Since it's debut a few years ago, The Voice has become the second most watched singing talent show on television, and has been a huge success for the struggling NBC. For the first time though, The Voice is airing a cycle in the fall, and is against The X Factor, with Simon Cowell. So which show did the viewers flock to?
Many industry analysts expected The Voice to flop, given that it was just on TV a few months ago. They also expected The X Factor to improve over it's lukewarm debut last year, thanks to the inclusion of Britney Spears, who signed a $15 million dollar contract to be a judge on The X Factor.
The Voice aired three times last week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Monday, 12.3 million viewers tuned in, and 11.4 million watched on Tuesday. Both of these numbers were in line with industry expectations. They are great numbers for NBC, but below the American Idol average.
On Wednesday, The Voice aired directly against The X Factor. Analysts expected The X Factor to beat The Voice, given that Factor now had Britney Spears to boost ratings, and Voice would be having fatigue of being aired for the third night in a row. So how did the ratings pan out?
The Voice won the head to head battle. It received 10.7 million viewers, compared to The X Factor's 8.5 million viewers. Additionally, The X Factor's premier was down 25% from the previous year. It seems Britney Spears turned viewers away from, and not towards the Factor. Needless to say, Simon Cowell can not be happy being beaten by NBC and recieving 1/3 of the viewership he had from American Idol.
Round 1 goes to NBC.
I think it's really cool that you set up a type of battle between these two shows within this post. It's funny, because a friend of mine and I were arguing about which one of these shows was better. Personally I have never watched X Factor, but the last season of The Voice was my favorite show; I guess you could guess who I was rooting for. I was a little upset with the way The Voice did a two-hour premiere on Monday night, and only a one-hour show on Tuesday and Wednesday. It's pretty obvious that they stretched the show in order to interfere with the season premiere of X Factor, and I would have preferred a two hour show on both Monday and Tuesday. Even worse, in order to interfere with the X Factor's second week show, The Voice played a re-run of the previous night's episode during that hour. Pointless? Yes, but not if there are eyeballs watching The Voice that aren't watching X Factor. However, the only people who would seriously sit and watch a re-run on Wednesday night are the ones who missed the show on Tuesday. Hence, this upcoming Tuesday viewers may be less eager to watch since they know it can be watched the next day as well. I think The Voice may end up hurting their own ratings, intentionally trying to hurt someone else's.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with NBC wanting to interfere with The X Factor. These networks are in competition with each other, so they are all intentionally trying to hurt each other. As for The Voice hurting it's own ratings, I think the fact that they are airing this season only months after the Spring cycle could hurt it's ratings more than airing multiple episodes in a week.
DeleteI agree with the previous comment by PAWSWAP, The Voice would have to keep this up in order to even "wipe out" X Factor from the viewers, but it seems if you air it so much, you have to pay expenses for those extra air times, but also for the people showing up. It would be less beneficial for The Voice to attract more viewers from X Factor.
ReplyDeleteI'm still a fan of Simon Cowell regardless of what show he's hosting! I don't think having Britney Spears on the show was scaring viewers away. I think it's more of what people they let on the show. The Voice is more fair to people with a natural talent to sing because they don't SEE the person until they like the voice. Where sometimes on other shows they may be judgmental of their looks and it may affect their "voting".
NBC used The Voice to send a message to it's competition: After 5 years of being the last place network, were back and were fighting. Beating Simon Cowell head on was the best way to send that message. As for the quality of the shows, I don't watch either so I can't attest to which one has better talent.
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