Similarly, DuMont's summer 1954 replacement series, The Goldbergs, achieved audiences estimated at 10 million.
Grimsby contains at least one rather remarkable talking-point scene, unfolding inside an elephant's vagina, which you would imagine would help the film achieve audience traction.
The rural affairs show, with a younger presenting team led by Matt Baker and Julia Bradbury, has become a Sunday-night ratings hit, achieving audiences regularly in excess of 6 million viewers.
But even if the public don't agree; even if the new production team discover that when your predecessors achieve audiences of 12 million the only place to go is down, they will not destroy Doctor Who.
Last Saturday ITV1's night news bulletin proved its most popular programme of the evening with the channel taking just 8 per cent of the primtime viewing and several shows failing to achieve audiences of more than 2 million.
So, with one notable exception, has every other ongoing television offering that has achieved conspicuous audience ratings of a size to make advertisers sit up and shell out.
That's especially true for a self-funded digital media company like Gawker Media Group, alone among our peers in having achieved substantial audience scale without outside capital.
BBC 6Music and BBC7 have achieved record audiences this quarter (of 485,000 and 795,000 respectively), and more than half the commercial national digital networks have also hit new record Rajar audience numbers.
Generally condemned by Fleet Street as being a below-average, sub-Everage ripoff, the Irish mammy drag-act achieved huge audiences, arguably as a result of enthusiasm on social media.
