So let me get this right - you're trying to compare a show airing in March against one in the height of summer and another show which, in 2013, aired during one of the coldest March's on record and is now being broadcast during one of the warmest?

Spin without context - are you friends with Alistair Campbell?

In all honesty a set of mediocre figures for Saturday night. The Voice and Takeaway are like the soaps, pulling in decent but unspectacular numbers yet enough to still win the night. Casualty was hit hard despite the return of Connie (which, unlike Simon Cowell's appearance on Takeaway) was advertised. The Law and Order: UK repeat didn't work but I can understand the logic when they scheduled it. They really need a light entertainment show there to compliment the drama on BBC one.

I suggested repeating Through the Keyhole, which ITV did do last night just at 11.40pm! Might be worth a switch with L&O to see if it can do any better.

5.84m vs. 5.94m, hardly a convincing victory for TVUK.

The Voice was only 0.1m up year-on-year despite the more favourable timeslot? Where did the 'nearly 2m' come into it?

It was only a few weeks ago that I was saying how Takeaway and The Voice looked a bit underwhelming sitting just under 7m. Less than 6m is poor for both shows, I suppose the weather might have played a part but I'm not sure it's that significant especially as The Voice got 5.8m for the same show last year on the 15th of June!

Will be interesting to see if BGT can buck the trend when it returns. The past few weeks really haven't been great for BBC1/Itv with low ratings across the week.

So I guess they need to add 3m in the officials to match the quoted average of the series so far of 8.9m they were spinning in the recommission news. With that said though as awful as the show is especially during the live stages it was pretty much a no brainer for the BBC to recommission for a couple more series. Now they just need to replace Will.i.am with someone who cares more about the show than their Twitter account.


I guess the real test is whether any of those 1.3m are added to the figures on Wednesday.

ITV have nobody to blame but themselves though for their post-watershed woes on Saturdays - did nobody at ITV Towers see the figures The Americans got last year. It's the lazy option but I think it's probably time for them to dig out those Briget Jones and Mamma Mia repeats again.

Overnights for 2013 series of Saturday Night Takeaway

Episode 1 - 6.46m (28.3%) [+1 610k]
Episode 2 - 6.74m (30.1%) [+1 430k]
Episode 3 - 6.48m (29.6%) [+1 255k]
Episode 4 - 6.69m (29.4%) [+1 269k]
Episode 5 - 7.33m (31.7%) [+1 421k]

Episode 6 - 6.7m (28.7%) [+1 ~ 0.5m]
------* vs The Voice average of 6.24m

Episode 7 - 6.76m (30.3%) [+1 541k]
------* vs The Voice average of 6.43m (28.5%)



Overnights for 2014 series of Saturday Night Takeaway

Episode 1 - 6.05m (25.9%) [+1 430k]
------* vs The Voice average of 7.25m (31.2%)

Episode 2 - 6.41m (27.8%) [+1 456k]
------* vs The Voice average of 6.95m (30.4%)

Episode 3 - 6..65m (28.9%) [+1 360k]
------* vs The Voice average of 6.70m (29.3%)

Episode 4 - 6.5m (28.7%) [+1 532k]
------* vs The Voice average of 6.70m (29.2%)

Episode 5 - 6.17m (26.9%) [+1 316k]
------* vs The Voice average of 6.21m (27.6%)

Episode 6 - 5.84m (27.4%) [+1 347k]
------* vs The Voice average of 5.94m (28.3%)




Overnight ratings are for the main ITV showing and exclude +1.
+1 rating listed separately in brackets.
The Voice ratings are the overnight average for the entire episode.

Me too. Much better FF through all the crap. I watched SNT live and watched the Voice after and FF through all the crap and still caught up at the end. The voice live shows really are bad.

It could be argued this year it's had tougher competition in the form of SNT. Plus last year wasn't it on at 8 as well.

Any figure for the Americans yesterday? I think it'll stay consistent around the 900k - 1m mark. The people that are watching are enjoying it. I must admit I am surprised ITV stuck with it on the main channel - I quite like they did that as it's something different to offer on a late Saturday evening, but I was expecting the second series to be carted off to ITV4.

The Voice isn't doing that great. I think the BBC were right to recommission it, but the audience just falls away after the blind auditions and that live show rating is average at best. The BBC or the format creator needs to address the issue of tweaking the later stages and the live shows to hang on to much of the blind audition viewers as possible. It's all well and good saying that viewers will flock to the blind auditions again next year (like they did this year)... but how long will it be before viewers completely give up with watching the blind auditions completely, as they know the later rounds won't be as exciting or worth watching? It's not encouraging to start high, then drop across the run. I was expecting Ant and Dec to do better last night as well.

Casualty is still doing well enough. That Law and Order UK rating is abysmal, but it'll be interesting to see if any of those million viewers decide to watch the Wednesday showing next week.

The weather will have knocked about half a million or so off both I suspect. But yeah, even then the numbers would still be a little underwhelming. To be fair Takeaway was still above 6m last night (at 6.2m) but it should still have done a bit better. Personally whilst it's still been decent I don't think this series of Takeaway has been quite as good as last year's and that might be affecting it slightly. The Voice meanwhile has still not managed to fix the format properly, and so despite sitting at 8m for the first half of the run is now at 5.9m. My guess is that next week's finale puts The Voice at about 7m, which could send Takeaway below 6m which would be a poor way to end the run. The clocks going forwards won't help either.

Not sure how BGT will do. My gut feeling is that it will take a small dip for the auditions this year. Whilst the clashes didn't help having The Voice on the same night might have helped both shows out a bit, I'm not sure. It does at least look like the launch will get a decent lead-in for once from the FA Cup Semi Final. After that though it might depend on the slot a bit. I think it's good they want to give Amazing Greys the lead-in but equally they need to be careful not to go too early, and I thought 7pm was a bit on the early side last year. I think 7.30pm would be a good bet (with Celebrity Chase at 6.30pm and Greys at 8.45pm). That gives everything a decent slot I think. I think it'll still hold a strong audience, but maybe more 9m than 10m with the way things are going.

I really appreciate the FF button for long shows like this. I don't really have the patience to watch it all live.

In your opinion most people this year seem to think there alot better this year. Plus SNT isn't hardly anything to shout about the guest and all the other week where crap.

It had no competition at 7pm. So it's still doing well in my book.

Interesting to see if it gets a bounce for the final.

See people are forgetting last year it had no competition where as this year it's getting it with a show getting nearly exactly the same numbers as it. I think all things considering the Voice is holding up much better considering. Hopefully next week as you say will get a bit of a bounce because it's a final.

Quite a poor night last night lucky I have loads of stuff to catch up on.
Be interesting to see what happens tonight and into next week now its lighter.

Just heard about a new scandal involving a video of an Eastenders actor puffing a joint and jacking off. The bbc need to get rid of him asap, this kind of news wont do the reputation of the show any good and could affect ratings. This is Leslie Grantham all over again and similar to recent scandals involving other soaps [inappropriate rapping etc].

Of course it's my opinion, and I didn't say SNT was any better, just better to watch live.

TV live shows are awful, too much padding and waffle. Last week was absolute torture. This week I managed to watch it in 40 minutes.

I have no idea why people get so defensive when someone dares to criticise TV

Soorry I got a bit confused, it was almost 2m up from the semi final of the first series. Also up as you point out from last year's semi final, including share. Takeaway was down almost a million viewers from last year and also down 2%shares from last year. How do you explain the drop in share%? Possibly due to declining Itv weekly viewing reach as a result of fewer casual viewers willing to watch the channel?

Don't think so - why would overall weekly reach affect*a show? If people like it they'll watch it; especially something like Takeaway which stands out in the ITV schedule.

One thing I will say is wasn't it this time last year that the Let's Get Ready to Rumble hype was taking off? That would explain the slight change in viewership and share - the hype isn't there for this series.

The trouble is the BBC looks at the first series and rather than fixing the problems with The Voice live shows they just halved them, and therefore ignoring one of the main complaints being that viewers didn't get the time to invest in contestants. Therefore now the live shows just seem like an afterthought rather than the climax of the series and people just aren't bothering with them.

Officials for last Saturday:

Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway - 7.68m (7.32m excl. +1)
* live: 5.37m (5.10m excl. +1)
The Voice UK - 7.14m
* live: 5.03m
The Voice UK Results - 6.65m
* live: 5.21m

It's also worth remembering this weekend last year was Easter and also parts of the country were covered in snow, so there are more factors at play than whether or not people are choosing to watch.

It was bang in the middle of Summer last year, this year its in the relative safe slot and month of the year. It also despite facing SNT had 1 hr opposite The Cube to grow its audience. In that respect being 0.1m up in not good enough. But still higher than any other BBC LE format which they are incapable of fining a successful one.

It got seven million of the right kinda audience for BBC One its doing well