• by Wayne Friedman , September 13, 2012

In the first battle between the two heavyweight singing competition shows, NBC's "The Voice" easily bested Fox's "X Factor" in a head-to-head battle on Wednesday night -- but both suffered from lower ratings versus comparable original episodes.

"The Voice," running from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., pulled a Nielsen preliminary 3.3 rating/11 share among 18-49 viewers and 10.7 million overall average viewers. It earned a 2.7 rating/10 share and 7.5 million viewers for the first hour of its season two-hour 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. premiere.

Despite the presence of new celebrity judges Britney Spears and Demi Lovato, "X Factor" dropped 25% lower to a 3.3 rating/10 share versus its premiere of a year ago. But "The Voice" didn't come away unscathed -- its results were 18% lower than its 4 rating on Tuesday.

After the one-hour "Voice" left the airwaves, "X Factor" had some clear sailing and rose to a 3.9 rating in the 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. hour.

The heavy competition did not seem to affect CBS' near-end-of-the-season "Big Brother," which pulled in a 2.0/6 -- down just one-tenth of a rating point from a week ago. The network aired reruns in the rest of its Wednesday night schedule.

NBC had other decent results for the entire night. Its summer reality competition effort "America's Got Talent" took in a 2.9/8 between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m., and the debut of its new sitcom at 10 p.m., "Guys with Kids," registered a strong 2.2/6.

ABC ran a full night of reruns.

For the night, Fox was tops in the demographic group that still matters most to prime-time advertising: 18-49 viewers. It had a 3.3/10; NBC, a 2.7/8;  CBS, 1.5/5; Univision, 1.5/5; ABC, 0.9/3; and CW, a 0.3/1.

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