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According to unofficial overnight figures, ‘The Voice’ had a peak audience of 11.57 million viewers at 8.25pm (across the standard and HD channel), while ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ peaked at 10.60 million viewers on ITV1 and ITV1 HD at 8.50pm.

Earlier this month ITV announced it was to move ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ from 8pm to 8.30pm so viewers could watch both shows in their entirety. Saturday night was the first time the shows were not scheduled to overlap.

However, on Saturday ‘The Voice’ controversially overran for three minutes. The ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ audience grew rapidly between 8.30pm and 8.35pm, rising from 5.7 million to 9.9 million viewers, suggesting people watched the end of the BBC One show before turning over.

Although ‘The Voice’ had a larger average audience than ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ for the previous two weeks, and when the shows overlapped, Saturday marked the first time ‘The Voice’ achieved a bigger peak than the ITV show.

The average audience for ‘The Voice’ was 9.88 million viewers, a 42.5% share of the available audience, between 7pm and 8.30pm across BBC One and BBC One HD.

In comparison, ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ had an average audience of 9.27 million viewers, a 37.4% share, between 8.30pm and 9.45pm on ITV1 and ITV1 HD. An additional 478,900 watched the show on ITV1 +1.

The ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ average audience represented a decline from the week before but slightly up on the series low two weeks ago (9.10 million) and ahead of the average audience for the equivalent show in 2011 (8.36 million).

Based on live overnights, including Saturday’s episode, ‘Britain's Got Talent’ is now currently averaging 10 million viewers, an increase of 300,000 viewers year on year.

Last night the second instalment of ‘The Voice’ had an average audience of 10.09 million viewers, a 38.5% share, on BBC One and BBC One HD between 7.30 and 9pm.

‘Britain’s Got Talent’ is sponsored by Virgin Media. Simon Cowell skipped the early auditions last year but has rejoined judges Amanda Holden, David Walliams and Alesha Dixon, this season.