You can make your point without blaming BGT for The Voice's decline, because that's nonsense.

I imagine SYTYCD came in about £20m cheaper?

It might do a SYTYCD, do OK in the first series, stiff next year and then get cancelled. There does seem to a bit of the two series syndrome around these days: The Biggest Loser, Popstar to Operastar, 71 Degrees North, all did OK in their first outing, but flopped second time round. Maybe the public is starting to become fed up with these copies of far bigger shows.

With stars like Louise Rednapp, and that annoying afro guy, i think it cost ALOT more

The Voice Has shown its worth it though, just better scheduling, tweaks to the scheduling, and maybe a new coach to keep it fresh, it can do better next year..

Not blaming BGT. I'm stating the facts. The Voice's ratings plummetted when it moved into an earlier slot. How well do you think Coronation Street would do tomorrow night if ITV moved the 7.30pm episode to 6 o'clock? I'm sure its ratings would fall below Emmerdale's at 7pm.

Indeed, all the soaps have seen the ratings drop this week in their usual slots because of the good weather.

I'm not saying The Voice doesn't have problems to be dealt with. Of course it does. I'm just saying there's very little chance of the BBC axing it.

Even the performance shows of the Voice which have struggled (and are pretty unwatchable imo) have never dipped below a 28% share.

SYTYCD came in the 250-270k an hour range and looked it.
The Voice is just below 500k an hour [The Apprentice is 600k an hour for example] and all episodes have have achieved either double or triple what SYTYCD rated.

The implication in your post is that The Voice's ratings plummeted because it moved to an earlier slot. It's not really something I agree with. I don't think a show loses that many viewers because it's been moved to an earlier slot, particularly on a Saturday where I think a pre-7pm start matters far less than it would on a weeknight - if people want to watch it they will.

I'm not saying an earlier slot wouldn't result in a dip in viewers, but when you look at the overall decline I would say it accounts for very little of that.

True, 28% share is good. Its down from >40% shares the auditions were getting but everyone knew the shares for the live shows would be lower, just as they have been in every other country around the world.


On BARB it says the first series of So You Think You Can Dance was getting 5-6million most weeks:

16 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (Sat 17:59) 6.70
9 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE? (SAT 1900) 7.13
18 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE? (SAT 1830) 5.80
20 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE? (SAT 2019) 5.69
13 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 1900) 5.96
17 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 2050) 5.62
18 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 2020) 4.95
25 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 1829) 4.83
19 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 1905) 5.21
21 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 2056) 5.07
11 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 2055) 6.02
14 SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE (SAT 1946) 5.52

ITV4?

The tennis moved from ITV1 to ITV3 at 5.30 because ITV4 were showing Indian Premier League cricket.

The Voice has now dipped lower than the first series of SYTYCD. SYTYCD was almost certainly on a two year deal and I wouldn't be surprised if Fame Academy was too. For The Voice though it's not about where it goes this year now, it's about where it launches from next year - in many ways the BBC will be happy for it to launch lower and maintain a 5-7m over the entire run rather than beginning at 10m and dropping to 5m.

Ah, interesting. Have ITV ever broadcast anything live on ITV3 before? I thought that channel just ran itself from a computer in the ITV archive?

Yes it has been used for RWC Games when there are live events on ITV1 & 4 at the same time

As in 2010, Soccer Aid overran again, just finishing the programme now.

Soccer Aid
2006 (May 27th)
18:30 to 21:45 - 6.1m (31%)
* peak: 7.6m (39%) @ 19:45

2008 (September 7th)
18:00 to 22:00 - 4.4m (21%)
* peak: 6.1m (26%) @ 21:00

2010 (June 6th)
18:00 to 22:15 - 5.5m (25%)
* peak: 8.1m (32%)

It will probably be high 4m/low 5m average, with a peak around ~6.5m/7m I imagine.

Obviously I was comparing The Voice to SYTYCD-S2 which ran in the same slot as The Voice last year and for the same number of weeks 12 under similar weather conditions.
SYTYCD-1 ran in Winter [and launched during snow week 2] and had a short run of 7 weeks.

I don't know why anyone is trying to feign surprise that there will be a second series of The Voice. The BBC signed a highly publicised two year deal for the show which was in various corners berated for being too big an expense and a waste of money. There was never any realistic chance that there wouldn't be a second series. The uproar that would follow them pulling the plug on that would be huge and would require them to spend yet more money to fill the hole left in the schedule.


I'm not sure why this would be the case.

It seems to me that Eurovision offers a pretty good and completely unique platform to sell records across Europe. Presumably if you write a song that wins (or does well in) Eurovision you've probably also written a song that's going to sell pretty well across Europe as well and thus earn writers and producers a decent chunk of change. I wonder if the problem is less that writers don't want to write a song for Eurovision but that they want to write a song for successful artists and that those artists don't want to do Eurovision. Or equally contemporary song writers and producers don't really want to work with the calibre of artist we put forward for Eurovision.

If hypothetically Cheryl Cole were to decide she wanted to enter Eurovision next year then presumably she'd have no trouble attracting a big name writer and producer to do the song with her. I suppose because they know its going to have a life outside of Eurovision.

SYTYCD series 1 ran in January and February and never on a sweltering Saturday in May.

The best way to analyse situations is to use audience shares.

So for The Voice

Battle Round: 42.3%
Live Show #1: 41.8%
Live Show #2: 35.6%
Live Show #3: (Earlier start) 29.4%
Live Show #4: 27.9%
Live Show #5: (last night) 28.8%

SYTYCD's best share for series 1 was 27.4% for the first programme.

Easily better shares for The Voice UK. Do you know if SYTYCD series 2 lost 15 shares like The Voice has done this series? I cant find its ratings on BARB so it mustve gone really low.

I found the information on WikiPedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_You_...ies_2)#Ratings

Series 2 dropped to as low as 9.7% but I think that would probaly have been BGT Final night.

Awful ratings for So You Think You Can Dance. Puts into perspective that The Voices 29% is not bad at all compared to 9.7% that got.

We've seen in the past that songs entered for Eurovision sometimes have a life outside Eurovision, Waterloo won ABBA the Eurovision Song Contest and helped launched their careers, can the song written for Eurovision be released beforehand or at least played on the radio and TV?

I'm led to believe that the song that won this year had already charted in various countries across Europe (including the UK) but I haven't actually checked that so I may very well have been lied to on that. They can certainly get airplay before the show itself though.

I dont think Iain said that the early slot was the only reason but it is a significant reason. I think your underestimating the importance of an early slot after the clocks move forward. A 28% share a couple of months ago would have got 6.5m, so that is 2m viewers lost.

If X Factor returns in mid-August in a 6:30pm slot then I think yoiu can knock at least 1.5m off what it gets usually at 8pm.

I'm not in anyway saying 4.5m is what it would have been getting if it was in a later slot.

But the fact the timeshift figures have followed a similar trajectory suggests there is more to it than just the time slot.