This season's launch of Seven's My Kitchen Rules (MKR) has blown away its rivals with more than half a million average viewers than Ten's I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and Nine's reboot of Australia's Got Talent.
In the prime 7.30pm-8.30pm timeslot, MKR attracted an average metro audience of 1.58 million to I'm A Celeb's 927,000 and Nine's Australia's Got Talent's 785,000.
It is the worst performing launch of Australia's Got Talent in its history, well below the previous low of 1.08 million in 2013 - the year the show was shelved before last night's reboot. Nine's Farmer Wants A Wife fared even worse, with an average metro audience of 763,000, another record low for the show.
Home and Away's 1.01 million was the second best performing show outside of the news of a jam-packed evening.
This helped Seven comfortably win the night with 30.8% of viewers, followed by Nine (24.9%) and Ten (20.3%).
The ABC had a 19.3% share with the return of news and current affair staples Australian Story (808,000 metro), Four Corners (792,000) and a special Australian of the Year version of Q&A (561,000).
In last night's episode of MKR, watched by an average 2.16 million people around the country, it was the turn of Sydney cops Monique and Sarah to have guests over with highlights including self-confessed cougar Cheryl and glamorous Melbourne lawyer Zana getting under the skin of contestants with snippy comments.
MKR tells AdNews it has secured a raft of sponsors for this year's season, led again by Coles.
“We have had fantastic sponsorship take up for MKR 2016 with Coles, Fonterra, Reckitt Benckiser, Nandos, CBA, Swisse and Delonghi all returning this year," says Lisa Squillace, Seven Sales Director- Sponsorships and Multi Channels.
"These client will also be joined by new partners Coke, Holden and Sage Institute. This demonstrates very strong support for a show which has continued to deliver year after year for our partners."
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