‘The Voice’ Again Gains in U.K. Ratings, Beating out Simon Cowell’s ‘Britain’s Got Talent’

LONDON – In its fourth week here in the U.K., The Voice, which airs here on BBC1, drew an improved average audience of 10.7 million viewers Saturday night in the overnight ratings, beating out Simon Cowell‘s rival music competition series Britain’s Got Talent on ITV1, the Radio Times reported.

The Voice drew its biggest audience numbers to-date in its 7pm-8:20pm time slot, adding another 1.2 million viewers over the previous week, it said. That means that its average audience has grown 2.3 million from the opening show.

Britain’s Got Talent, from Cowell’s Syco and featuring the TV star as a judge, reached an average 9.6 million viewers between 8pm and 9:15pm, the Radio Times said. An additional 500,000 viewers caught the show an hour later on ITV1 +1, which airs shows with an hour delay. Last week, BGT had lost in terms of average live viewers, but drew a bigger audience when adding in the audience of the ITV1+1 airing.

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BGT once again managed to edge out The Voice in terms of peak audience though. Its 12.2 million, or a season-high 12.9 million including ITV1+1, compared to The Voice‘s 12.1 million peak viewers.

BGT also saw its audience rise by 600,000 from last week’s episode, with consolidated ratings up 7 percent season-to-date and at the best-ever average for the show at this stage in the season.

In the 20-minute overlap period between the shows, The Voice continued to outperform BGT as it has done in recent weeks. The BBC show’s average 11.8 million audience compared with BGT‘s 5.8 million.

As reported, this coming weekend, ITV has pushed back the start time of BGT to move it away from The Voice.

The Radio Times highlighted that The Voice has now wrapped up its blind auditions and will move into the battle rounds, which will get Saturday and Sunday night airings next weekend. With the blind auditions being seen as the most novel element of the show, it will be interesting to see how the show’s performance will shape up from here.

Email: Georg.Szalai@thr.com

Twitter: @georgszalai