Analysing Media Numbers The Guardian Way

"Where have the viewers gone?" asks the Guardian in an article entitled Doctor Who loses momentum. A good question, except about half way down the article it says:

Last year's series then settled down to average 7.9 million viewers and a 39% share across its first seven episodes.

The current series has a similar average after seven episodes - 7.7 million viewers and a 38% share - making it one of BBC1's most successful dramas of the year so far.

So, er, 200,000 viewers have been shed on average. Russell T Davies must be shitting himself...

And obviously last year ITV didn't realise that Doctor Who would return so triumphantly. This year it looks like they've been trying to schedule event TV against it:

Doctor Who has also faced stiffer competition from ITV1 in the past couple of weeks, with The Prince's Trust 30th anniversary concert and Soccer Aid scheduled against it.

Before that, ITV1 had put movie repeats against Doctor Who, with disappointing results.

Which suggests to me, and I'm not the Guardian's media analyst so I could be completely mis-interpreting this, that Doctor Who has kept relatively steady while ITV have clawed back a few viewers.

It hardly justifies the title or the lead paragraph, does it.