mainly because it has been a lot more accessible to Australians over its long life than Star Trek has.

 

Never seen Dr. Who and hadn't even heard of it until I hit my twenties.

 

At this moment, Doctor Who, certainly. Even ignoring the hoopla over the 50th anniversary, Doctor Who has more of a presence with an active TV series which is delivering new episodes on a somewhat regular basis, which are relatively well received. While Star Trek since going off the air eight years ago has done two movies, the most recent of which didn't exactly blow the box office away and has polarized fandom somewhat.

Although, it would not surprise me if more people worldwide are aware of Star Trek than Doctor Who.

 

Why does it matter?

 

Because this is a discussion board?

 

You know I would call a simul-cast of the 50th Anniversary episode in 90 countries, worldwide.

 

I think it would be fair to say STID did "very well" at the box office - there are relatively few films that pass the $450m mark. "Didn't exactly blow the box office away" is somewhat disingenuous as a description of the movie's success IMHO.

Hypothetically, I think it extremely unlikely DW would get anywhere near a $100m+ budget if a feature were produced - and would be very lucky to get close to a box office haul even half as big as STID.

 

With all the series and movies I'd definitely say that overall, Star Trek is more popular.

 

Trek gets many more pop culture references.

I wish I could like Doctor Who, but despite many attempts to get into it, its always left me cold - bar the late-90's TV movie version (which I've read was not warmly met by fans)

 

Doctor Who didn't arrive in America until the mid-to-late 70s, riding on the heels of the popularity of public television's Masterpiece Theatre which imported shows like The First Churchills, The Six Wives of Henry VIII, and I, Claudius. PBS was also responsible for bringing us episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, perhaps surprising American viewers that while British humor was often thought of as dry and sophisticated, it could still be low brow at times. However, although PBS was bringing in these shows, not all stations in the network could afford the funds to air them in their cities due to how the shows were brokered within the network.

The local stations that were not affiliated with PBS sometimes got us really strange syndicated fare like Benny Hill, Doctor in the House, and On the Buses (which got Americanized as Lotsa Luck).

I wasn't that big a fan of Who, preferring Blake's 7 more, though I didn't see much of it either. The fact that both shows were mostly done on videotape had the unfortunate effect of making them look cheap to American eyes at the time.

 

Doctor Who. It's hot. Trek is not.

 

Agree.

 

Next to Star Trek and the domestic "Raumpatrouille Orion" Gerry Anderson's television shows (e.g. "U.F.O.", "Space 1999") were popular in Germany. I'd say this would be the general reply: "Doctor Who?!?"

Bob

 

I'll say this for the BBC though, they've done a first rate job marketing/promoting the hell out of the whole 50th anniversary thing.

A special on the "science of Doctor Who", documentaries, a docu-drama on the origins of the show, news stories, a DW celebrity edition of game show "Pointless", talk shows, endless inserts bewteen programming etc, etc.

I really hope CBS/Paramount take heed of it, pull out the stops, and really go to town when it's Trek's turn.

 

However, how many episodes of Trek have been broadcast simultaneously in 94 countries...

 

There is also the small matter that DW has more episodes than all of ST combined. ST amounts to 28 years on TV (3 TOS, 7 TNG/DSN/VOY, 4 ENT). DW almost had that many in the classic era 26 years. There is also 2 movies based on it.


DW got mentioned several times in the show "Leverage" i.e. several of the characters alias where actors to have played The Doctor.