[tellyblues]

The Voice has been in sharp decline for a while now. It was lucky to get 4m last year, aided by a summer of nothing. The death of The Queen and the BBC handing ITV two Saturdays on a plate prolonged that luck.

As posted above and has been said many times before, the blind auditions are the only exciting aspect of The Voice but once they're done the show fails. Starstruck has problems straight away, each episode being overly bloated and the overall quality of the show questionable. There's nothing wrong with The Voice until the knockout rounds which holds it in much better stead for a new series starting up compared to Starstruck where viewers know what to expect - and avoid. Even if it had been commissioned for another series under the same format, running out of big names would have been its downfall but the format was not beyond fixing.

Starstruck also has the weakness of being associated with Stars In Their Eyes which hampers its potential unlike say The 1% Club which is Test The Nation meets Whittle but these are shows that the general public don't remember and so The 1% Club is seen as "new". It's also logic based questions which is unique for a gameshow in this day and age. Limitless Win is all about numbers - another rarity - and anyone can play along. This is partly why they rate so well.

A bog standard gameshow wouldn't have faired any better than Starstruck so I expect similar discussions to be had in 2024 when one turns up and fails to retain enough of SNT's audience but no doubt the eagerly anticipated last for a while series of SNT will change things.