After all the hype about Seven’s new challenge to rival cooking show MasterChef, the results are in…and the verdict is not pretty for the network.

After a summer of heavy promotion of the new show My Kitchen Rules, which included full banner advertisements n national newspapers, and regular commercial plugging on their network, the show only barely received a pass mark with mediocre ratings on its premiere.

The new cooking show which pits cooking teams from each state against each other in a competition based style drew in only 1.1 million viewers to be the ninth most watched programme for the evening.

In comparison, Ten’s MasterChef first episode attracted 1.4 million viewers, and had a daily show average of around 1.5 million. The finale drew a remarkable 3.29 viewers to cement its spot as 2009’s most successful show.

On the night, the most watched show was a new episode of Two and a Half Men on Channel Nine, which boasted 1.5 million sets of eyes.

While the results are not as impressive as executive producers would have liked, the bottom line is it still passed the million-viewer line, which has been regarded as the pass mark for all television programmes in a prime time slot.

With a decent start, My Kitchen Rules should expect to improve from here if it is to be a legitimate threat to the MasterChef franchise.

My Kitchen Rules returns to our small screens next Monday for its second episode.

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