Britain's Got Talent once again emerged as this weekend's Saturday night ratings winner - but The Voice narrowed the gap between the two shows as it picked up even more viewers.
According to overnight figures the BBC One show attracted an average audience of 7.9m when it was screened at 8.05pm, when BGT had already been on the air for over an hour.
Meanwhile its peak audience was even higher, with 8.9m tuning in to watch the penultimate round of auditions - 50,000 more than watched the show last week.
The figures are also considerably higher than the 6.3m who saw the series' opening instalment, which was shown at the earlier time of 7pm.
However the ratings are down on the 2012 series, which was pulling in audiences around the 10m mark at the same time last year.
By contrast Britain's Got Talent pulled in an average audience of 9.3m viewers - comparable to its ratings last Saturday night - when it was shown between 7pm and 8.20pm.
That figure rose to just under 10m when viewers watching an hour later on ITV+1 were taken into account - while a peak audience of 11m tuned in.
An ITV spokesperson said the viewing figures were on a par with the ratings at the same stage of the 2012 series.
The Voice's final blind audition show will be screened next Saturday night before the contest moves on to its next stage - which last year proved the turning point for the show as audiences dropped.
