Kicking off at 7:30pm on Sunday May 6th, Masterchef managed to retain a 1.3m average throughout its one hour premiere with its highest tune in reaching 1.6m. The success can be attributed to Ch10's careful marketing over the past two months leading up to the new season riding on the back of last year's success which capped off a stellar season with 2.74m glued to the screen to see Kate Bracks take the trophy. Clever merchandising has also seen the Masterchef brand become not just a household name for its TV series but also for its books, magazines subscriptions, celebrity chef events and cooking utensils. Add this to the major buzz around past entrants and winners and all of THEIR merchandising success stories (i.e Julie Goodwin's many family-orientated cookbooks) and you have yourself a major contender in the ratings war.
Having said that, Masterchef was not attractive enough to maintain Channel 10's audience for the rest of their Sunday night programming, with Channel 9 winning the night with their broadcasting of The Block and 60 Minutes. One could put this down to Channel 10's failure to secure a strong complementary set of shows to entice that ever elusive 18-29 crowd. Weekly showings of New Girl and Modern Family have done little to help audiences settle into Channel 10 for the night meaning an audience is only more likely to start watching the network at the time Masterchef begins, potentially missing out on that all important first 15 minutes. Following up with Touch doesn't seem to be helping either despite its success in the USA. It just goes to show that Australians are not just interested in something because its American.
The next few weeks are starting to get more and more interesting for Channel 10, with Offspring in its 3rd week, Bikie Wars starting in 2 weeks time, and Being Lara Bingle starting soon after. Despite its apparent investment in Aussie drama, Channel 10 really needs to pull their thumbs out. With ratings and profits dwindling year after year, and with share prices dropping rapidly, there needs to be a drastic overhaul of the way Channel Ten does business. Focusing on producing one major program and then filling in the gaps with a whole load of crap just doesn't cut it for the modern audience anymore who are more than happy to switch the TV off all together and go watching cat videos on YouTube for an hour instead. All I can say is, its do or die for this beloved channel.
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