Nine’s romance gamble backfired spectacularly as viewers chose cooking over dating. The numbers reveal a brutal reality.

Australian TV viewers overwhelmingly chose Seven’s My Kitchen Rules over Nine’s The Golden Bachelor as the two program finales went head to head on Sunday night.

Proving Aussies find red wine and rosemary braised short rib with a Dubai chocolate eclair chaser more tantalising than middle aged people playing tonsil hockey in the South African sun, Seven romped home with a national audience of 971,000 tuning in to see Cronulla dads Justin and Will take home the $100,000 prize money on MKR.

By comparison, a national audience of 649,000 tuned in to see Barry “Bear” Myrden open his heart “after all these years” to 58-year-old Korean-Australian IT executive Sunny – a result that showed 50 per cent more viewers tuned in to Seven’s MKR than to Nine’s Golden Bachelor.

Bear and Sunny’s romance finale attracted just 649,000 viewers nationally as Nine’s dating experiment flopped against Seven’s MKR juggernaut. Picture: Nine
In the nation’s five capital cities, the figure was 646,000 to 493,000 for the programs both broadcast in the 7pm timeslot.

The average total audience was 1.17 million to Nine’s 836,000.

Beef topples Bear as MKR wins the night
At home, audiences were evidently as reluctant to commit to “Bear” and Nine’s Samantha Armytage-hosted dating franchise as was circumspect 61-year-old pilates studio manager Janette, the program’s runner-up.

In the program’s second half-hour, from 7.30pm to 8pm, the ABC threw down a serious challenge to The Golden Bachelor with Spicks and Specks attracting 606,000 nationally (five capital cities 406,000).

Ten’s Big Brother first elimination meanwhile was well behind with a national audience of 477,000 (five capital cities 341,000).