The departure of Ed Balls from Strictly Come Dancing after weeks of defying rock-bottom scores from the show’s judges attracted one of the programme’s biggest audiences of the year.
The results show on Sunday saw 10.6 million tune in to see Balls’s ultimately unsuccessful dance-off against Judge Rinder, with a peak audience of 11.4 million.
The former shadow chancellor tweeted after the show:
The Strictly judges placed Balls at the bottom of the leaderboard for all but one episode of the BBC1 show’s 14th series, but each week phone-in votes from the public saved him from the dance-off.
His outrageous performances helped propel Strictly to huge audiences, with last Saturday’s Blackpool special attracting a peak audience of 11.9 million and the previous week’s episode, featuring Ball’s take on internet sensation Gangnam Style, the biggest average audience at 10.8 million.
Despite being a ratings draw, BBC bosses were reportedly keen to see Balls exit, with his ability to escape the drop despite technically poor performances seen as a distraction. The introduction of a second dance test for Saturday’s show, the cha-cha challenge, was thought by some to be a way to ensure Balls tripped up.
It remains to be seen whether Strictly will be able to maintain its allure to so many viewers without Balls. His departure coincided with another polarising reality show exit, with Honey G leaving the X Factor on ITV.
The novelty rapper, whose parody of hip-hop and black culture has been described as offensive and a modern version of blackface, was voted off the show on Sunday. Just 6.1 million tuned in to the results show, despite a stage invasion stunt on Saturday night by the well-known prankster group Trollstation, which some viewers suspected was staged.
The X Factor has failed to attract anywhere near the audiences of its BBC reality competitor, and has suffered from being shown in the same Sunday 8pm slot as Planet Earth II, which has become the most watched natural history programme in at least 15 years.
