‘The Voice’ UK: Alys Williams’ return helps ratings, but show still loses to Ant & Dec

We have been conditioned over time by American singing competitions to expect some pretty large ratings during the premiere week, but then to see it drop in the following weeks. However, we are quickly learning that this is not necessarily the case when it comes to “The Voice” franchise. The NBC version of the show carried over very well in its second week on the air, and we’re now seeing something very similar courtesy of the series in the United Kingdom.

After scoring around 6.2 million viewers on average for its first round of blind auditions last weekend, “The Voice” UK managed to pull in an average audience this time around of 6.43 million viewers. The show may have been sparked by more people realizing that the show was back on the air, or simply be the return of a contestant in Alys Williams who notoriously choked up during her attempt to get the chairs to turn around during the first season.

As good as these ratings are, though, the show once again lost to “Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.” The finale of the talk / prank series hosted by the duo ended up drawing 6.77 million. Just like last week, though, the silver lining here is that “The Voice” UK had a peak audience that was more than a million viewers higher, with its show drawing over 8.75 million compared to Ant & Dec’s 7.5.

Things will become much tougher next wee for “The Voice,” as it squares off for the first time against “Britain’s Got Talent.” ITV purposefully moved up the start of its show to 7:00 p.m. local time in an effort to sink the rival show, so we’ll see if it works.

If you want to read our review of Saturday night’s episode of “The Voice” UK, you can do so over at the link here.

Photo: BBC One