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Seven dumps Celebrity Splash Semi-Final 2

Exclusive: Seven skips a Semi Final and buries its Grand Final in a frantic bid to rid Celebrity Splash.

Heat 2EXCLUSIVE: It’s official. Celebrity Splash has belly-flopped in the eyes of the network.

Seven has backflipped and ditched Semi-Final 2, due to air next Monday night.

Instead it is skipping straight to the Grand Final, by burying it at the low-rent time of 8:45pm Thursday May 16 in all markets.

Next Monday night Seven will air Dynamo: Magician Impossible at 7:30pm, but also has AFL in some markets.

Updated: Contestants Denise Drysdale, Nick Bracks, Adam Richard and Koby Abberton who were due to qualify in Semi-Final 2 will now dive at the beginning of the show before a Grand Final dive.

Last night the show averaged 821,000 down from its premiere of 1.31m viewers. It was trounced by The Voice on 1.96m viewers.

The show is still advertising audience tickets for Monday May 20 four days after its now-rescheduled Grand Final.

The last time I can remember a Reality show of this scale having such a major backflip was Nine dumping Excess Baggage onto GO! at the top of last year and TEN fiddling with the The Hothouse and axing The Resort without any finale.

Celebrity Splash will now go down as one of the year’s biggest blunders.

A Seven spokesperson said, “The four remaining contestants will compete in a Semi Final dive in the first portion of the show and we proceed straight into the Grand Final.”

62 Responses

  1. The saddest thing about this whole debacle is that there are over 800,000 people in Australia who tuned in to this cheap, inane, pointless drivel. If there are viewers out there who will watch any old tripe with ‘Celebrity’ in the title then I’m seriously going to pitch my idea to the networks. Yes folks, coming soon to your screens; ‘Celebrity Chiropodist’ (in 3D)!

  2. @Danny
    What ever the Crap! it’s called, it’s going to Fail.
    Big Brother on the other hand, was a success, it won the demos on most days (which counts) and will continue to be a success. The only reason why it dropped a bit towards the end, was because of daylight savings, and it still managed to win the demos.
    So Nine are in a good position right now. Still the One! Looming!

  3. Unsure why Channel 7 saw the need to “tread water” with Celebrity Splash rather than launching House Rules in the MKR slots. I really find that puzzling.

  4. Gosh, talk about a knee-jerk reaction. 821K was still far more than anything 10 had on their schedule for the evening. How bizarre of Seven to do this, given that it is a show that only had a four week run, anyway. They may as well left it as is, it was never going to be competitive against The Voice.

  5. I don’t think anyone is surprised by this at all. The writing was on the wall as soon as the show was commissioned. I wouldn’t be surprised if the “celebrities” spent more time in pre-production and training than they did in the actual show itself…

  6. We all knew it wouldn’t work outside the ‘now’ and that’s exactly what’s happened. I’d say Seven knew it was not likely to be a long-term proposition hence their short episode order.

    The question now is how much the Grand Final will dive seeing as the viewers now know what Seven think of the program, especially since it is now out of that 7.30-8.30 family friendly timeslot.

  7. Was wondering where it went

    I dont care, I enjoyed it. Brainless tv at its best

    Would have been suited for Friday or Saturday night. Good family fun.

  8. What a knee jerk reaction. 821k viewers is not that bad when it’s pegged against the highest rating show of the week. Given it’s live they should just shorten and tighten the format and leave the second semi and GF as is. I’ve seen a lot worse shows than this.

    Why didn’t they launch House Rules straight after MKR to beat the Block? If House Rules is stripped people will either choose one or the other and they could have at least started theirs earlier to try and hook more viewers.

    At least we get to see Nick Bracks in speedos again – he is smoking hot!

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