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Perfect couple. Perfect silence.

For the second time this year Channel Nine held a reality grand final with a big cash prize and didn't bother to tell media afterwards...

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apc3On Wednesday night Nine dubbed Gemma and Raf Australia’s Perfect Couple, giving them a cool $210,000 for their efforts.

On Thursday you could have heard a pin drop.

For the second time this year a reality grand final on Nine was almost universally ignored -not just by media, but by the network itself.

It is customary with most big TV finales to issue a Press Release to media, talking up the fact that the network has just ‘changed somebody’s life’ with a big injection of cash accompanied with lots of lovely adjectives. Usually there will be “gee whiz” quotes from the happy winners.

Other shows including Dancing with the Stars, Australian Idol, So You Think You Can Dance Australia, Australia’s Next Top Model and, more recently, MasterChef Australia, do this with regularity.

Nine didn’t do it for homeMADE either, when it gave away $100,000. But it has previously gone there for shows that are deemed hits including The Farmer Wants a Wife. After Perfect Couple was sliced to 30 minutes, it seems it had given up entirely.

Upon enquiry, Nine offered TV Tonight an interview with Gemma but said there was no Press Release on the finale.

Yesterday coverage of the show by online media was almost non-existent too. Mumbrella reported: “The disastrous reality show – featuring couples competing in various tasks – pulled in just 610,000 for its final outing, according to preliminary TV ratings from OzTam.”

A review from the always entertaining Marieke Hardy in The Age noted: “Where do they find these people? Is there some sort of ranch for the genetically bland where they’re raised and allowed to frolic free range?” (this would have been written before the finale aired).

Several TV Tonight readers simply said of the winners: “Who cares?”

It seems, nobody. Including the network…

16 Responses

  1. I’m writing an essay on this show and would like to interview someone who thought it was crap and someone who loved it.

    Please contact me if you like to answer some questions (rant some more).

    Thanks,

    Grant

  2. I think Channel 9 did a great thing by having a same sex couple on this show and I think they should have won! The show had lots of potential but think the editing was off and the name was wrong.

  5. Maybe Nine are equally embarrassed as the winning couple (and the audience and non-audience) that they actually gave away nearly a quarter Mill for such rubbish…

  7. Why do Nine get reality so wrong? I mean, come on, if Ten can do it surely anyone can.
    From what I’ve seen of the contestants they have cast The Apprentice very well – certainly have the MasterChef “feel good” factor. But both the US and UK versions have been duds here, so it really does seem a bizarre choice.

  8. That’s a good point bindi, a media release doesn’t guarantee that will be what is mentioned in the media with their key points intact, if mentioned at all. With this example, it would more than likely be spun negatively by a journo and backfire.

  11. @vid, australias perfect couple was an australian version of a US show ‘here come the newlyweds’. and anyway fremantle/9 have said that they are completely changing the format and style of the international shows. from the ads it looks like the big change is that they have turned it into a warmhearted, everybody is friends, uplifting type of show. which is a big change. worked for MC but whether it will work for the apprentice is something completely different.

    i am doubting it’s sucess.

  14. they probably just don’t want to draw attention to their failure, because surely any articles written would have to mention that the whole series was a flop. 9 likes to cling to the smallest victories like hot seat and promote the hell out of them, but any failures they just want to sweep under the rug and pretend they didn’t happen.

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