Married At First Sight has posted its largest metro audience of the series to win across all demos on Sunday night and lift its series average above one million viewers.
The show has also smashed records as the highest rating show on catch-up since OzTAM VPM ratings records began.
Nine's revamped social experiment drew an average five city audience of 1.17 million viewers, followed by My Kitchen Rules (1.06 million) Nine and Seven news and the ABC's crime drama Vera (828,000). Ten's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here elimination show posted 782,000 viewers.
Married At First Sight's series average of 1.08 million viewers per episode is now less than 100,000 viewers fewer than My Kitchen Rules 1.17 million, which is down 25% from 1.56 million in 2016.
Married at First Sight didn't just win total people, it posted huge wins across key advertising demos - 16-39s (Married 387,000 vs MKR 269,000); 18-49s (Married 590,000 vs MKR 403,000) and 25-54s (Married 634,000 vs MKR 463,000).
It's also dominating catch-up, with episodes averaging between 100,000 to 160,000, accounting for the top 10 VPM ratings in February (see below). The ABC's Newton's Law (84,000) and Home and Away (81,000) are the next best rating shows on catch-up.
Week Nine ratings wrap-up
Married helped Nine win key demos across the nights it ran last week (see main channel by day chart, below). Seven still dominates total people while Ten continues to profit across demos on Thursday night when reality rivals aren't running.
In prime time, Seven had the largest audience share of total people with 39.6% to Nine's 36.9% and Ten's 23.5%. However, Nine won the demos - 16-39s (Nine 39.4% vs Seven's 34.4%); 25-54s (Nine 38% vs Seven's 35.7%) and grocery buyers (38.2% vs 34.9%).
Since the ratings year began in early February, Seven and Nine have split weekly audience wins across demos (see year to date main channel performance chart).
This sets up the ratings year nicely for a much closer battle than in 2016.
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