My Kitchen Rules has won another Sunday but Married At First Sight's first commitment ceremony helped it gain ground on its rival in a night that featured the Winter Olympics and the debut of an Underbelly biopic about Mark 'Chopper' Read.
It was the official start to this year's ratings season and Seven came out on top with a network share of 39.9% - the highest ever recorded on 'day one of the ratings calendar'. However, the start of the official ratings calendar becomes less and less relevant ever year the major networks ignore it in their major tent pole launches.
The top rating program last night was MKR, which drew a national audience of 1.72 million to Married's 1.58 million. Nine's tent pole edged out MKR in metro overnights by the slimmest of margins – 1.163 million vs 1.162 million.
Married won the ratings duel in Sydney and Melbourne, but MKR reigned supreme in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth, as well as country Australia.
In terms of advertising demos, Married At First Sight won all of the key age groups in metropolitan regions.
Its stronger catch-up TV audiences (between 124,000 to 170,000 for every episode so far) means it is likely gain more ground on MKR after 28 days of viewing.
The metro victory will provide Nine's programming chiefs with confidence the season could follow a similar trajectory to last year when MKR started stronger but Married ended on top.
The third reality tent pole of the evening – Ten's I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here – was well back in ratings with 892,000 national and 651,000 metro viewers for its elimination program.
Has the hype surrounding the 'Rumble in the Jungle' run out of steam or are viewers more interested in fights between newly 'married' couples and makeshift restaurants than two old pugilists on a jungle set?
Chopper outgunned
Nine's highly anticipated Underbelly series about Chopper posted overnight metropolitan ratings of 903,000.
Whilst solid, it was out-gunned by Seven's Day Two coverage of the Winter Olympics, which drew impressive metro ratings of 1.04 million, many of whom switched on to watch Aussie hopefuls Britt Cox and Jakara Anthony finish just outside of the medals in the women's mogul final.
The Pyeongchang Winter Olympics delivered strong metro ratings for Seven all weekend, including 938,000 for the impressive opening ceremony and 762,000 on Saturday night.
Nine's T20 between Australia and England drew a metro audience of 794,000.
Last week, MKR dominated every night it ran with ratings of between 1.104 million and 1.196 million in metro total people.
Seven also won all key demographics in prime time viewing and it will be interesting to see how the other networks will respond given the promising start to its Winter Olympics coverage.
Check out the icon below for some highlights.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.