'Got Talent' versus 'The Voice': Which are you more excited about?

Forget X Factor versus Strictly; there's a new reality TV war in town.

Britain's Got Talent usually has bumper TV ratings and Saturday nights in its pocket when it rolls into town in the Spring. And with Simon Cowell back on board as Captain of the HMS Doggy Dancing, Opera Singing, Crying Children Ship and a bumper new panel of judges (David Walliams, Alesha Dixon), 2012 should have been no different.



However, a few big wigs and large spenders at BBC One have had other ideas. The Voice, a show which was created by Big Brother mastermind John De Mol two years ago, finally launches in the UK next month and will air on BBC One on Saturday nights primetime.

Following ratings success in the US (a whopping 37.6m viewers watched the post-Super Bowl season two premiere) with judges such as Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera, the Beeb have hired in the services of Jessie J (the pop one), Tom Jones (the old one), will.i.am (the one who knows Cheryl Cole) and Danny O'Donoghue (the other one) to compete as the show's 'coaches'.

Got Talent suffered in the ratings last year with Michael McIntyre and David Hasselhoff failing to capture the imagination as Simon Cowell stand-ins. The actual talent was even worse. Does the world need any more dancing dogs, doddery singing pensioners or weepy pre-pubescent opera singers?

The Voice will hope that the answer to that question is a big fat no. NBC launched The Voice in the US to much fanfare and despite a crowded marketplace in pop reality shows (Idol, The X Factor, The Sing-Off), the show has managed to hold its own and maintain some of the network's best ratings in a long while.















Whether the BBC can manage to shed their stuffy image when it comes to reality TV and stoke up some drama and mega ratings remains to be seen. If anyone knows or cares who Danny O'Donoghue is by the end of the first episode should be a good marker for the show's success.

Simon Cowell has faced off against the BBC on many occasions in the past. X Factor and Strictly have gone toe-to-toe in recent years (we mark the score 3-2 to Cowell at present) and he managed to make the last BBC singing reality series Fame Academy look fussy and old-fashioned compared to his bells and pyros mega productions. Cowell will remember less fondly his dual with Beeb over musical shows, when his Sinitta-led Grease Is The Word paled in the shadow of Andrew Lloyd Webber's jazz-hand singathons.

Cowell admitted to Digital Spy that he considered going head-to-head with The Voice to be a challenge. And Cowell loves a challenge. But with an ageing format on his hands and a new kid on the block, he's probably got one of the toughest TV battles of his career on his hands.

Which show are you more excited about watching on Saturday nights in 2012 - The Voice or Britain's Got Talent? Vote in our poll below.