Nine’s The Hotplate gets best audience yet and steals the buzz from Ten’s Spelling Bee launch
A strong launch for Ten’s The Great Australian Spelling Bee was not quite enough to beat a resurgent The Hotplate in the audience ratings last night.
Grant Denyer and Chrissie Swann are hosting Ten’s spelling competition
The Channel Ten show debuted with an audience of 921,000 at 7.30pm, but it was not enough to beat Channel 9’s latest cooking show which picked up its highest ratings yet with 944,000 viewers, up on its debut of 784,000 last Tuesday, according to OzTam’s overnight metro ratings.
Channel 7’s cookery offering Restuaruant Revloution – Grand Opening continued to struggle and only just held on in the Top 20 with 522,000 viewers in the same timeslot.
Seven are spiralling backwards and with little new content to turn them around media buyers will be questioning their strategy.
At least TEN and Nine are offering new content to excite viewers with shows such as Martied at First Sight and Spelling Bee.
800 Words will skew old which is not what they need.
X Factor won’t be enough to rest the slide demographically .
Life is too short to watch every single one of those shows listed especially mind numbing non entertaining zero composite reality atrocities like Hot Plate or Spelling Bee, network TV is an absolute mess.
Several months after MKR, viewers are getting their fill of My Kitchen Rulesy Drama from this second rate back alley knock off, but honestly I’m finding it easier to stomach as the nights go, possibly because if you close your eyes it really could just be Pete, Manu, and the pathetic contestants we know and hate and love.
I think credit to 10 for having a crack that showcases just how much young talent we have in this country. 8 -13 year olds spelling those challenging words in a simple to follow format. Numeracy and literacy are the 2 biggest hurdles in education, so if a TV show allows young kids to watch and learn then all power to 10.
Spelling Bees, and Cooking Shows should be the kick along programming that supports the main acts. The deplorable downturn in creative and intelligent television programming, has promoted the lower order, and a few semi robotic types, who now truly imagine that they have the talent to organise and promote good television.
These expensive failures are OK, there are advertising dollars still rolling in, and we must strike a gong someday, after all, there is less time to fill now, and we are getting better at this every day…….aren’t we?