Score draw – TV ratings honours almost even for Let It Shine and The Voice UK on ITV

Let It Shine, ratings
(Image credit: BBC/Guy Levy)

Only 300,000 viewers separated the big new Saturday night entertainment launches, with Let It Shine narrowly beating The Voice UK on ITV

The new Saturday night battle for viewers' attention was so close it could almost be called a draw, with BBC1's new singing contest Let It Shine (pictured) drawing an average audience of 6.3 million and The Voice UK on ITV attracting 6 million.

Both shows were well above their channels' averages for the slots on a Saturday night.

But Broadcast reports that both shows were below the 7.1 million who watched the first episode of the previous series of The Voice on BBC1, which subsequently moved to ITV.

The shows were relatively evenly matched when they clashed between 8-8.25pm. Let It Shine won the first 15 minutes before The Voice dominated the last 10 minutes.

Good news also for Tom Hardy's new period thriller Taboo, which launched on Saturday night and attracted 4.8 million viewers and a 23 per cent share of the entire watching audience.

Taboo was created by Peaky Blinders' Steven Knight and produced by Ridley Scott.

 

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.