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The Voice and The X Factor went at it last night, and the NBC series came out victorious in their much-hyped direct clash. From 8-9 PM, The Voice drew a 3.3/11 in adults 18-49 and 10.7 million viewers vs. a 2.7/9 and 7.5 million for the opening hour of The X Factor‘s second-season premiere, which introduced new judges Britney Spears and Demi Lovato. Of course it was a somewhat Pyrrhic victory as The Voice shed 18% from its Tuesday night episode, but both shows had been projected to lose about a rating point from going against each other. In the second hour when it didn’t face The Voice, X Factor on Wednesday spiked by 41% in 18-49. Overall, it averaged a 3.3/10 from 8-10 PM, tying Voice‘s 8-9 PM performance for the top 18-49 spot on the night. (UPDATE: In the finals, X Factor was adjusted up to a 3.4, no info on The Voice‘s final ratings yet.) Still, X Factor was down 21% from its series premiere last fall and from The Voice‘s second-season premiere Monday when comparing fast nationals to fast nationals. Compared with the final numbers, it was down 25% year-to-year and lost 4 million viewers.
While Voice successfully beat X Factor for bragging rights, it didn’t do as well in its goal of boosting America’s Got Talent‘s performance finale, which posted a 2.9/8, down 24% from last year. It was followed by a preview of new NBC comedy Guys With Kids (2.2/6), which also was down from the series NBC previewed in the slot the last two years: comedy Up All Night (3.7/10) and drama Outlaw (2.4/7).
The only other originals on the broadcast networks, CBS’ Big Brother (2.0/6) and the CW’s Oh Sit! (0.4/1), did a good job weathering the singing-competition storm in the 8 PM hour. Big Brother was down a tenth from last week, Oh Sit! was even. Fox (3.3/10, 8.5 million viewers) won the night in 18-49, NBC (2.7/8, 8.9 million) was tops in total viewers.
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What a PR disaster for FOX. It’d be pretty funny if FOX dropped from 1st to 4th like NBC did back in ’04! They’re lucky they might avoid that fate because they’re not bogged down by the 10pm hr. Britney wasn’t worth the 15 million and surely Mariah won’t be worth the 17 million because she’s way more irrelevant than Britney so no way she boosts Idol’s ratings.
That’s a terrible number for X-Factor, even against The Voice. Looks like it could be a rough year for FOX. No amount of scripted success can counteract the fall of X-Factor and Idol. Lots of make goods on the horizon.
The drop from last season’s X-FACTOR premiere is entirely from THE VOICE smartly going up against its premiere night. I watched the first episodes of THE VOICE and last night’s episode of X-FACTOR and thought X-FACTOR blew away THE VOICE from an entertainment perspective. What a well produced show, Demi Lovato is a terrific new judge, and the stories and contestants were emotional and engaging. I would give X-FACTOR an A- overall. I would give THE VOICE a C+. The big “eh” about X-FACTOR was unfortunately Britney Spears, but maybe she’ll improve. Overall, really good stuff.
I totally agree. Thought X-Factor was great. Much better than the entirety of its first season. I give them big props for going back and really assessing what hasn’t been working lately on both their own show and on competition shows in general. Look at how The Voice is already in its third episode of boring auditions (sooo tired of that shit) while X-Factor quickly flew through 3 cities to get right to the point, and yet it still completely connected you to its new contestants. As much as I hate to compliment the guy, Simon Cowell deserves credit.
X-Factor was terrific. I liked the first season and think this one looks really good too. I’m also a fan of The Voice. Definitely going to keep watching both.
It’s funny to see what is clearly a batch of NBC moles posting on this site now. Look at how quickly the positive rah-rah Voice comments showed up all over these comments. As an innocent bystander, I think The Voice is actually pretty tired and Blake Shelton is the only judge who has any real personality. I’m over it. X-Factor surprised me last night because I thought the first season was pretty damn uneven. I agree with someone else’s post about Demi Lovato being a fresh presence on the show. I will keep watching X-Factor, but The Voice lost me on Monday night.
The best surprise for me of the summer was Big Brother. The season started off bumpy, but turned into another terrific season. I hope they do an All-Stars season next summer — it’s really fun getting to see the fantastic players come back and compete against each other.
Totally disagree. I thought the X-Factor was way too contrived and edited to the max. The country blonde girl rolling her eyes and being snarky to the Rihanna look-a-like. So scripted. Then they put through the *bride man*. Come on. This was like watching the Gong Show from many years ago. Then all the Britney crap. The weird faces and her one or two word slams stung together. Even Simon has become a bore. At least the Voice comes off as real and authentic. The comradery between Blake and Adam is so funny and real. It’s no wonder the Voice’s ratings were better.
I don’t think that was scripted – I think that is what we call good editing.
The most important numbers not whether the Voice beats the X Factor…the critical numbers are the ever slow, but consistent decline in ratings year over year for all of the talent reality shows.
tick tock…tick tock
Like the newsmagazines of years ago, when networks flood the air with the same type of show, they all fall. Saturation WILL kill all of these types of shows; it’s just a matter of time. Costs go up and ratings go down, as soon as they become unprofitable, you’ll see comedies return in their place. You can change the actors/judges/personalities, but the premise is the same.
FOX should have canceled American Idol when Simon jumped ship. The shows are too similar–though Simon didn’t help contrast their differences by starting out with Paula Abdul. Now FOX has two shows that are killing each other.
Exactly! That is what happened! It was all wrong from season 1, with Paula Abdul and the token black guy.
I agree that “Idol” numbers will not hold up this season. What now, Fox? This is exactly what happens when you base your entire network on the success of one show – “Idol.” “X” already dilutes the singing competition market, so that was a major flub on behalf of Fox in the first place.
Looks like the Fox execs may actually have to go to the drawing board and develop shows – something they haven’t had to do in a decade. Let’s see how THAT pans out …
Don’t think that’s fair of you to say! How many seasons does American Idol have? AI just barely started to show its ratings reversal after always outperforming their previous year.
They’ve had successful shows like New Girl, Glee, Bones and critically acclaimed shows like Fringe and Arrested Development. They have not been picking their noses, unlike NBC who has not come up with anything since Friends ended.
The only ray of light they’ve had was The Voice and they are going to burn that off.
At least FOX never did that to AI, they only had 1 airing a year making it an event and not just another show like what NBC is going to do with their spinning chairs show.
Bones is heading towards ending, Glee’s ratings are dropping like a stone, and even Animation Domination is showing steep declines. New Girl is the only real bright spot on a dying lineup (although, to Fox’s credit, The Mindy Project and Ben & Kate both look good).
Fox are far too reliant on X Factor/Idol. If they continue to decline then Fox will be in real trouble given the amount of programming time they eat up each week. I have had Fox pegged as the next NBC since the beginning of last season.
I think the story of the night was how good Guys With Kids was.
sarcasm is alive and well! yay!
Quality or ratings?
Its ratings beat last year’s Free Agents by 0.2. Free Agents was axed after 4 episodes.
Quality? It has 38 on Metacritic, the lowest of the 4 NBC comedies.
I think it’s just as well there’s something to distract from Guys With Kids.
I have watched XF, IDOL, VOICE. Every season. The sad part is XF Season 2 may have been one of the best produced singing-competition shows ever. Engaging, emotional, exciting, funny. I wish Voice was Fall, XF was spring and Idol was gone! You’re all killing each other!
It’s so funny to think that these people were the one’s ranting that Factor will beat Voice. You know what? Voice slew X Factor big time. You guys are all talk like your boss Cowell. Now you turn into someone that says “Numbers doesn’t matter”. That’s what you get for messing up with The Voice, really sit down! LOL
How do you measure relevancy?
X factor feels as tired as american idol.
Much preferred The Voice over X Factor. Another boring season for Simon. On the other hand, LOVE Blake & Adam! (Xtina–not so much…)
I watched all two hours of x and it was ok but I’m not who these shows are targeting. I’m 40 single female. I watched to see Britney, I wondered how she felt starting out so young and now judging kids much younger than herself and contemplating her own age. My bf was relieved when I said I won’t be watching this contrived mess of a show again. Viewers are more intelligent than these networks would like to admit. Kardashians, and these singing competitions seem like a boring put on. Jersey shore really felt like that after the second season. It becomes dull and insulting after a while. Maybe these networks need to go in knowing these types of shows should have a short/er life span.
You can pump as many millions into judges, production, marketing and all those embarrassingly desperate quick-fix stunts as you want – it is now obvious these “talent” shows have finally run their course.
NBC is on the rise. They are the only network with GOOD PROGRAMMING and numbers. CBS IS A JOKE with their multi cam bad broad comedies. Now if only the rest of the country would catch up.
Simon…you can put lipstick on a pig, but it still comes out an oinker.
What do you expect from a talent show that actually has Britney Spears as a singing judge?
The girl doesn’t sing, she lip syncs.
Simply put..it’s oversaturation..like the westerns in the 1950′s and 1960′s…one show is unique,maybe even two…but there’s just too much talent shows and reality shows because the talentless, morons in Hollywood can’t come up with decent programming…BRING BACK WESTERNS.YOU CAN’T GO WRONG!
Amazing how badly botched the launch of X-Factor. The format is better than Idol but wow have they done a terrible job putting a judging panel together. Firing Cheryl Cole was the signal they didn’t have a clue, putting Sherzinger as a replacement was worse. It now there’s talk Khloe Khardashian might host the show. Why? She’s on two other reality shows, has NEVER hosted a show, knows nothing about the music biz and is tabloid non-celebrity we need LESS of.
Simon deserves the ratings decline for all of these terrible decisions. One more season if it’s lucky.
Just hoping X Factor fails and Cowell finally shuts his piehole up once and for all. GO THE VOICE!!! I despise NBC but in this instance, I hope this show beats the snot out of X Factor.
I said it last week and I’ll repeat it this week. FOX is going to a disaster on Mondays and Tuesdays, way down on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays, and slightly up on Saturdays (maybe). This will be a rough year for FOX. Don’t expect much better numbers for Idol after the disasterous collapse it had over the course of last year….wow, at those premiere hour numbers for X-Factor- 7.5 million viewers. I bet NBC smells blood in the air now against FOX. We could see NBC go Wednesday & Thursday with The Voice if DAncing With The Stars comes back huge with its all-star edition. They know they can put the hurt on X-Factor but they can’t touch DWTS viewer totals (18-20 million last year). Either way, X-Factor still has to face the BIG comedies of CBS & ABC in a couple of weeks, so things could be really ugly for X-Factor by the time they roll out.
Of course The Voice has more viewers. Thanks to Christina Aguilera. She is a true artist and is authentic. She always knows what she’s talking about. She has been in the business her whole life and recording albuma since 1998. THAT’S the kind of people we need on a talent show, people who actually HAVE talent!