Simon Cowell has suffered an embarrassing defeat at the hands of Mary Berry and co, after the launch episode of ‘The Great British Bake Off’ became the most watched show of the year.
The BBC baking competition has overtaken ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ in the ratings rundown of 2016’s most popular shows, having pulled in 13.6 million viewers.
New official figures, which take into account those who watched the show on catch up or on demand services, rose by over three million from the overnight rating ‘Bake Off’ received when it returned to screens two weeks ago.
The final of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ has now been bumped into second place, with an official figure of 12.5m - over a million less than Bake Off’s launch brought in.
And if early ratings are anything to go by, the new series of ‘The X Factor’ does not look to be in any danger of topping those figures, having only received 6.8m in the overnights for its first episode last week.
The number marked a 10-year low for an ‘X Factor’ launch show, and was also down around 800,000 on last year’s opener.
Simon is bound to be unhappy about Bake Off’s ratings success given comments he made about the show during a TV conference in 2014.
Sticking the (bread) knife into his BBC rival, the supremo said: “My belief is it’s more exciting to see someone like Leona Lewis win and sing a fantastic song, than looking at a chocolate eclair at the end of the show.”
‘The Great British Bake Off’ airs on Wednesdays at 8pm on BBC One.
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