With the headline "We're Bach in business!", the Daily Mail reposted the story featuring 16 paparazzi images taken just hours before The Bachelorette finale aired. 

[Sam Frost and Sasha Mielczarek in a photo he posted Thursday night.]

Sam Frost and Sasha Mielczarek in a photo he posted Thursday night. Photo: Instagram

The network won a court injunction on Thursday night forcing the Daily Mail to take down its photos which served as a catastrophic spoiler to the end of the series. 

In a statement announcing it had dropped the injunction, Network Ten said the Daily Mail has been sanctioned by "the court of public opinion" following outrage from furious fans at the Mail's spoiler tactics. 

"Network Ten applauds the decision of the Supreme Court to grant the injunction last night," the statement said. 

"At Ten's initiative we have sought the injunction be discharged given that it has completely served its purpose. 

"The outstanding success of The Bachelorette Australia finale confirmed the action. The Supreme Court has appropriately sanctioned The Daily Mail,as has the court of public opinion."

The moment Frost chose Mielczarek as her man on Thursday attracted 1.520 million viewers.

The corresponding segment on The Bachelor drew 1.482 million viewers.

Even the build-up on the final episode was bigger, with 1.241 million tuning in compared to 1.228 million on The Bachelor, according to OzTAM's overnight ratings.

The Daily Mail had launched a counter-attack, challenging the injunction. It said it would defend itself against any claim for damages from Network Ten and would be seeking costs for Friday's court proceedings. 

If The Daily Mail thought they were being clever in spoiling Thursday night's finale of The Bachelorette, they were wrong.

Fans were furious after the website published intrusive paparazzo photos of Sam Frost cuddling the winner, Sasha Mielczarek. The pair were captured as they stood inside the window of their hotel room – a place in which they'd have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

The photos were published at the top of The Daily Mail's homepage, with no spoiler warning. The story was soon yanked after Channel Ten won a rare court injunction.

But the damage was done. Outraged fans declared on social media that the show had been ruined, and Frost told Kiis FM she was "absolutely gutted". (On Friday morning, the website said it would appeal the injunction.)

The question is: why on earth did The Daily Mail do it?

Why choose to spoil the ending of The Bachelorette for its fans? Would they dare send a paparazzo to the set of Game of Thrones, and then publish photos potentially revealing a major plot twist? Oh wait...

Light entertainment versus an acclaimed drama – it makes no difference. Both series have legions of fans who come along for the ride each week. Journalists get to see these and other programs in advance, so we can have our stories ready to go.

If we don't get a preview, some well-placed contacts will fill us in.

It seems churlish, though, just to spoil something because you can. (And it feels awful when system glitches or human error result in accidental spoilers, as journos from every Australian media company will attest.)   

For Ten, the stakes are much higher. The network's frantic court action was prompted by a very obvious motivator: money.  

The Bachelorette has been one of Ten's highest-rating shows this year. With its overt product placement, huge social media presence and strong ratings, it's a cash cow. All successful reality shows are.

Of course, this has no bearing on the stories journalists choose to write. But it does explain why the networks go to such extreme lengths to protect their shows.

Before I could preview The Bachelorette finale, I had to sign a contract allowing Ten to sell my organs on the black market, patent my DNA and keep my firstborn child if I ruined their show.

My Kitchen Rules – this country's top-rating program four years running – shoots two alternate endings to prevent spoilers. The producers tell one team they've won the entire series, dump a bag of glitter on them, give them a trophy, and film them whooping and crying and hugging. Then someone yells, "Cut!", and they sweep up the mess and repeat the whole thing with the other team.

The amazing thing is that neither team knows who won until they watch the episode go to air with the rest of the country.

Another reality show, whose fans are just as obsessive as The Bachelorette's, has a policy of not letting reporters on set. "We don't want you to know our secrets," the producer told me.

I've also observed packed auctions on The Block. There must have been at least a hundred people crammed into each apartment. Yet no one leaked the results because … well, why would you want to be the grown-up equivalent of that grade five boy who runs around telling the prep kids that Santa isn't real? Just because you can ruin the things other people find fun, it doesn't mean you must.

Given Ten's struggles over the past few years, their eagerness to protect a successful show is no surprise. The "winner announcement" segment of The Bachelorette finale drew 1.92 million viewers in the city and regional areas, with 1.55 million watching the rest of the episode. It's impossible to know if more people might have tuned in had The Daily Mail spoiler not run – and if so, how many.

As Ten and The Daily Mail duke it out, it's worth knowing the context.

The Daily Mail is a partner of Ten's rival, Nine. According to some sources, relations are often "strained" between Ten and the website.  

In particular, Ten has not been impressed by the Mail's photographers trailing its stars as they go about their chores.

Bondi Vet's Chris Brown, for instance, was snapped near the beach "trying to go incognito", as the accompanying story alleged. Studio 10's Sarah Harris was caught unawares while trying on her wedding dress in a boutique. And Offspring's Asher Keddie was put under surveillance while taking a break in Perth. The masthead ran photos of her having a cigarette with her husband, describing her as "makeup free" for some reason. She was standing in a park during this brazenly makeup-free outing – a park that looked peaceful in the photographs, but which the Mail called "desolate". For good measure, they added that her baby "was nowhere to be seen" – something media outlets tend not to notice when fathers leave the house without their babies. 

In the end, it all comes down money. Not just for Ten, but for the Mail, too. Intrusive photos are its stock-in-trade. Its readership has grown strongly since its UK parent company launched a local website. There is clearly a demand (among some people at least), for this stuff.

The Mail went to great lengths to get their photos of Sam and Sasha inside their hotel room, and they want them back.

If the fledgling masthead wants to spoil top-rating reality TV shows, it has every right to. (Provided it operates within the law, naturally.) But why stop at reality TV? Why not publish the plot twists of every critically-acclaimed drama without warning readers? Why not divulge the endings of new-release movies and novels?

Some of the commentary today has a whiff of "who cares, it's only reality TV?" about it. It'd be interesting to see how these commentators would react if you blabbed the climax of their subtitled Danish box-set crime series before they reached the last episode. People are allowed to enjoy their diversions, however light-hearted or pointless.

And it'll be interesting to see how The Daily Mail fares if they keep this up.

- Michael Lallo