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Which Reality shows suck up most of your time?

Strap yourself in. Some Reality TV shows want 50 nights or more of your time, but do viewers have the stamina?

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What are TV’s biggest Reality commitments?

MasterChef Australia and The Block are the most demanding Reality TV shows on air requiring 50 nights or more from their audience.

Both screened for 13 weeks in 2021 with MasterChef tipping the scales at a whopping 61 episodes (plus 2 Masterclasses). That’s great for the sales department, but not so great for time-poor viewers.

Some shows also make great demands in terms of the hours every night, with the most recent I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here some screening episodes at close to 2 hours.

So do viewers have the stamina?

In some cases yes. Both The Block and MasterChef are two of TV’s longest running Reality juggernauts, at 17 and 13 seasons, respectively.

But if you’re looking for some of the least demanding of your time then The Voice: Generations (3 episodes) & Australian Ninja Warrior (9) have you covered. Foxtel Reality shows are also usually around 10 episodes each.

Here are the episode runs for most recent completed seasons of Free to Air Reality shows:

Rank Title Episodes Weeks Avg. length* Total mins*
1 MasterChef Australia 61 13 75 4575
2 The Block 50 13 80 4000
3 Married at First Sight 32 9 90 2880
4 Big Brother 31 10 75 2325
5 Love Island 27 7 60 1620
6 Australian Survivor 24 9 80 1920
7 The Amazing Race Australia 24 9 75 1800
8 I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here 20 5 100 2000
9 The Bachelor 16 6 70 1120
10 SAS Australia 14 4 75 1050
11 The Voice 13 5 90 1170
12 Celebrity MasterChef 13 7 80 1040
13 Farmer Wants a Wife 13 3# 80 1040
14 Celebrity Apprentice 12 4 80 960
15 Beauty & the Geek 12 4 75 900
16 The Bachelorette 12 6 70 840
17  Big Brother VIP 11 4 80 880
18  The Masked Singer 11 4 75 825
19  Australian Ninja Warrior 9 3 90 810
20  The Voice: Generations 3 1 90 270

* estimated
# Reunion aired later

Brook Hall, Seven Network Scheduler told TV Tonight time is a big consideration with the network looking to outputing shorter seasons.

“From 2015 -2018 we had House Rules and MKR which together had 100 episodes. When you’re rating, and people are watching, I can see why you’d do that. So I can understand why MasterChef or The Block are 50 episodes or more.
One thing I can say about MKR (2022), we’ve cut it into a third. When we took over The Voice we cut it in half. We’re keeping that philosophy because it puts you in a strong position,” he said.

“If you have 10 brands of 10 to 15 episodes, if one or two fall over you’re okay.

“One thing that we learned is we became too reliant on basically two shows. James (Warburton, CEO) wants lots of strong weapons, not one or two where you leave yourself vulnerable.”

37 Responses

  2. Isn’t it funny that once upon a time, with all the extra content offered for it, Big Brother would have been right at the top of that list with a huge gap between it and all the others.

  5. The only ones I bother with are I’m A Celebrity (but rarely stuck around for the whole episode especially when they go for up to 2 hours) and The Masked Singer, and I would pop in and out of MasterChef and The Amazing Race. I wouldn’t care if I missed any eps of those shows along the way.

    I can’t deal with any of the others and, in any case, watching Gogglebox will keep me informed as to what’s going on in those shows without having to care or invest time in watching them!

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