It's a long way short of the three million viewers that tuned in to watch the first season's final episode, but The Block finale still managed to top the ratings on Wednesday night.
Nine's renovation show was the most watched show of the night with a peak audience of 1.7 million in its last half-hour when winners, John and Neisha Pitt, were announced.
The first 70 minutes of the program also managed a respectable 1.3 million viewers and an overall spot of third most watched show of the night, narrowly beaten by Seven News with 1.35 million.
However, at the height of its success in 2003 the first series of The Block managed to pull in a record-breaking 3.1 million viewers for its finale.
Co-creator and executive producer Julian Cress says it is a record that still stands and is unlikely to be beaten as the nation gets a steadily increasing number of free-to-air channels, not to mention readily available internet television and a growing number of pay TV subscribers.
"Since 2003 the media really has changed, there's so many different options for TV," he said.
"As big of an audience as the first season got is just not possible anymore."
The Block couples kept any money made on their apartment above the reserve price, with the highest auction price also netting the renovators an extra $100,000. The Pitts were the overall winners, walking away with $305,000.
Chez Gravina and Brenton Courts' apartment was passed in at the auction after falling $15,000 short of the reserve price, but Cress says he's confident the property will sell for at least that amount in coming weeks.
"I'd be very surprised if it stayed on the market for very long," he says.
A fourth season of the show has already been announced with Cress looking for "enthusiastic, energetic, determined and competitive" people to sign up for the next instalment.
While Nine celebrated the success of The Block, the network's new talk show hosted by former cricketerShane Warne and aptly called Warnie debuted with a modest 854,000 viewers.
The show was the 12th most watched program of the evening and was sandwiched between the final two season episodes of Seven's City Homicide which managed 887,000 and 779,000 respectively.
The police show will return to Australian television screens next year but will change to a mini-series format.
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