Britain's Got Talent loses a million viewers but still beats The Voice in ratings war

Saturday night ratings battle: Britain's Got Talent versus The Voice (BBC/ITV)

Britain's Got Talent saw its audience drop by a million viewers last night but it remained way ahead of rival The Voice.

The third episode of BGT was seen by an average of 9.6 million on ITV (including viewers on its +1 catch-up channel), compared with the 10.6 million who watched a week earlier.

But it was still almost two million ahead of BBC1's The Voice which drew 7.7 million to the fifth programme of the 2013 series.

ITV said its edition of BGT was on a par with the audience level for this stage of the contest last year.

Last year The Voice was drawing almost 10 million viewers by this stage of the competition.

PA