Game on for Hot Seat
Next week Hot Seat will reach $6m given away this year -but it has a renewed challenge on its hands.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Viewers in Melbourne and Sydney may have noticed that Nine has been playing double episodes of Hot Seat since Wednesday last week.
Could it be a telltale sign they are planning more in 2016 to take on The Chase?
Since Seven’s 5pm game show rolled out in mid-September, The Chase has been trumping Hot Seat at 5:30pm. Two months of episodes suggests the trend is more than just curiosity from viewers.
Earlier this year Eddie McGuire said in regard to the game show battles, “To be perfectly honest I’m happy for all the shows to work. That might sound twee but I love the fact these shows are generating work for people. I’m always disappointed when Australian made product goes up against Australian made product. That’s the nature of the beast, unfortunately.”
Hot Seat has at least one card up its sleeve: prize winnings. Next week it will reach the $6m mark in prizes awarded in 2015.
In the two months* The Chase has been on air it has given away $715,000 -in the same period Hot Seat has awarded $1.323m.
Nine was tight-lipped on its plans to combat the competition but Andrew Backwell, managing director of programming and production said, “Hot Seat has totally dominated the 5:30 slot for many years and we are very confident it will continue to deliver in 2016.”
* Sept 14 – Nov 24
9 Responses
I think this proves that Nine only really care about their news figures in Sydney and Melbourne. Why else would they only start airing double episodes in these markets.
Don’t really see it that way. Previous changes such as one hour news were trialled in markets before being rolled out wider.
Nine should put Hot Seat at prime time and revive a game show for 5.30.
Not unless they want to lose viewers in primetime.
We people who live in Tasmania have also been getting double episodes of Hot Seat when the cricket is not being screened
That makes an average of $30000 per show for Hot Seat. Given that most of the time they only walk away with $1000 I must have missed the episodes where they gave away $1000000 to bring the average up.
I reckon this is what Channel 9 are doing.
They are now trying the double episodes in Melbourne and Sydney. If The Chase gets beaten many times during this experiment, then this idea of back-to-back episodes will go national.
I’m actually surprised The Chase has given away that much because I thought it was a lot less.
I take it The Chasers aren’t doing their job then if they’ve lost that much already. The UK version has on average roughly one winning team a week winning around £10-£15k, so about $30k. Seems like the Aussie verision is giving away twice as much.