‘Strictly Come Dancing’ final ratings throttle those of ‘X Factor,’ everything else

If you think that “Dancing with the Stars” is a success in America, you really should take a look at how its counterpart in Britain is faring still. “Strictly Come Dancing” is the original, and while its viewers overall are lower than the ABC show, we’re talking all about the audience share here.

The final of “Strictly” on Saturday ended up drawing in total around 11 million viewers on average, which is clearly enough to make it one of the most-popular programs on Britain this year (though still below the surprising titan otherwise known as “The Great British Bake-Off”). Here’s the thing here: If “Dancing with the Stars” generated the same sort of audience share in the United States, we would be talking here about a show with more than 40 million viewers here. That’s almost unheard-of in modern entertainment.

This final easily throttled the recent ratings for the “X Factor” final, which was watched by close to 8.5 million viewers. This number was even inflated somewhat when you consider that a good chunk of that was simply due to the performance from none other than Adele, plus one last performance from One Direction before the band went off on hiatus.

Do we ever see “Strictly Come Dancing” having a tumble in the ratings? It’s hard to imagine it, if for no other reason than that the show has clearly found a great system with only doing one show a year, and making a huge TV event around it.

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