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Testing time for The Block

After that 'elimination week' now the real test for The Block begins.

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This week The Block faces a test when it needs to hold or improve on its numbers from last week.

The ‘elimination week’ was a bit like that first year of MasterChef when we had to sit through auditions. Now the show begins, as the final four couples step onto the Richmond properties.

We’ll get a better idea of whether viewers have taken to the strip format, the casting and the upcoming challenges hosted by Shelley Craft. Indeed, we’ll have a better idea if Nine has dabbled too much with the format. On first glance, the move to Melbourne has paid off. Melbourne viewers love their TV more than any other city, especially during a cold winter.

No question, last week’s figures were a solid start. If Nine can hold (or even build) they will be happy. Tonight the show has another one hour episode, as it does on Thursday. Nine would also be wise to code them separately for ratings as MasterChef and My Kitchen Rules did, to avoid Friday’s audience dragging down a weekly average.

The four houses, which are already completed certainly look impressive. Getting there will be the story for viewers.

And the show will benefit from being the first of several renovation formats on air.

Producer Julian Cress tells The Australian if The Block doesn’t upkeep its audience then it may be bad news for TEN’s The Renovators. In truth, it could be worse for Top Design.

“We still have no idea what they’ve (The Renovators) done with their format. The reason Nine wanted to strip The Block has more to do with Charlie Sheen’s addiction than it does with any plans Channel 10 has to make a renovating show.

“It was the fact that Two and a Half Men simply vanished from the schedule. A TV network is a hungry beast and you need to fill that hole with something.”

13 Responses

  1. Just finished watching tonights episode, judgement of first room. Way to spin it out…so much of the previous nights shown again and again. Then the final judging was drawn out as well. Boring television. It will want to improve for me to stick with the show. Pick up the pace guys or risk losing viewers in big numbers.

  3. @Alex – when a show has more than one episode a week, like The Block or Masterchef, or Home and Away, networks can choose to code each day’s program differently so that the OzTAM ratings boxes see them as separate shows.

    For instance, Ten do this with Masterchef which is why it currently fills half of the top ten in the weekly list of highest rating programs. On the other hand, Nine have coded all of The Block’s eps the same (even tho’ some are 30min, some 60min) as Seven have done for H&A. These programs therefore only appear once on the weekly list and their rating is a weighted average of all of the eps for the week.

  6. Agree regarding separate coding. Perhaps the networks could consider coming to an agreement where they all code stripped shows the same way?

  7. Last week was not interesting, once i gathered for weeks format I couldnt care less about the show. I happened to catch a small bit on thursday night, and was very dissapointed the useless sisters got in with their dreadful room with hair ties wrapped around the curtians, not tv and hideous couch. The twins had a room I would have in my home.

  8. @Paul: My wife and I both agree, they shud have one.
    Those other sisters did a crap job, holes everywhere in walls, no TV etc.
    The judge from what ever magazine he is from is a complete tosser.
    Never did like him.
    Just goes to show that the judges only look at the icing on the cake, not what is underneath where it really counts.

  10. Nine deserves all the bagging it gets. After resting on their Two and half laurels for the last few years they became lazy. They need to rebuild form scratch which is never easy. Seven’s commitment to local programming should be commended. Maybe in a few years time (if Nine makes the right calls) we will be able to say the same of them too.

  11. Dissapointed the twins didn’t get in. I would have watched it for sure if they had. I’m sure they would have gotten a lot more male audience too, if they had won.

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