ITV change Britain’s Got Talent air time to avoid Voice ratings battle

ITV have changed their Saturday night schedule to avoid a head-to-head battle between ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ and BBC One’s ‘The Voice’ after weeks of losing out to the debuting talent show. 

Simon Cowell’s reality show has backed down after the two show's overlap benefited his rivals for three consecutive weeks.

This weekend saw 'The Voice' pull in 10 million viewers during the clash, while 'BGT' only managed 6.4m.

[Related story: BGT judges turn away Roman centurion]
[Related story: Cowell recognises Voice ratings win]

ITV announced today that on Saturday 22 April 'Britain’s Got Talent' will air at 8.30pm – following on from a 90-minute 'The Voice' special. It had previously been scheduled for 8pm.

Both shows will air at their regular times this week, 7pm for ‘The Voice’ and 8pm for ‘BGT’

The ratings battle has been well publicised over the past month with stars of both shows taking shots at their rivals in a bid to impress TV viewers who only really want to watch people sing, embarrass themselves or rap about their missing keys/phone. 

Simon Cowell and Amanda Holden have both mocked Tom Jones’ age, to which the Welsh crooner replied asking who Holden was.

The media mogul begrudgingly congratulated BBC One Controller Danny Cohen on Easter Monday, tweeting: "A slightly irritated congrats to Danny and the BBC. But you didn't have a dancing dog!

"I thought our team made a fantastic show last night and congrats to them as well. Loving the show this year."

Jenny Cummins, PR Manager for ITV Broadcasting responded to the change in schedule by tweeting: “We’re making sure that as many viewers as possible can watch the show in its entirety.”

And she insisted that ‘BGT’ viewership was up year on year “averaging nearly 10m so far”.

On Monday an insider told The Sun that Simon Cowell would ditch his Mr Nasty image to save ‘BGT’ from its “ratings kicking”.

It appears he’s settling on a Mr Scaredy Cat image instead.