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MasterChef plans live finale

TEN ups the ante on the cooking show with a live to air finale due in late July.

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It had 3.7m viewers last year, so this year MasterChef will stage a live to air finale.

The move will put an end to potential Spoilers leaking out.

“It wasn’t a pleasant three weeks last year (before the finale was screened),” says the network head of programming for TEN, Beverley McGarvey.

“It’s such a massive production; there were a lot of people who knew the winner and had to keep a secret.”

So clandestine was TEN’s publicity for the show that it even offered two interviews with “winners” Julie Goodwin and Poh Ling Yeow to the Sunday Telegraph, one of which was fake, so that the newspaper could print a story after the winner was announced. As we all recall, it an online editor ran the wrong one.

Going live makes sense and is in keeping with the buzz for the show.

When TV Tonight approached TEN on the notion of a live finale as far back as early May the response was very coy, continuing to push a line about “closed set.”

The next question is where the event will be held…. Sydney Opera House? Carriageworks? Luna Park? Or a P & O cruise ship? Indeed does it even need to be Sydney-based?

The date is still under wraps…. tipped to be late July.

Source: The Australian

18 Responses

  1. I agree. I doubt whether the cooking part of will be live, as it would take too long to set up scene, do the cooking, clean up, set up the next scenes, cook, clean up, organise the staging, lights, etc. An episode of MC takes many hours to flim. I imagine they will copy what Survivor do for their winner’s announcement episode.

  2. Yeah I like the idea of a live to air finale but as Johnson pointed out won’t there be a significant delay between the finalists being decided (given the show is filmed several weeks in advance) and the actual final. What if one of the finalists gets bumped on the head and forgets how to cook?

  3. This show is so heavily edited, it will be interesting to see how it differs when it’s live. also it will be a tad harder for them to rig the result, although I guess if they ensure that “sellable” people only are in the grand final, it won’t matter.

  4. “CK says:
    June 12, 2010 at 8:40 am

    how would this work if they had to cook? Surely we wouldn’t have to watch them cook for an hr or so?(when it isn’t live they can edit the cooking parts) Or will only the final announcement be live?”

    that would be still be achievable, i mean we sit through hours of cricket or tennis or AFL, its only interesting because they fill such events up with commentators, sideline interviews, half time entertainment etc. turn the final into a live sporting style event, like iron chef and you got yourself a winner in the ratings channel ten.

  5. Hopefully where Texas borders Mexico, so this show and their crew of “The Three Fat Stooges” playing pretend chef can all stop existing, and shows can start at the proper time, not 15 minutes late.

  6. It’s gonna be so interesting to see whether masterchef’s finale will rate higher than last yrs. I guess it depends on what day ten decide to put it on, whether they use sunday and loose share like the biggest loser or during the week and gain share like the previous seasons of the biggest loser.

  8. Wow a live finale! I thought the finale would have been taped in late May. That means the final two (or 3 or 4) will have to wait another months before they get to contest the last challenge. But the live finale also means the judges will taste the dishes served hot, unlike previous challenges where there are several hours’ gap between cooking and tasting.

  9. I think it would be cool to see the whole show live, but for the best interests of the show, I think they should only do the final announcement of the scores live.

    I reckon that Channel Ten could even do something like CBS do with Survivor and have a live reunion show, straight after after the announcement of the winner. They could stretch the finale out to three hours (7:30-10:30). I’m certain that a reunion show would still rate through the roof.

  11. That sounds amazing.

    But will they cook a dish and plate it up and have the judges taste it and eliminiate all the space of say a 2 hour finale.

    Let’s hope so

  13. how would this work if they had to cook? Surely we wouldn’t have to watch them cook for an hr or so?(when it isn’t live they can edit the cooking parts) Or will only the final announcement be live?

  14. I thought the MC Finale would air Sun July 11th; and to be honest I would just like to see it set in the MC Kitchen I don’t need fancy finales at iconic locations; I would be very happy to see a finale similar to last year in the kitchen they’ve spent so long in.

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