Nine’s Married at First Sight finale was the second-most watched TV program this year after the Australian Open men's final and last Wednesday's My Kitchen Rules.
It attracted an average of 1.39 million metropolitan viewers and 1.99 million nationally, well above Seven's My Kitchen Rules, which had 1.21 million metro and 1.82 million national viewers.
The show peaked at 2.4 million, and won all key advertising demographics.
The Married At First Sight finale is the second night in a row Nine's tent pole pulled in an audience of above 1.3 million, and well above the 1.1 million viewers that tune in to last year's finale.
The finale saw two couples, Eleni and Simon, and Sharon and Nick, chose to stay together and give 'marriage' a shot, even though the couples were not legally married during the show under Australian law.
Ten’s two episodes of Modern Family, which replaced its weight loss flop Biggest Loser: Transformed during the 7.30pm prime time slot, attracted 338,000 and 305,000 viewers respectively.
Also on the night, Seven's Home And Away had 820,000 viewers and the ABC’s outstanding biopic series Australian Story, which last night featured the Leyland Brothers, attracted 716,000 viewers
Married At First Sight help Nine's main channel record the largest audience share of 29.9%, edging out Seven with 23.9%, the ABC (14.5%) and Ten (9.9%).
On Twitter, there has been a 160% growth in people tweeting about Married at First Sight in season four compared to season two. There were more tweets about this season than the last two combined, making it the most talked about season yet.
In a blog post, Nine’s program director Hamish Turner said he is confident Nine will continue its ratings success post-Easter.
“I don’t think you can overestimate what Married at First Sight has done for our schedule, particularly against I’m a Celebrity and My Kitchen Rules,” Turner said.
“Married at First Sight has delivered across all the key demographics: 25-54s, 16-39s and grocery buyers with kids. And it has delivered across all of our platforms.
“In fact on every single metric it has over-delivered.”
Turner cited the success of Married at First Sight across both television and digital as the reason for his confidence in Nine’s schedule after Easter.
“Married has been a really strong demo play,” he said. “But the biggest thing for us has been the cross-platform play that the show has delivered," he said.
"It has delivered on linear TV, it has delivered on our digital platforms, such as 9Honey, and on catch-up services such as 9Now, with the VPM numbers being around 150,000. So the net is an audience around 1.5 million for each episode.”
In fact, Married At First Sight has re-written OzTam's VPM record books with huge numbers setting up Nine on linear TV and breaking new ground in the rapidly growing AVOD space.
Nine will hope viewers love affair across both platforms is more than just a fling.
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