‘The Voice UK’ Season 2 Finale Ratings Rise

LONDON – The Voice UK season-two finale on BBC One on Saturday drew an average audience of 7.2 million, slightly more than the final episode of the first season of the singing competition.

The show reached a 34.8 percent share of all TV viewers. Last year’s season closer had averaged 7.1 million viewers for a 34.2 percent share.

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The finale saw an audience gain of 1.4 million over the previous week’s episode and drew the music competition’s highest ratings since early May. Andrea Begley was crowned the show’s second winner.

The Voice UK had last season beaten Simon Cowell’s ITV hit Britain’s Got Talent several weeks in a row, but this year saw weaker ratings throughout its run. The BGT finale earlier this month drew 11.1 million viewers and became Britain’s highest-rated show of the year.

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The Voice UK, which stars will.i.am, Jessie J, Tom Jones and Danny O’Donoghue as coaches, will return to the BBC for a third season, but observers expect further format tweaks. The show’s finale on Saturday peaked with 8.04 million viewers, down from 9.5 million last year.

Meanwhile, the second episode of BBC/Starz period drama The White Queen saw the ratings for its second episode on Sunday fall.

The 4.5 million average audience was down from 5.3 million a week earlier.

The 10-episode co-production has a summer run on the BBC and is set to premiere in the U.S. on Starz on Aug. 10. The drama is set during the so-called War of Roses in England, the 15th century conflict between rival factions for the English throne.

E-mail: Georg.Szalai@thr.com
Twitter: @georgszalai