Masterchef: Homophobic? No. Racist? No. Ageist? Maybe

What’s to say a “geniune slice of Australia” applied to the show in the first place?

Surely younger people are more likely to apply to be on a reality television show that would involve them moving from home to live in a shared house with other contestants, leaving their jobs and living away from their families for months?

Nice piece Tony, thanks for a good read.

A woolly, confusing and pointless article — what exactly is the point here?

And some strange statements:

“… predictably the token oldies were quickly eliminated.”

Maybe there aren’t so many older people involved because it’s a little harder to put your career on hold at that stage in life? And you’ve probably found a career that suits you, along with a mortgage?

“This time round Australia’s TV consumers have voted for …”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that the judges did the voting rather than the Australian public? I guess it’s possible that the makers of the show are trying to second-guess consumers’ likes and dislikes, that’s all. But that’s what television is, isn’t it?

4/10.

Thank you for your insights into the Fairfax app and Masterchef phenomena today – unfortunately, that’s all I can stomach with your client’s distracting advertisement – a woman’s bent-forward backside in virginal underpants (so incongruous in the “ready for doggy-style sex” context) intermittently swelling and shrinking beside the principal text column. Turn it off and I’ll come back.

I came home and watched a recording of the Melbourne v Sydney game I had just been at. Now that’s good television.

Could it also be that people over 40 are less likely to want to give up their lives for 4 months to move into a share house and bare all on TV? When you’re in your 40s, 50s etc.. you’ve got an established career with decent money, a family, more responsibilities. There wouldn’t be many who would want to swap all that for a chef apprenticeship wage (which is all most of the MasterChef wannabes could hope for). That’s not to say people in their 40s or 50s shouldn’t do it if that’s what they want, but I bet there were more people applying for MasterChef in their twenties than in their forties.

How old was Julie last year’s winner? Close to 40 if not over it? She may be “mumsy” but your point is on age right and she won…

ps – agree with “jbb”. I’m reading this at work – don’t want a female butt flashing on my screen!

Well I do and don’t agree with some of Tony’s posted comments about the show.

Masterchef has become a ratings bulldozer espechally when up against a couple of staid boring politicians who in all honesty very few people really give a stuff about.
Unlike other “reality TV shows” this is friendly television not some imported American ideal of how everyone has to be competitive, back stabbing trolls.

That in itself is a winning thing just being friendly. We live in a friendly society built around a collective known as a neighbourhood. The idea of being selfish is quite alien to most of us, we are plesant people as a whole. Most of us live in places where we know who our neighbours are. Masterchef became an extension of our neighbourhood.

MC1 knocked our socks off but one year on Po most definately was the go-getter who has really won while frumpy Julie faded away as her only idea fizzled out.
But then again Po is not stuck on the central coast with a family to keep under control so she can most certainly be a lot more managable as a product.

The coming months will be interesting to see how Adam & Callum navigate through all the media attention sliding back in to a normal life in to a very hard industry to crack.

Can you please frequency capp that bum ad? It’s annoying me too.

“Isn’t it great that in one of the most ethnically diverse countries in the world, we can see on commercial TV, a few people whose name isn’t Smith or Johnson.”
Amen Mr Richardson.
Australian programming (including most ads) doesn”t come close to reflecting our experienced reality or our future. Programmers and agencies are undiverse, so unsurprisingly their work is too (for the most part). But it’s great to see this changing (at least on the programming side).
Masterchef is a breath of fresh air. Wthout tokenism or being patronisingly “inclusive”, its diversity feels real and natural (because it is).
While Vuvuzela Gillard and the Blinking Budgie Smuggler make me feel like I’m living in the 1950s, Masterchef (truly) makes me feel happy to be living here.

There are ads on the Internet? Who knew? Certainly no one using firefox with adblock. I could never go back to an Internet crawling with bad ads.

Until you remove that bum, i too am not reading at the moment….it is soo annoying and makes me cringe while i am eating my chocolate!! as for mas terchef, must have missed all that…I found it all too contrived… great posts thanks:)

As good as Tony’s last efforts on the rules of gurilla marketing. Just boring, and if I had read it properly probably wrong.

Tim does tactical TV advertise on Mumbrella?

@Her,

That’s pretty harsh. I wonder if you’d express those opinions in person? I generally consider that it’s poor form to say things/behave online in a manner that I wouldn’t otherwise do in the flesh (like people who leave a restaurant having not complained – and therefore given the opportunity for their problem to be addressed – and then absolutely trash it to all and sundry on review sites/social media when they get home).

Same goes for @Chris (No.3).

And no, I have no connection with the guy.

A great read, Tony. Loved your descriptions of the contestants–how I would have described them myself if I was, well, a more amusing writer! What else could we expect from Ten, though, in terms of ageism. It does have a young demographic, when all’s said and done. The annual crop of Big Brother contestants used to reflect this, so did Idol (perhaps to a lesser extent). Was seen very clearly when the crossovers with international Big Brother houses in England especially were shown.

And, Tim, the Big Bum ad is a really good example of bad advertising: I don’t look at it longer than an nanosecond before I click somewhere (anywhere!) else to get away from it. So it’s not doing its job because I don’t know what it’s for–I just know it’s abuminable (sorry. couldn’t help myself).

@mick learn to spell. Or at least use spellcheck.

@mumbrella The bum ad may be getting click throughs – but I doubt the ad is working. I kept seeing it next to all the news items (and yes, as it gets larger is it quite distracting) so curiosity got the best of me and I clicked through. However, the intro pages took so long to load that that I closed it, still not having a clue what they do.

I clicked through on the bum ad too, just because it was so freaking horrible. The page that eventually came up didn’t satisfy any curiousity. The clickthroughs may be great, but I’ve read less than half the posts I normally would since it’s been up.

Agree with the others – that ad on the side is unbelievably irritating.

An article about advertising made unreadable by an ad about something that is not immediately apparent. Haemorrhoid cream? Underpants?

For what it’s worth, I think the ad is flabulous (yes, following in Sharon’s footsteps, can’t help it!). I definitely clicked through, although couldn’t exactly work out what these guys do, and also couldn’t find any contact info.

I was trying to work out if there is any correlation between Lunch Partners and Naked, as Naked’s activation arm in the U.K. is called Lunch. Something tells me though that Naked aren’t looking to expand their business at this point in time!

Haha I just kept running the mouse over her backside to see the thighs grow, thinking hmmm I must get to the gym. Maybe it would be a great ad to put next to a story on the Biggest Loser! Didn’t bother clicking through though.