Married At First Sight ended with a bang last night, hoovering up a record 2.4 million national viewers (to become the most watched program of the year so far). More than 1.75 million watched in metro markets, and 648,000 in regional areas.  This helped the ailing AFL Footy Show — 460,000 national viewers including 250,000 in Melbourne (up from 174,000 last week and 173,000 the week before). But the reliance on the Grande Finale of Married means last night’s boost is meaningless — still no doubt Nine and Eddie McGuire and his gang will take heart from it.

But another way of looking at the figures, especially in Melbourne, is that over half of the 550,000 viewers for Married deserted Nine before the AFL Footy Show. That is a big turn off for a heavily promoted program, especially with the AFL season starting tonight. Buried by this result was another bad night for Ten, fourth again behind the ABC (Seven was crushed by Nine).Ten’s main channel share was 7.3%. It’s total share of 11.3% was pipped by the ABC’s main channel share of 11.4%. That tells us how weak ten was last night.

In the regions  Married was tops with 648,000, followed by Seven News with 540,000, Seven news/Today Tonight was third with 513,000, A Current Affair was fourth with 476,000 and Home and Away was fifth of 441,000.

Network channel share:

  1. Nine (38.0%)
  2. Seven (28.8%)
  3. ABC (15.6%)
  4. Ten (11.3%)
  5. SBS (6.3%)

Network main channels:

  1. Nine (31.0%)
  2. Seven (20.0%)
  3. ABC (11.4%)
  4. Ten (7.4%)
  5. SBS ONE (4.2%)

Top 5 digital channels: 

  1. 7TWO (3.7%)
  2. 9Life (3.3%)
  3. 7mate (3.0%)
  4. ABC Kids/Comedy (2.3%)
  5. 7flix, ONE (2.0%)

Top 10 national programs:

  1. Married at First Sight (Nine) — 2.401 million
  2. Seven News  — 1.488 million
  3. MKR (Seven) — 1.450 million
  4. A Current Affair (Nine) — 1.259 million
  5. Seven News/Today Tonight — 1.427 million
  6. Nine/NBN News — 1.231 million
  7. Nine/NBN News — 1.208 million
  8. Home and Away (Seven) — 1.140 million
  9. 7pm ABC News — 093
  10. The Chase Australia 5.30pm (Seven) — 871,000

Top metro programs:

    1. Married at First Sight (Nine) — 1.753 million

Losers: Ten.

Metro news and current affairs:

  1. Seven News/Today Tonight — 951,000
  2. Seven News —949,000
  3. Nine News — 921,000
  4. Nine News (6.30pm) — 913,000
  5. A Current Affair (Nine) – 901,000
  6. 7pm ABC News – 757,000
  7. 7.30 (ABC) — 595,000
  8. The Project 7pm (Ten) — 442,000
  9. Ten Eyewitness News — 426,000
  10. The Project 6.30pm (Ten) — 266,000

Morning TV:

  1. Sunrise (Seven) – 445,000
  2. Today (Nine) – 390,000
  3. News Breakfast (ABC 162,000 + 79,000 on News 24) — 241,000
  4. The Morning Show (Seven) — 237,000
  5. Today Extra (Nine) — 176,000
  6. Studio 10 (Ten) — 108,000

Top five pay TV programs:

  1. Gogglebox Australia (LifeStyle) — 147,000
  2. Selling Houses Australia (LifeStyle) — 138,000
  3. Ugly House To Lovely House (LifeStyle) — 76,000
  4. AFL 360 (Fox Footy) — 64,000
  5. Paul Murray Live (Sky News) — 53,000