HD Ratings: MAFS Takes Passengers With It

It was happy-ever-after on Three on Sunday when the final of Married at First Sight NZ and the network movie premiere of Passengers helped it to win the night in all the core commercial demographics.

The clean sweep was bad news for the first Sunday instalment of TVNZ 2’s Australian Survivor, which couldn’t even beat the final of TVNZ 1’s flagging costume drama Vanity Fair.

However, MAFS NZ only won its slot with two of the four core commercial demographics.

It averaged 5.4% of Three’s 25-54 viewership and lost in the first half-hour to TVNZ 1’s Hyundai Country Calendar; similarly, TVNZ 2’s Shortland Street stole the lion’s share of household shoppers with kids from 7.00-7.30 but enough switched over to MAFS NZ for it to average 6.0% overall.

But viewers 18-49 opted for TVNZ 1’s Sunday (4.5% vs 3.8%) and those aged 18-39 preferred TVNZ 2’s My Kitchen Rules NZ (3.5% vs 2.2%).

In a press release, MediaWorks emphasised the importance of the 25-54 rating:

Season two of Married at First Sight NZ concluded last night with 135,108 viewers tuning in to the finale amongst 25-54s from 7.30pm-8.30pm. This wrapped up another successful season of the hit social experiment, with a total of 845,600 viewers in the commercially important 25-54 demographic tuning in throughout the season and averaging an incredible 24.0% audience share and 7.5 rating point. This week on ThreeNow, Married at First Sight NZ led the weekly top 10, with VOD up 18% year-on-year, and more impressively, live streams were up 85% year-on-year.

Meanwhile, MKR NZ dished up twice as many 18-49 viewers as lead-out Australian Survivor (3.9% vs 1.8%), which was crushed in all the key demos by Passengers.

After weeks of low ratings with female-skewed movies, Three rebounded with the sci-fi thriller averaging 5.8% of 25-54s, 4.6% of 18-49s, 3.7% of 18-39s and 8.0% of HHS/k.

Vanity Fair averaged a steady 2.8% of 25-54s.

Prime had a rare 25-54 win on Saturday when its Bledisloe Cup telecast averaged 4.4%; it also topped the 18-49 ratings, with 3.1%.

And TVNZ 1 had a better Friday when the time slot-winning X Factor UK boosted what hitherto had been a lacklustre run of All Round to Mrs Brown’s.

X Factor averaged 4.2% of 25-54s vs 3.3% for TVNZ 2’s Doctor Who and 3.5% for Three’s Graham Norton Show while lead-out 7 Days rated just two-tenths of a point higher than Brown (4.3% vs 4.1%).

There was a reversal of fortunes in the 18-49 and 18-39 demos, when Brown out-rated Days, but the latter was tops among HHS/k — as was Doctor Who, which fared better than Norton among 18-39s.

However, Who’s audience steeply declined over the hour, from 3.4% of 18-39 to 1.8%, from 4.7% of 25-54 to 2.4%, from 3.6% of 18-49 to 1.9%, and from 5.9% of HHS/k to 3.9%.

TVNZ 2 won Friday night in the 18-49, 18-39 and HHS/k demos while TVNZ 1 was the 25-54 favourite.