The X Factor’s ratings troubles continued during the weekend as Saturday’s show was trounced by its BBC rival and drew its smallest average audience since its first ever episode in 2004.
An average of 5.6 million tuned in to watch the first live show in the latest series of The X Factor, compared to the average of 9.4 million viewers who watched the BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. The ITV programme peaked at 6.5 million.
Two acts – Alien Uncovered and Bupsi Brown – were eliminated during Sunday’s live results show, with Cowell managing to get the former’s name wrong. He called the girl band “Alien Nation” – a 1988 sci-fi film – during the double elimination programme.
The Mirror reported that Saturday night’s figures were more than a million down on the previous week’s show and 2.5 million down on last year’s opening live episode.
The show has been in gradual decline since 2010, when 17.7 million watched Matt Cardle win the final on ITV1 and ITV1 HD. Since then, each final has recorded lower figures, with an average of 9.1 million people – a 35% share of the audience – watching 2014’s final.
Cowell made changes following that, with BBC Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw and Rita Ora appearing as judges for series 12.
“You can’t keep making the same show with the same format because if everybody knows what is going to happen every year, eventually people will get tired of it,” he said.
A source said that the figures for Saturday’s two-and-a-half-hour edition of The X Factor would rise once all viewing figures were taken into account, including people who record the programme and watch later. They added that X Factor was averaging 8.7 million viewers in that respect.
