‘Married At First Sight’ gets huge 6-season renewal on Lifetime

EXCLUSIVE: In one of the largest orders ever, Lifetime has picked up six new seasons — Seasons 12-17 —  of its flagship reality series “Married at First Sight.”

Additionally, Lifetime has greenlighted a new spinoff series, “Married at First Sight: Unmatchables” with an eight-episode order and has given a blind commitment to another series from the “Married at First Sight” franchise producer, Kinetic Content. Along with the recent pickup of 16 additional episodes from new offshoot “Married at First Sight: Couples Cam,” this brings the total order to Kinetic Content to almost 400 hours. Lifetime is expected to make an announcement during its portion of the summer press tour this morning.

The massive renewal follows a two-season pickup (Seasons 10, 11) “Married at First Sight” received last year, which included the series undergoing a supersizing with more couples and longer episodes.

It also comes as “Married at First Sight”‘s eleventh season, which launched July 15, is delivering strong ratings. Through three weeks, the series is averaging 1.7 million total viewers in Live+3, with its audience growing each week. Currently, Season 11 is performing +12% above comparable Season 9 to-date from last summer and is even with season 10 to-date from the winter.

“Married At First Sight,” in which couples meet for the first time at the alter, has ranked as Lifetime’s top series for the past three years. (The series started off on A+E Networks’ FYI before getting a simulcast on A&E and ultimately moving to Lifetime.) “Married At First Sight,” based on a Danish format, also helped Lifetime successfully launch another relationship reality series, “Marrying Millions,” and establish two nights of relationship reality programming with “Married at First Sight” and “Marrying Millions” on Wednesday, and “Married at First Sight: Couples Cam” and “Married at First Sight: Australia” (the Australian version of the format) on Thursdays. The four shows will soon be joined by “Married at First Sight: Unmatchables,” further expanding the “Married at First Sight” universe.

Over the years, some 65,000 people have applied to participate in “Married at First Sight.” Some of those who have been hard to match by the experts and never made it to the show are getting a second chance in “Married at First Sight: Unmatchables,” which aims to help polish up the diamonds in the rough, providing them with strong relationship advice and a lifestyle overhaul to give them an opportunity to shed what’s been stalling real romantic connections in their lives. In each self-contained episode, Pastor Calvin Robertson and Dr. Viviana Coles will mentor two unlucky-in-love singles who simply couldn’t be matched previously and follow as they go through their physical and personal transformations, as they are set up on a date to see if love is in the air and if they have truly found their match.

“’Married at First Sight: Unmatchables’ is an exciting new member of our ‘Married at First Sight’ family,” said Gena McCarthy, EVP Development and Programming Lifetime Unscripted. “Each season we see so many amazing, complex and charming people that apply for the main show, but we simply can’t match everyone. ‘Unmatchables’ allows these people a shot at love following our expert- led interventions and transformations.”

“Married at First Sight: Unmatchables” is executive produced by Chris Coelen, Eric Detwiler and Ally Simpson from Kinetic Content, along with McCarthy and Cat Rodriguez for Lifetime.

“Married at First Sight” Season 11, set in New Orleans, is currently airing on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. and will be joined this week by “Marrying Millions,” which returns Aug. 5 at 10 p.m. New episodes of Lifetime’s breakout hit “Married at First Sight: Couples Cam” are airing Thursdays. The self-shot series features fan-favorite couples: Doug and Jamie (S1), Ashley and Anthony (S5), Shawniece and Jephte (S6), Danielle and Bobby (S8), Stephanie and AJ (S8), Kristine and Keith (S8), Beth and Jamie (S9), Greg and Deonna (S9) and Jessica and Austin (S10). Couples from season 11 will join the series in 2021.

Kinetic Content, a Red Arrow Studios company, is behind Lifetime’s top 3 unscripted series for 2019 in A25-54 and W25-54: “Married at First Sight,” “Little Women Atlanta” and “Little Women LA.” It also produces Netflix’s breakout hit “Love Is Blind,” which just landed two Emmy nominations, including one for Structured Reality Program.

“Married At First Sight” and “Married at First Sight: Couples Cam” are produced by Kinetic Content. Executive producers on both series are Kinetic’s Coelen, Detwiler and Simpson and Lifetime’s McCarthy. “Married at First Sight” is also executive produced by Jason Sands and Toni Gallagher while Geoff Nuanes is also executive producer for “Married at First Sight: Couples Cam.”

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