Dire ratings for the once gastronomically successful cooking series MasterChef have led Channel 10 to axe any spinoffs this year, to concentrate on revitalising the original format in 2014. Last night’s finale drew the lowest figures in its five series history, scraping together just over 1 million viewers for “The Winner Announced” segment, while the bulk of the show drew a little over 900,000 viewers.
Reality TV tends to follow a pretty standard popularity curve, with
initial curiosity ensuring a reasonably well received first season, leading to interest peaking in the second season, and then a steady
decline until the show disappears into obscurity. Sometimes a show is inexplicably reignited a few years later,
but for the most part, they are simply never heard from again. Finale episodes for the first two seasons of MasterChef drew over 4 million viewers each, suggesting that the show is on a downhill slope, and that its goose may soon be cooked.
Channel 10 has chopped the idea of a spin-off this year, which means there will be no Junior Masterchef, Masterchef: The Professionals or Masterchef: Would You Like Fries With That? The show fell into hot water before it even aired with the pre-promotional “Boys Vs Girls” malarky drawing criticisms of sexism. Ten program chief Beverly McGarvey told the Herald Sun it might be time for MasterChef and its viewers to take a cue from Ross and Rachel: “There has been a lot of MasterChef on in the past couple of years so really what this show needs is a break… When it has a break we think people will respond to it the way they used to.”
35-year-old former cyclist Emma Dean won the 2013 title, pipping the cool, calm and collected Lynton Tapp at the post with her frantically made version of Attica‘s Plight of the Bees dessert, a complex combination of lemon curd, mandarin, meringue, and granita. It looked delicious until they put a layer of pumpkin on top. Dean took home $100,000, a book deal and an Alfa Romeo a car.
Via heraldsun.com.au
