Idol Chatter & Voice Views

John Legend shows his appreciation for landing an artist for his team, but there wasn’t much to celebrate over when it came to The Voice’s opening night ratings. (NBC Photo)

Or at least part of the price.

The show won the Monday night ratings battle, beating FOX’s “911” by a narrow margin.

But it also recorded its worst ever ratings for a premiere (1.7 among adults 19-49, per TV By the Numbers).

And the 8.93 million viewers who tuned in to Monday’s Season 17 kickoff marked a 17 percent drop from the 10.77 million who watched the Season 16 premiere.

My hunch is that The Voice turned off many fans during Season 16, and understandably so.

Between an erratic schedule, cross battles that fizzled and finals that lasted just three weeks, Season 16 of The Voice would rival Season 2 of The X Factor and Season 12 of American Idol as one of the worst singing show seasons ever televised.

Since then, the show has made some positive moves.

Season 17 will feature a full slate of Tuesday shows, which means singers won’t disappear for a month at a time, as they did in Season 16.

The live cross battles have been ditched with the old pre-taped knockout round returning.

And The Voice appears to have eliminated the gimmicky Comeback Stage, which gave artists who didn’t turn chairs in the blind auditions a chance to make it back onto the show.

We’ll see whether those changes are enough to halt the show’s ratings decline.

Season 16 also set a record in that regard when its rating dropped to record low 0.9 on three occasions and just 6.2 million viewers tuned in for Top 13 results night.