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Media
The Voice and BGT clash reduced to 20 minutes
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 15 March 2012
The launch editions of the BBC’s ‘The Voice’ and the new season of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ on ITV1 will clash later this month, but only for 20 minutes.
As previously reported, it was revealed late last week that the first episodes of the rival broadcasters’ big talent shows would launch in a head-to-head battle on 24 Mar, even though in the second screening age people increasingly want to watch these programmes live so they can bitch about them on Twitter and Facebook.
BBC insiders accused ITV of bringing the launch of ‘BGT’ forward to compete with their expensive new talent show acquisition, while bosses at the commercial broadcaster criticised Beeb execs for staging such a blatant ratings war by scheduling their new talent show into ITV’s customary talent show spot.
As the final schedules for 24 Mar were being firmed up earlier this week, the BBC brought the start time for ‘The Voice’ forward quarter of an hour, so the overlap would be 35 instead of 50 minutes. ITV responded by likewise bringing ‘BGT’ forward fifteen minutes, though late yesterday saw sense and pushed its programme back fifteen minutes from its original time instead. All of which means there will only be a 20 minute clash.
But for those 20 minutes what will you be watching? Will.i.am saying “Yeah, yeah, like, yeah, like, yeah” to a baffled Tom Jones, or Alesha Dixon demanding of Simon Cowell and David Walliams “but when’s this kid going to start dancing?” Personally I’ll be shunning both shows and sitting back, as I so often do, to not watch ‘The Big Lebowski’ on DVD. Which is an in-joke that only one CMU reader will get, so let’s hope he sufficiently appreciates it for the rest of you.
