MAFS hits 1.96m in record ratings finale

Josh McDonnell
By Josh McDonnell | 9 April 2019
 
MAFS contestants Jules and Cam

Nine's Married at First Sight has beaten its own ratings records, with the final episode of the reality show's sixth season reaching 1.96 million metro viewers.

The show generated a further 643,000 in regional Australia, taking its total national overnight viewership to 2.61m.

The show, which dubs itself a "social experiment" wrapped last night, following a breakout season in 2018, exceeding expectation and becoming Nine's 'ratings behemoth' over the past two months.

Last night's episode saw all the couples from the experiment return to "face the music" as each contestant was shown all the behaviour that went on throughout the season.

Despite the continually high ratings, the show just slightly built upon the results of last year's finale ratings, drawing in only 68,000 more viewers.

MAFS has also stamped out its place as one of the best performing broadcast video (BVOD) on-demand programs, with video player measurement (VPM) scores of over 400,000 on multiple episodes.

The show has been a major drawcard for Nine's BVOD platform 9Now, which has seen live viewing go up by triple-digit percentages over the course of the season, while catch-up viewing of the show is up double what it did last year.

The finale has already beaten nine of the top 20 most viewed programs from 2018, including game three of the State of Origin and the Melbourne Cup.

Season six has been a massive ratings win for Nine, consistently hitting the 1m and 1.5m viewer marks, at times even going past 1.8m.

The show has proved to be a success that has also seriously impacted the other major network's tentpole programmes and audience shares.

Seven's My Kitchen Rules has been continually eclipsed by the MAFS craze, struggling to get out of six-digit viewing figures, while other major networks Ten has often found itself dealing with a single percentage main channel overnight audience share.

Last night's episode of MKR was the closest commercial primetime program behind MAFS, with 710,000 viewers.

Overnight both Seven and Ten's main channels felt the final sting of MAFS' success, with Nine taking a 32% main channel audience share. Seven trailed next with 18.9%, while Ten again sunk below double digits, managing only 8.7%. By comparison, the ABC outperformed Ten, reaching a 13.1% main channel share.

The show started the season on a high, cracking one million viewers in its first episode back and securing Nine's first key entertainment program ratings win of the year, a trend that would continue throughout the season.

AdNews conducted an analysis of the show halfway through this season to highlight how the show had been tracking when compared to 2018.

 

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