Screen Forever 2022: Seven’s high risk for high rewards

When My Kitchen Rules and House Rules both “fell over” for the Seven network, it was forced to overhaul its slate, says Head of Scheduling Brook Hall.

But it opted to expand its offer with a mix of reboots and new titles instead of relying on 2 big brands.

“When we had to replace 100 episodes of those two shows and, and basically our whole 7:30 slate in one go, which is not often done and high risk, we thought, ‘Ok, instead of those two shows, and a few others safeties that we have, we’re gonna have to run 10 new tentpole programs,’ -which is risky and terrifying.

With high risk comes high reward, if it works. Hall says amongst its overhaul of new shows it sought to minimise risk.

“If we’re going to have 10 new shows, can 5 of the at least have familiarity? (The audience) knows the brand, we’re going to try polish them up, and then swing wildly at 5. It’s safe to say reboots have a high success rate just because they’ve got a proven track record: Farmer, Big Brother, The Voice… Holey Moley, I think we probably got a bit greedy as a network. It looks exciting, let’s strip it, but we made too many episodes.

“So we had swings and misses in that area but I think in the next 18 months, you’ll see a lot more in the riskier area, okay, because we’ve kind of got those anchors now. So you can keep swinging.”

One of Seven’s upcoming big plays is international reality contest Million Dollar Island -a new format which emerged during the pandemic.

“Development slowed, because people weren’t broadcasting new ideas as much. This is one of the few that was bubbling around we’d heard about. We knew the Americans were all bidding on it as well as NBC got that then we heard John de Mol was across it,” Hall continued.

“It’s exciting, something new and shiny. They’re doing a lot of tweaks and development on that now as a collective between a few of the territories.

“So to our point we are going to jump on new and fresh ideas, because you’ve got to keep swinging. You got to keep exciting the audience.”