The rumour mill has gone into meltdown over The Voice, with its future as the BBC’s flagship Saturday-night show unclear. Bosses have portrayed it as a success, with viewing figures that suggest it was BBC One’s most successful entertainment launch in 10 years – pulling in an average of 9.2 million viewers. Predictably, BBC One controller Danny Cohen has come out in staunch defence of the programme he spent £22 million on, insisting he is “confident that The Voice will return even stronger next year”.
But a closer look at the figures reveals that after a promising start, the figures dipped as the show progressed – with a woeful 4m tuning in for the semi-finals and a none-too-impressive 7m for the final. On average, those numbers were well below the performance of the BBC’s own Strictly Come Dancing, and competitors Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor.
Problems appear to be mounting for the planned post-series bonanza, the Live Tour, with speculation swirling that the showcase will be cancelled (to be fair, the Britain’s Got Talent tour has already been pulled – but that was mainly because people were unlikely to turn out to watch a dancing dog). The final insult, though, was that the winner’s single – a cover of Whitney Houston’s “Run To You” performed by Leanne Mitchell – missed out on the UK Top 40 singles chart, scraping in at just 45.
It is, perhaps, this latter problem that is the most worrying for BBC bosses, as this will surely undermines the whole point of the show. If winning The Voice counts for so little, then why should anyone enter it? It is now inevitable that any serious potential artists will now look to The X Factor instead, where even though a successful career for the winner is far from guaranteed, there is at least a brief spell of fame to look forward to.
The main reason behind The Voice‘s decline was predicted by this column, and became central to pundits’ criticisms: after the initial “blindfold” rounds, the show was essentially the same as The X Factor – but with less glitz. The overall praise-not-put-down style of the judges also began to grate, with the judges lacking the honesty and clout of Cowell and Barlow. Will.I.Am was an interesting sideshow – which he must have appreciated, giving him the opportunity to carry the Olympic Torch – but he was about the only spark present. In sum, it became a poor facsimile of an existing, successful show, created five years too late: a repeat of the early 2000s when Fame Academy attempted to ride on the coat tails of Pop Idol.
Bosses are bound to defend their show – after all, a pretty penny was spent acquiring the format before the cameras had even been plugged in – but the excuses that Cohen has presented don’t cut any ice. Saying that “there are inevitably things you learn in the first series of a big new show” is not acceptable, as the format has existed so long elsewhere – particularly in the US. This was a readymade show that should have hit the ground running, not an untried, homegrown concept. Only beating The X Factor would have justified the import cost. But it did not.
Other tiers of BBC management will undoubtedly refuse to admit the show was a mistake, and the reasonable ratings average will probably spare it the axe, if only to save face. But if Universal backs out of its deal to release future winners in the wake of Mitchell’s chart flop – and Cowell storms back into town this Autumn with a new, high-octane X Factor – the pressure on Cohen may mount to breaking point.