Hail Aggie: The Voice returns to record ratings

When Simon Cowell was hyping up season one of the X Factor USA, he claimed that anything less than “20 million viewers would be a disappointment“. Poor Simon ended up disappointed when the overhyped series only pulled in half of that, but you know who’s not down in the dumps? Christina Aguilera!
The acid-tongued diva proved that it takes more than a spray tan malfunction to hold her curvacious frame down, with the season two premiere of her series The Voice raking in a record-breaking 37.6 million viewers last night.
The return of the talent show benefited greatly from the direct lead-in from the Super Bowl, also airing on NBC, which was the most-watched telecast in US history with 111.3 million viewers. Not only that, but Madonna‘s performance was also the most-watched halftime show ever, raking in an average of 114 million viewers.
Go Madge!
The enormous numbers for The Voice gave it the highest-ratings for an entertainment telecast since Grey’s Anatomy’s post-Super Bowl airing on ABC back in 2006.
Was Grey’s seriously that popular? Lord Jesus.
To further put the ratings into perspective, the last time a talent series scored numbers this big was the sixth season of American Idol back in 2007, which premiered to 37.44 million viewers.
Of course, a huge drop in viewers is to be expected by the time the next episode of The Voice airs, but with ratings this big, they can afford to lose millions of people and still be one of the biggest programs on TV. Considering that Idol’s eleventh season recently premiered to 21.93 million viewers, I’d say that The Voice could end up rating better overall this season, and if not this season, then definitely by the next.
As for X Factor, uh… They may as well just pull that flop from the airwaves, because with The Voice snatching wigs and American Idol still pulling in strong numbers for an eleven year old show, there’s no need for Cowell’s overproduced soap opera on TV.
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