The Voice has sung its swan song for the year and while it was quite the aria, it was 29% softer than last year.
The Winner Announced segment of The Voice was the highest ratings the singing competition enjoyed all year with 2.30 million metro viewers tuned in. While 2.30 million is a formidable number, it's a staggering 29% down on last year's 3.23 million. Similarly, the grand final segment attracted 2.03 million, a drop of 26% on the previous year's 2.7 million.
It's unusual for a reality series to be down overall on the second series, it generally trends the other way. But The Voice captured the national imagination last year in a way that was unprecedented in recent memory. In 2012, It only dropped below the two million mark a couple of times (bottomed out at 1.8 million) and 'normal' weekday episodes had hit the 2.7 million mark.
In 2013, the program still enjoyed high ratings but it was a tall order for it to repeat the success of the first series. The critical and audience narrative of the show had also shifted for the year with grumblings of an over-focus on 'sob stories' compared to pure singing. The industry and audiences await to see how Nine and Shine will inject renewed energy into it for 2014.
Elsewhere, Seven's House Rules achieved a season-high of 1.39 million viewers, a marked improvement on its debut of 803,000 viewers a month ago. It's particularly commendable as it was up against The Voice finale, which could be interpreted as further evidence of The Voice's diminished power.
However, Seven's once-almighty US drama Revenge has been losing viewers in its second season. Last night's episode drew 863,000 viewers compared to the million-and-a-half it was averaging last year.
On Ten, its most watched program was its news bulletin with 770,000 viewers, followed by The Project (confirmed times) with 637,000 viewers and MasterChef with 606,000 viewers.
Across the main channels, Nine won the night with 32% of audience share, followed by Seven with 22.6%, the ABC with 12.7%, Ten with 9% and SBS had 2.8%
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