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Married at First Sight hits all-time high

Ratings: Nine's dinner party episode pulls the biggest single audience of the 2018 ratings season.

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Nine’s Married at First Sight broke through the 1.6m barrier last night, its best ever performance across 5 seasons.

All the dinner party drama, in which a new coupling was revealed, drew 1.62m viewers. That makes it the highest single show of the 2018 ratings season (beaten only by the Australian Open Men’s Final which is in summer non-ratings).

Needless to say it won every demo and every city, with Melbourne the highest audience at 537,000 viewers.

MKR had to settle for 970,000 viewers, still second overall and still with some firepower. 7:30 / The Checkout followed at 522,000 /442,000 respectively then Bondi Rescue on 307,000.

But at 9pm Nine saw a huge slice of the audience change channels, with many headed to The Good Doctor. At 893,000 it was up on last week’s 869,000. Only 417,000 remained for Nine’s Date Night -though it should be noted another 226,000 watched Talking Married on 9Life. Hughesy did have a problem this week against the competition, with 338,000 down on last week’s 403,000, third in its slot.

Nine News, ACA and The Chase all won their slots.

Nine network won Tuesday with 35.2% then Seven 31.1%, ABC and TEN both 13.7%, and SBS 6.2%.

Married at First Sight was #1 for Nine at 1.62m viewers followed by Nine News (950,000 / 943,000), A Current Affair (929,000), Hot Seat (518,000 / 320,000), Date Night (417,000) and Movie: Something Borrowed (177,000).

My Kitchen Rules (970,000) was best for Seven then Seven News (949,000 / 945,000), The Good Doctor (893,000), Home and Away (724,000), The Chase (548,000 / 352,000) and Grey’s Anatomy (306,000 / 137,000).

ABC News (711,000), 7:30 (522,000), The Checkout (442,000), The Human Body: Secrets of Your Life Revealed (315,000), Think Tank (218,000) and Hyper Evolution: Rise of the Robots (188,000) comprised ABC’s night.

The Project (479,000 / 298,000) was best for TEN followed by TEN Eyewitness News (415,000), Hughesy, We Have a Problem (338,000), Bondi Rescue (307,000) and Family Feud (273,000). NCIS: LA was 218,000.

On SBS it was Insight (215,000), Who Do You Think You Are? (185,000), Dateline (150,000) and SBS World News (135,000).

9Life’t Talking Married topped multichannels at 226,000.

Today Extra: 121,000 / 85,000
The Morning Show: 108,000 / 64,000
Studio 10: 67,000 / 55,000 / 48,000

OzTAM Overnights: Tuesday 20 March 2018

19 Responses

  1. I just don’t get it with AUS free to air – why they cannot just run a series at the same time, same channel, same date and be done with it. So the Good Dr is ‘Australias best loved programme’ so they stuff the viewers with the finale in a months time?? WTF – why not next Tuesday – same time – Comm Games doesn’t start til Apr 4th…. taking viewers for a ride!!

  3. It’s official. Australian TV viewers have sunk to all new low. When a dreadful reality show like MAFS can rate that high, you know there is something wrong in the country. Now we will see more copy cat ‘marriage/dating’ crap like this. I hope the people who were opposed to marriage equality are watching this trash and thinking about the ‘sanctity of marriage’.

  4. Honestly can we come out and say it… MAFS really is the absolute trashiest show out their.

    Well done for the ratings but Shine and Nine must know what absolute trash this is surely?

    1. bobk – trash like MAFS should not be rewarded with high ratings. I am appalled that this sort of rubbish is hugely popular. I haven’t watched a minute but the promos are bad enough.

  5. Agree about the episode of the good doctor last night. Its good now we have actual hospital storylines and not just focus on Sean’s background. Just wish they would get rid of the annoying neighbour and bring Leah back.

    But the finale is next week in the states and ch7 are holding it over until after the comm games. So annoying.

  6. What is it with married at first sight? Just how is it so addictive? I speak from experience, just reading a recap was enough to get me to stream it on 9now.

  7. Unbelievable audience for Married At First Sight, 537k in Melbourne alone.

    Nine should’ve won by a lot more though, only a few % difference is on par with most nights, though Nine did win its first Good Doctor night.

    It was due to Nine’s enormous plunge from 1.6m to 400k (loss of 1.2m!?!?!?!?).

  8. I watched MAFS last night for the first time in weeks, I thought it was the last episode so was curious as to how many had made it. I’m not a fan of the format, I find the dinner parties hard to watch as people are being set up to fail. To me it’s like watching a cricket match with 3 ‘commentators’ describing the play. For example, Davina grabs the ball and bowls to Ashley, its short and Ashley has plenty to say about it. Davina smells an opportunity here and comes in again, this time with a Yorker and she’s right on the stumps. Ashley plays all round it and she’s out of here! Davina looks very satisfied with her play today.

  9. Love all the people constantly saying The Project needs to be scrapped while it has been the networks highest rating program all week. Meanwhile, MKR is at all time lows and that doesn’t rate a mention from the armchair critics.

    1. It’s hard to throw shade at any program that continually approaches 1m viewers, which is seen as the gold standard in the current television landscape. MKR is very poor this year, as the focus on bitchiness rather than cooking has been taken to its outer limits. Still, it’s a solid workhorse for 7 and I’m sure they’ll be happy with the numbers.
      Remember, MasterChef had a season where they lost the way and focused too much on the judges and the overseas trips and ratings declined.
      The very next year, they pulled it in and determined that the cooking and personal development was what drew viewers, and they were right. Ratings turned around.

      MAFS wasn’t a huge hit initially, and if you were to reverse the ratings between it and MKR, you’d be close to the mark, for the first few years.

    2. I expressed dismay that it was being renewed for a 10th season?!? Prefer My restaurant rules anyway as it was more for the community than self indulgent as I view the MKR show

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