But The Voice has the same problem. I'm following the US version of the show which has reached the live stages, yet I couldn't remember the history of any of them. At least I know a couple/three/fours acts in each heat with Britain's Got Talent.

It's an issue for both of them. Partly why I keep wishing BGT would cut down the number of semi-finals.

I agree; if they could cut it down to 5-6 acts in each semi final it would be better.

It would be much easier for The Voice to create the mythology (if you like) of a stand out talent talent if all four coaches didn't turn round for any given act quite so regularly. If that was only happening a handful of times across the auditions then its much easier to create that story. I do however agree with the general point that the blind auditions aren't necessarily built for that viral moment unless it operates on a very extreme unexpected level. Had last weeks young opera singer been better than that might have done it.

In general though I tend to hold the opposite view to the rest of the world. I think The Voice hits its stride with the Battle Rounds and that's where the more unexpected stand out moments tend to come.

BGT (like The X Factor) suffers from the producers favourites syndrome where a handful of acts are given a disproportionate amount of screen time meaning that other finalists (or in BGT's case semi-finalists) fly completely under the radar and have no connection with the audience. I've always found it very odd editing to completely ignore finalists (particularly on The X Factor) but it works for them and it crafts the series narratives which are really what matter for the SyCo shows.

Looks like they have done the opposite thing and actually increased the number of semi finalists this series from 40 to 45 - as you've said, if anything, it should've been reduced to about 30. Alesha Dixon said a few weeks ago that the first semi is due to be on Sunday 6th May so it appears there'll be 6 semis (maybe 7 contestants in 3 semis, 8 contestants in other 3) with the final on Saturday 12th May. However, given how well The Voice is rating on Saturdays at the moment, they'd be wise to shift the schedule so the first semi is on Monday 7th and final on Sunday 13th. A Saturday final would be dented quite a lot by TVUK.

I think it'll still be 5 semi-finals but with 9 acts in each (so possibly done as one 2 hour show per night). I think they might still start them on Monday 7th (maybe Alesha got the days mixed up?) as I can't see them doing a Friday final. I wouldn't rule out a Sunday final though as I think they could do a 2 nighter, as Lemonaid and The Cube are both due to end that Saturday, and it'd be pretty difficult for them to fit both of those shows in alongside a full BGT Final in one night (remember BGT will have to be off air by 10pm), so they might have Lemonaid at 6:15pm, The Cube at 7pm and BGT at 8pm, with All Star Family Fortunes (7pm) and BGT Results (8pm) on Sunday. Backing this theory up is the fact that between the end of Titanic and Soccer Aid ITV have 5 Sunday nights, and Vera and Lewis (one of those series will most likely take the Sunday slot after Titanic has ended) are both 4 episodes, leaving them a spare Sunday for something like BGT.

Having said that, if they do have the whole final on the Saturday, I think as long as ITV don't mess up the scheduling then The Voice UK would have more to worry about than BGT as BGT will be the final and have the whole week's momentum behind it. Still think a split final would be better though.

Incidentally I think they're actually doing a better job this year of presenting more acts for the live shows than they have in the last few years, with all 3 shows featuring around 4-5 at least memorable acts that have got through, meaning that the semis won't be full of acts viewers don't recognise if they keep it up (extending the episodes to 75 mins has helped). The fact that the standard overall is much better than last year helps too (tonight's show was bonkers but brilliant).

If BGT did have six episodes before the final I'd say they'd have 5 semi-finals and a wildcard show for an 11th (and possibly 12th) finalist - even though neither would have a chance of winning.

I'd personally cut one act per night rather than add one to each semi-final - but we know rather than the useless Popeye style acts it would be the half decent but barely seen acts that get the chop.

Yeah, 5 two-hour semi finals with 9 contestants sounds a good idea. The separate results shows the last two years for the semis didn't really work and I don't think there's a big storyline for Corrie airing around then to be boosted by BGT anyway. The Voice might have a separate results show for its live shows so BGT might find it unavoidable facing it on the Saturday; having a separate finale results show on the Sunday would definitely make sense. As for Sunday nights after Titanic, it appears to be Vera which will be taking 8-10pm slot.

Yeah if The Voice have a results show later on the Saturday BGT won't be able to avoid that but I doubt they'd be too worried about it because BGT would have the headstart there. Having a separate results show on the Sunday seems like an obvious thing to do to me as they'd get loads more ad revenue as they could quite easily do a 2 hour show. As they'd have 10 finalists, they could drip feed the initial results throughout the first 45 mins or so, mixed in with guest performances, recaps etc, with the top 3 then performing again before a few more guests whilst the lines are open with the winner announced at the end. They manage it in the US with only 4 finalists (so no drip fed results and vote freezes) so I'm sure they'd manage fine over here.

Unsurprising that they've chosen Vera over Lewis for Sundays as Vera is a fairly new show whilst Lewis seems to be slowly winding down (Endeavour seems like a natural successor). Having said that, if Lewis goes on Wednesdays like I think it will I'm sure it'll do fine as I doubt it has much of a crossover audience with The Apprentice.

#TheVoiceUK averages 9.5m/41.1% share - the highest rating show on any channel yesterday #BBC1

#TheVoiceUK peaks at 10.7m

As well as a show average of 9.5m, #TheVoiceUK averaged 10m between 8/8.20pm; over 3.7m more than any other channel.

Last night's peaks - 10.7 million for #thevoiceuk versus 11.3 million for #bgt. Narrows the gap quite some way.

#thevoiceuk actually BEAT #BGT for average audience. 9.54m watched it compared to 9.43m (tape-checked and exc +1) for BGT.

Margin between The Voice UK (9.54m and 10.68m peak)) and Britain's Got Talent (9.62m and 11.85m peak - full slot & inc +1) narrows. Still both TV giants.

#LemonAid debuts with 3.4m (with +1). Very close #BGT vs #TheVoiceUK

Sources: Sam Hodges, Colin Robertson, Chris Aylott, John Williams

Happy Easter everyone.

I'm surprised by that, I really thought The Voice would be slightly down, there seemed to be a little less buzz around it to me. Great ratings for both though.

BBC will be absolutely delighted. I think we can say The Voice was the winner last night.

On the Boat Race, from Sam Hodges:

I'll be back in a few hours when the spin doctors have done their work and find out who really won

Urgh i guess we'll have a day of each side adding +1's and peaks and HD ratings and catch ups and BBQ's to the argument. Yay.

Somebody send for Professor Stephen Hawking. I don't remember my A-level maths ever being as complicated as this.

But The Voice increases its average audience despite the Easter Holiday. You have to go at the BBC actually emulating ITV's skill at hyping up a show to this extend. I'd never have believed they had it in them.

Can we now?

I'm quite surprised that The Voice managed to increase despite it being Easter weekend (the Shrek lead-in may have helped a little) - it did incredibly well. BGT still did fine - up on last year and ahead including +1 (and no doubt will be ahead overall once all viewers are taken into account).

Looks like BGT had a fairly typical Easter weekend drop whilst The Voice didn't. Also worth noting that as BGT started nearly 5 minutes late it will be tapechecked.

Elsewhere, that looks like an alright start for Lemonaid considering the early slot.

was not expecting that

+1 ofc puts BGT ahead. But I've no doubt posters from both sides will be overreacting to what is basically some statistical information
I don't however believe in using it for finals as this opens pandoras box as likely it'll be similar to what the BBC show got on iplayer. (although The Apprentice/The Voice probably do A LOT better than that, I just can't be arsed arguing over it on here and the Beeb have stopped putting out their iplayer packs )

The Voice up is a great result, am surprised BGT was down - it ratings seem a bit manic.

Fact is for a new show those results are amazing. And for a returning show those results are good.
But it is ITV/Cowell that made it 'a war' which it isn't, but its what they have done. So yeah the papers will talk - backfire is a nice word.

EDIT: I also have The Sun backing me on this


So yeah it seems that with time the press people are finally understanding ratings
I think we can ALL celebrate that!

Don't get me wrong, I still want The Voice to fail - not much chance of that now alas....

But to beat BGT - and TROUNCE it head to head - is truly seismic. The official ratings will be interesting, I wonder if Voice will keep its lead?

Cowell will be bereft today - if he's not already topped himself at the news - and that of course is highly satisfying.

First SCD slays TXF, now Voice knifes BGT.

80k between them if you include +1 across the full slots. Statistically that might just about equate to a win for BGT, but it's not one worth crowing about and the real winner is quite clearly on the other side. It's The Voice that is punching well above its weight in its first series.

That is impressive stuff from The Voice.

The Voice beating BGT is a huge deal. Its gone up both weeks so far, beaten BGT by its biggest margin head to head last night and shows no sign of going down. Its been a bad year for Simon Cowells shows, XF losing to SCD, Red or Black flopping and now BGT losing to The Voice not just head to head but in averages. Seems like 99% of people are just loving The Voice at the moment and want others to be part of the experience of watching a fresh show like this which actually celebrates the talent our country has to offer.

So how much better is Danny Cohen than Jay Hunt?

Not really as if you're including iPlayer then you need to include BGT's ITV1 and ITV2 repeats. So BGT comes out on top overall.

So you think you can d.... be a BBC1 Controller?

BGT will get that back in the officials (well, actually in the ad adjusted overnights) but for the numbers that go out to the media today, it'll go down as a win for The Voice. With a gap of 100k, it remains the kind of win that ITV have handed to the BBC on a plate and I suppose that the upside of it is that it once again draws attention to the foolish work of their schedulers (and lets add in Peter Fincham, presumably this is stage one of his application for DG? ). Not that anyone at ITV will notice because I reckon they probably think this is some kind of scheduling genius (after all, they do keep doing it)!

The Voice still has the momentum - not "taking off" as such but another solid addition of viewers. With even more press as a result of this, could well break 10m next week for the last auditions show. I'm guessing after that it'll be fingers crossed at ITV (aside from Fincham - he'll be at the interview stage of the DG application by then!) that it starts to level in the battle rounds and live stages. BGT down a bit from last week - I'd have expected a drop last week and a rise this week! However, the positive news is that despite the adverse circumstances, it's still up from last year. It was at least a big improvement on last week in terms of quality so maybe that'll help next week. Although it's ratings have always been a bit erraticso who knows.


I think it does a great disservice to the people in the BBC's PR and scheduling departments to pretend that they just put their little show out with no concern for anyone else and were cruelly set upon by big bad ITV. Not to mention the hard work of the judges on The Voice who have done stellar work in coming up with ways to work X Factor, Got Talent and Simon Cowell into just about every interview they've done since the show was announced!