Nearly four million people watched the inaugural BBC Music Awards last night to see Ed Sheeran and Pharrell Williams take the top honours.
But the average audience of 3.9 million on BBC1 was still 700,000 less than this year's Brit Awards which had itself scored a ratings low for recent years.
The two-hour live awards programme saw Sheeran take the prize for top British artist of the year, while Williams triumphed as international artist and took the best song trophy for his hit Happy.
But despite taking two of the three main awards, the US musician, writer and producer was unable to actually attend the event and had to appear by a live link.
An audience of 13,500 attended the event at Earls Court in London with performances by Take That, Sheeran, Ella Henderson and Coldplay. The TV audience for the show - hosted by Chris Evans and Fearne Cotton - peaked at 4.7 million midway through the broadcast.
There had been some expectations that the show could have been a rival to ITV's Brit Awards, staged at London's O2 Arena, with the next ceremony to be staged in February and hosted by Ant and Dec.
Humble Sheeran collected his trophy from Sir Tom Jones, and the 23-year-old said he wanted to say "a massive thank you to everyone who has bought a record, bought a ticket, streamed on YouTube, done anything, listened to my music".
His career has exploded in 2014, and he has become one of the UK's biggest-selling stars, scoring the most- played album in the world on music streaming service Spotify in 2014.
Reflecting on his year as he collected his trophy, he said: "I always thought my career would stop at one album, so knowing my career is longer than one album is the highlight."
During the show at Earls Court he performed his number one hit Sing, which united the crowd as they chanted along.
Williams accepted his prizes via video-link from the US, where he was presented with the trophies by his friend Gwen Stefani.
He beat nine other nominees to take the song award, which was chosen by public vote from a shortlist of the most-played tracks of the year. Others in the running included Sheeran's Sing and Sam Smith's Money On My Mind.
Williams said: "How amazing it is to have a song that is considered among all of the other really, really great songs.
"As writers and producers we are beholden to what the audience thinks and what you guys want to do, so when you say song of the year, really it's not my award - it's your award."
The show devoted a lengthy slot at the beginning to plugging the BBC's support for the music industry and advertising the live events and concerts which it broadcasts.
The ceremony also recognised a new generation of performers with a lesser trophy, the BBC Introducing Award, for an up-and-coming act, which went to Catfish And The Bottlemen.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article