Nine’s Married at First Sight premiere claims reality TV win over MKR
Nine’s Married at First Sight was the winner of the reality TV battle on Monday night with a premiere audience of 1.003m at 7:30pm, up on last year’s 912,000 viewers.
The show out-did the premiere of Seven’s My Kitchen Rules’ 10th season, which pulled a metro audience of 816,000 from 7pm. Last year, My Kitchen Rules captured 1.182m metro viewers for its first episode – a 366,000 year on year decline in audience. The result marks the first time Married at First Sight has beaten MKR on a launch episode.
Married at First Sight was up on last year’s launch episode, which pulled 912,000 metro viewers
Nationally, Married at First Sight grew to a combined audience of 1.321m, while My Kitchen Rules swelled to 1.216m. Married also topped the key advertising demographics – 16-39, 18-49 and 25-54 – while MKR came in second.
Both shows were ahead of Ten’s I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, which averaged 676,000 metro viewers on Monday night, and a national audience of 944,000. I’m A Celebrity premiered two weeks ago with an audience of 1.098m, making it the highest premiere for a reality show this year.
Michael Stephenson, chief sales officer at Nine, said he was heartened to see growth in the show’s launch audience.
“We know the audience, across television and especially in BVOD on 9Now, will only build from here as Australia’s biggest reality program takes hold of the national water-cooler conversation,” Stephenson said.
“This only underlines the reasons why Nine chose to make the switch to tennis and the amazing launch vehicle it is for our first quarter programming.”
However Seven prevailed in the later time slot, with US drama The Good Doctor managing a metro audience of 621,000. The show ran from 9pm up against Ten’s Murphy Brown and Nine’s film Fifty Shades Darker, which ran from 9:20pm. Murphy Brown averaged 318,000 metro viewers, while Fifty Shaders Darker attracted 314,000.
Seven also took the lead in news, with a metro audience of 1.024m for its 6pm bulletin. Nine News at 6pm achieved 931,000. The success of Seven News is largely attributed to its performance in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
From 9pm on 7mate, the Big Bash match between the Perth Scorchers and the Melbourne Renegades averaged 243,00 and 194,000 for the two sessions respectively.
Overall, Nine nabbed the Monday evening win, with a 22.4% share. Seven came in second on 21.6%, while the other broadcasters failed to grab a 15% share. Ten finished slightly ahead of the ABC on shares of 11.6% and 11.3% respectively, while SBS averaged just 2.8%.
From a network perspective, Seven scraped ahead on a 33.6% share helped by a 5.8% share on 7mate. It beat Nine Network’s 30.1%, ABC Network’s 14.9%, Network Ten’s 16.8% and SBS Network’s 4.6%.
