Nine's Married at First Sight has come within a whisker of beating Seven's My Kitchen Rules but has secured ratings wins in all of the key demos on Sunday night.
Last night, Married At First Sight couples revealed whether they'd like to leave each other or stay with mixed results, but increasingly viewers have been chosing to stick with a show that has gradually grown in audience over the past two weeks while MKR's ratings ebb and flow at levels below last season.
Only 11,000 metropolitan viewers split the two programs, with MKR watched by 1.075 million compared to Married At First Sight's 1.064 million.
In terms of demos, Married At First Sight won 16-39s (303,000 vs MKR's 274,000), 18-49s (500,000 vs 432,000) and 25-54s (541,000 vs 505,000), according to OzTam's five city metropolitan figures.
The result will please Nine executives, who have always coveted the 16-39s and 25-54 metropolitan demos, but few would have predicted Married At First sight would be this close to Seven's juggernaut, which enjoyed a resurgence last week.
Seven also launched its Paul Hogan biopic Hoges, which posted 837,000 viewers, while Nine's 60 Minutes special interview with Joanne Lees drew a strong audience of 893,000.
Ten's I'm A Celebrity... Get Me out Of Here attracted 696,000 for the normal Sunday show and 720,000 for the elimination.
Seven's primary channel won the night with a 24.5% audience share to Nine's 21.7% and Ten's 14.6%.
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