'X Factor' U.K. Audience Drops Further in Fourth Week

LONDON - The X Factor U.K. on British commercial broadcaster ITV1 saw its audience decline in the fourth week of the season as the music competition continued to underperform last year's ratings.

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The latest hour-long episode Saturday night peaked with 9.4 million viewers and had an average audience of 8.2 million. Those were the lowest figures season-to-date for the show from Simon Cowell's Syco Entertainment and the Thames arm of RTL Group's Fremantle UK unit. Last season, the show had regularly drawn more than 10 million viewers.

A week earlier, ITV1 had drawn as many as 9.7 million viewers and an average audience of 8.6 million.

Still, X Factor remained the highest-rated program on British television Saturday night by nearly 3 million viewers.

The show has one new judge in Pussycat Dolls star Nicole Scherzinger who replaced Kelly Rowland. Take that's Gary Barlow, Tulisa Contostavlos and Louis Walsh, the only judge who has been with the U.K. show from the beginning, are back as judges, while Dermot O'Leary is hosting again.

ITV1 was also the highest-rated U.K. channel in Saturday primetime again with an average audience of 4.8 million viewers between 7pm and 10:30pm.

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com
Twitter: @georgszalai