MasterChef delivers a master win

When Network Ten announced in 2008 that it had purchased the MasterChef franchise to replace Big Brother as a major reality format, there were more than a few people that scoffed.  Who would want to watch a cooking competition in prime-time?  After all, the benchmark of cooking contests on Australian TV had been set with Ready Steady Cook – and it was well short of being a national phenomenon.

But Ten and the show’s producers, Fremantle Media, reworked MasterChef so that it bore little resemblance to its UK original.  When the show launched in Australia in April last year, it got off to a solid ratings start and as the series progressed it became a major player in the 7.00pm timeslot for Ten.  The show’s three judges, chefs George Calombaris and Gary Mehigan and food critic Matt Preston, went from being relative unknowns to instant celebrities – with Preston picking up a TV Week Logie for outstanding new talent earlier this year.

With the show’s popularity snowballing it was perhaps no real surprise that the season finale between Julie Goodwin and Poh Ling Yeow returned the highest ratings of any non-sporting telecast since OzTAM records began in 2001.  Winning the series led to Goodwin releasing a top-selling cookbook, Our Family Table, and appearing in a string of commercial endorsements as well as a regular segment on Today and a column in The Australian Women’s Weekly.  She has also about to launch a new show, Home Cooked, on the Nine Network.  Series runner-up Yeow also gained a high-profile role, hosting a weekly TV series, Poh’s Kitchen, on ABC1 and gaining a publishing deal with ABC Books.

So with the second series preparing to launch earlier this year, the rival Seven Network sought to rain on MasterChef’s parade and brought out their own cooking show – My Kitchen Rules, a so-called original format that was really just a mash-up of elements of MasterChef and a UK show, Come Dine With Me, added with the ‘State versus State’ component of its former My Restaurant Rules and pinching two celebrity chefs who had appeared as guests on MasterChef.

My Kitchen Rules never quite hit the same heights of MasterChef’s public support, but it didn’t do too badly, either, giving Seven some very good early evening ratings.  The problem is, though, that the show did little to spoil the public’s appetite for cooking shows and left them wanting more.

So when series two of MasterChef arrived earlier this year, it hit the ground running and immediately returned ratings that took some weeks to materialise in the first series. 

And, like the first series, the public’s fascination with all things MasterChef continued to grow as the series progressed, turning MasterChef into a confirmed $100 million product on the back of advertising, merchandise and cross-promotion activities.

Appearing six nights a week and hitting around two million viewers each night by the end of the series, Ten was looking at making history again with last weekend’s season finale.  So much had the show struck a chord with the general public that Sunday’s election debate between Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott had to be re-scheduled to avoid being unwatched up against the kitchen battle between South Australians Callum Hann and Adam Liaw.

And, sure enough, history was made again.  When Liaw (pictured) was announced as the second series winner, an average of 5.2 million viewers (across five cities and major regional markets) were watching – a number that surpassed last year’s season finale and again ranked it as the most watched non-sports program since 2001.  The program, spread over two hours, gave Ten an overall share of 41.8 per cent of the Sunday night audience – well ahead of Seven (19.0%) and Nine (15.7%) – a figure that could secure Ten the entire week regardless of whatever results it receives over the rest of the week.

The public’s connection to MasterChef has ignited its fascination and knowledge of food – like Nine’s earlier series The Block sparked a passion for home renovation – and has resonated well with children, who will recite recipes that they saw on the show, and who will no doubt provide the perfect ratings springboard for when Junior MasterChef starts later in the year.

The immense popularity of MasterChef has again seen the Seven Network taking up more food-related formats in a bid to undermine the MasterChef phenomenon, or at least try to cash in on some of the show’s success.  As well as producing a second series of My Kitchen Rules the network has bought the format rights to produce a local version of the Japanese show Iron Chef (seen here on SBS1) and is also reported to be planning a local adaptation of Canadian series Conviction Kitchen.

In the meantime, here’s hoping that with the extra kilos that we might stack on thanks to the inspiration from MasterChef, that another series of The Biggest Loser will be around in the new year to inspire us to lose them!

Source: News.com.au, TV Tonight

Who you can’t vote for in the Logies…

It is that time of year when TV Week asks its readers, and the wider TV viewing population, to vote for their favourite personalities and programs for the annual TV Week Logie Awards.

This year’s presentation, to be held on 2 May, marks the 52nd annual presentation of the awards first named by Graham Kennedy, who decided that the middle name of TV pioneer John Logie Baird sounded like a good name for an award and, in naming the award after him, it would forever be a tribute to his achievement.  (It was remarked in later years that had Kennedy known just what an impact the Logies would have had on Australian TV culture, he would named them after his own middle name – Cyril)

These days, viewers can vote for the awards without having to buy a copy of TV Week.  In the past, votes could only be made via coupons printed in the magazine or by using a unique PIN printed inside the magazine when voting online.

However, despite the voting being conducted online for a few years now, the online interface used to collect the votes is essentially just a basic web poll.  None of the glamour or excitement of TV’s night of nights here.  No colour.  No pictures, or even video clips of the people we are being asked to nominate (and this can be handy when trying to identify some of today’s TV starlets who aren’t easily recognised by name alone). In fact, voting for your favourite TV stars and programs now looks to be as clinical and enjoyable as filling in your average tax return, especially now as the stars and shows are reduced to mere numbers or tick boxes. 

Also curious are the omissions from TV Week’s list of voting ‘suggestions’ (although they are our only options, there is no “other” allowed here).  Just a few that this author noticed missing from the categories:

Most Popular Actor: Tom Oliver (Neighbours), Alan Fletcher (Neighbours), Andrew Supanz (All Saints), Kip Gamblin (All Saints), John Waters (All Saints)

Most Popular Actress: Janet Andrewartha (Neighbours)

Most Popular Presenter: Larry Emdur (The Morning Show), Kylie Gillies (The Morning Show), David Reyne (9AM With David And Kim), Kim Watkins (9AM With David And Kim), Sandra Sully (Ten News), Dave Hughes (The 7PM Project), Peter Everett (Ready Steady Cook), Sam Pang (ADbc), Grant Bowler (Border Security), Ed Kavalee (TV Burp), Daryl Somers (Hey Hey It’s Saturday – The Reunion), Jonathon Holmes (Media Watch), Magda Szubanski (The Spearman Experiment).

There also seems to be some inconsistency in what qualifies as “presenter” – Masterchef’s three judges are listed as potential nominations for the category, but the show’s (then) host, Sarah Wilson, is not.  The Biggest Loser’s fitness coaches, Shannan Ponton and Michelle Bridges, are listed in the “presenter” category, but the show’s (former) host, Ajay Rochester, is not.  The Seven Network’s talent quest, Australia’s Got Talent, gets a guernsey, with host Grant Denyer and judge Dannii Minogue qualified for a mention, but no mention of Minogue’s colleagues, Red Symons and Tom Burlinson.  For rival show Australian Idol, Andrew Günsberg is listed as host, but no mention of any of the show’s three judges, Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson, Marcia Hines, Jay Dee Springbett and ousted judge Kyle Sandilands (who did appear in the preliminary stages of the show in 2009).  SBS newsreader Anton Enus qualifies for a vote, but his weekend counterpart, Lee Lin Chin, does not.

Australia’s Got Talent qualifies in the category of “most popular light entertainment program”, but a rival show of essentially a similar format, Australian Idol, is categorised under “reality”.

Most Popular Light Entertainment Program: TV Burp, Hungry Beast, Double Take, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, Hot Seat, The Einstein Factor and The New Inventors are all missing from the nominations list.  The one-off special Rove Presents Hamish And Andy’s American Caravan Of Courage is allowed to be voted, but another one-off special from the same network, Shaun Micallef’s New Year Rave, is not.

These are just the omissions noticed by this one author.  There may be plenty more that TV Week and the networks have failed to acknowledge as being worthy of a vote – and yet the Logie Awards are intended to be the ‘people’s choice’ awards covering all the various genres of television and allowing all on-air talent – with the only eligibility being that they appeared in a credited role during the 2009 television year – an equal opportunity of being voted for.

It is surprising that, after 52 years, TV Week and the publicity agents from all the networks can not get together and muster up a complete list of eligible personalities and programs and be consistent in what, or who, qualifies for a particular category.  The gaps in these voting categories only serve to add ammunition to growing public sentiment that the Logie Awards are no longer a credible recognition of the achievements of our television industry.

TV Week’s Logie Awards site (with the link to vote online) is at tvweek.com.au.