David Mott responds: “Our aim was simply to get viewers to sample The Renovators”
TEN's David Mott has responded to a wave of criticism about sandwiching The Renovators into the middle of MasterChef's finale.
- Published by David Knox
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TEN Chief Programmer David Mott has responded to a wave of network criticism over the last few days about sandwiching The Renovators into the middle of MasterChef‘s finale.
He reminds us TEN launched Masterchef in 2009 as an adjunct to the Biggest Loser season ending.
“It’s a tried and true technique that has served us well in the past,” he tells media and marketing website Mumbrella.
“In fact, the last time TEN split a finale night was when we launched a brand new and unknown little format called MasterChef Australia off the back of the 2009 Biggest Loser finale.”
Not quite. In 2009 TEN didn’t have Ajay Rochester weigh in the first three contestants then tell us to come back for the next batch an hour later. The finale itself ran as a stand alone programme on a Monday night:
7:00pm The Biggest Loser
7:30pm MasterChef Australia
8:30pm The Biggest Loser Finale
10:00pm The Biggest Loser – Winner Announced
So it actually preceded the finale leaving the analogy, alas, somewhat creative.
It would be interesting to know what kind of numbers TEN might have yielded had it run:
6:30pm MasterChef Australia finale
8:00pm MasterChef The Winner Announced
8:30pm The Renovators
In fairness it would have run up against The Block but an earlier ending may have also yielded a higher finale number and a better lead-in for Renovators. We’ll never know (and aren’t we all Proramming geniuses in hindsight?).
In defending the ratings for MasterChef‘s finale, Mott says they expected a drop due to the record-breaking 2010 numbers:
“MasterChef differs because of the dizzying heights it reached during its second phenomenal season. This is after all the show that broke OzTAM records. But a realistic scrutiny of the numbers will tell you that an audience of more than 4 million viewers is a once in a life-time result that just can’t be repeated year after year.
“In this multi-channel environment, audiences in excess of 2 million viewers are the exception and not the rule.”
This is a fair point. 2010 was one out of the box, and before increased multichannel competition. He also acknowledges Australia’s Got Talent‘s stellar season. But the numbers across the season also reflected some viewer disappointment in this year’s MasterChef.
“What seems to have been lost in all the debate around finale numbers is the consistency of this show over three seasons. For programmers and advertisers the real value lies in a format that performs solidly day-in and day-out across 14 weeks of prime-time. In this regard, MasterChef really is the stand out show of the last three years,” he writes.
“In fact, this year, the regular daily shows have outperformed season one, delivering an average audience of 1.64 million viewers, up from 1.53 million viewers in the highly successful premiere season of 2009.”
MasterChef is indeed the standout success of the last 3 years. Other networks would give their right arm to have come up with it first. David Mott took a punt on a Big Brother replacement when many observers thought he had lost the plot. Risk is integral to the advancement of television. But so is viewer loyalty as Sunday night amply demonstrated.
Many viewers forget that MasterChef’s first year started sluggishly, not helped by a week of “auditions,” before viewers swarmed to their ovens. This year’s average is therefore higher than 2009, but lower than 2010.
Lastly, he defends the move to sandwich Renovators as a way of driving more viewers to the new series.
“Our aim was simply to get viewers to sample The Renovators. And that’s exactly what they did to the tune of 1.25 million viewers. That’s invaluable exposure for a format that we hope will have both success and longevity.”
Whether it was a short-term gain against long-term anger at Renovators remains to be seen.
So far the show seems to be dividing viewers against those who prefer its production over The Block (and its numbers don’t come close to the latter) to those are so turned-off by the move that they are choosing to ignore it in protest.
In this sense, TEN can only hope that the show will do exactly what MasterChef did in 2009 and find some audience traction.
You can read the full response by David Mott at Mumbrella.
42 Responses
@ Bazza – what show of yours was cancelled? There has been some switching this week but I do not recall any cancelling?
@theGyng, yeah, there have been a number of turkeys so far this year. Not a stellar year for our programmers.
Shine have a lot of work to do to revitalise MC for season four. I agree with cutting down the number of nights it is on – six is too many, the investment of emotion and time is too much. Less shock-and-awe challenges and more good cooking is needed.
As for The Renovators, there is no doubt it is tanking – for the investment Ten has made in it, the numbers are awful. Unless it picks up momentum fast, I doubt whether there will be a season two.
A few observations – casting is pretty good. Great demographic mix across a number of age groups. Quite interesting personalities and very good skill levels. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we do not see enough of them renovating. Is it not called “The Renovators”. So why the bleep aren’t they renovating those six houses. Enough with the challenges, let’s see them renovating, that is what they audience will identify with, not how well they style a mock dining room. The judges are really nice people, so good choices there. Not at all keen on the host. He makes Sarah Wilson look highly animated. His delivery is painful.
Obviously the great unwashed could care less about The Renovators. No matter how much you want people to “sample” a shit sandwich, one taste is more than enough.
Do programmers ever get sacked?
And – how many turkeys have we seen this year? A lot IMO. More than any other year?
FTA tv is dying a death by a thousand cuts.
We keep hearing how the rise of multichannel free to air is cutting prime time numbers. But I would be interested to see how many people were actually watching channels which weren’t around during last year’s Masterchef, during Sunday night’s finale. I doubt it would be 1.4m – which is the number of viewers lost since last year, and I doubt even if it were 1.4m that those viewers would have all been watching Masterchef if the multichannels weren’t available. It’s such a cop-out excuse.
I’ve got a feeling that because it goes to Shine next season Fremantle didn’t really play their A game with this one.
Bring back Big Brother!
Im sick of these boring cooking and building shows..All the other countries still run Big Brother why do we have to be so daft here in Australia.
Lets watch people cook and build for 3 months.. no drama.. no excitement..no character development..no getting attached to housemates.. yeah great
Is the Renovators a modern day equivalent of the Titanic?
The bigest, best, smartest etc……you can rearrange the deck chairs but it is still gonna sink
The remote control is much more powerful than any programmer.
Ya wanna mess us viewers around….zap….your strategy is trashed.
@ tellie. I did think that the chs had to ensure EPG was accurate
re actual start times of shows
Have to agree that is just getting stranger and stranger. Once the Channels played with 1 to at most 5 mins, re ?-30 and ?-00 show-starts. Now it is getting to be between 10 to 15 mins they are playing with, to the point of now making it official, ?-10 and ?-40 advertised.
Isn’t there any ‘body’ that oversees such things, and can drag them all back into line again, and all go back to the traditon -30 and -00 starts. It has become all very childish.
@David Knox, @Guy – fair enough – it is a matter of opinion. I’m really not a reality girl, but I do think Dinner Date is a well made version of what it is while Renovators is a painful, overcomplicated, pale imitation of much better shows like Masterchef.
I don’t watch either show but MC may be best rested to ensure it’s long term viability. On another note there is bugger all stability in programming times across the commercial networks these days.
@jmgirl
Dinner Dates premiere was utter trash and rubbish while at least the first episode of The Renovators was half decent. After that episode its been on freefall and now i thik the show is a train wreck but comparing both premieres David got it spot on.
And (from my last comment)7 are generally ok with these stupid moves.
He can’t use the bigest losser as a example as that was the last daily show then masterchef then tbl final , while what he did here is split the masterchef final in two and make not only watch the renovators he also made us watch the that review of what happen an hour ago.
Now I’m not a fan Of masterchef but I wonder why the networks are making stupid programing moves like this. only abc and sbs not make any of these stupid moves .
I feel for David Mott. Very good programmer who IMO is being directed to from above.
Meantime, can I note that this site gave ‘Renovators’ (on any view, not v good and, it now turns out, not a success either) four stars while damning ‘Dinner Date’ (which, even without a monster AGT finale lead-in, absolutely owned its 9.30 slot last night, and its key demos, and is clearly quite a good, fun show) with a mere 2.5 stars?
Cld we possibly have a little ‘I got this one wrong’?, @tvtonight?
God no. Renovators premiere was well made. Dinner Date traded off Manu and he was barely in it. I don’t write Reviews based on ratings results. But you’re allowed to disagree. My opinon and your opinion are both valid, but that’s all Reviews are offered as….