Catch-up boom for Alone Australia

Season Two of reality contest Alone Australia has become SBS’ biggest show of 2024, drawing strong audiences for the braodcaster, particularly with Catch-Up viewing included.

Episode One averaged 287,000 national viewers overnight but across 28 days has boomed to 627,000 -that includes 327,000 BVOD viewers.

Episode Two was even higher at 314,000 viewers overnight and is now at 872,000 in 28 day viewing.

SBS Head of Unscripted Joseph Maxwell said, “It’s such a standout show for us in terms of what it does for table audience and what it does for 25 to 54 audience. It’s just that sign of the future of how many people are watching On Demand, how many people are watching on catch-up. That percentage is pretty remarkable. I think we put it out as 52% for Episode 1. It’s one of those shows I think that will just keep building and building.

“The other fascinating thing that we’ve seen -that I hadn’t really predicted- is a huge amount of people now going and watching Season One.”

Season Two, filmed by ITV Studios Australia in the harsh conditions of New Zealand’s South Island, has proven too tough for half the contestants, with 5 more remaining in the hunt for a $200,000 prize.

Maxwell promises much more to come across the remaining 4 episodes.

“It does play out very differently from Season One, which ended up very much as a two-horse race. Now there are more contenders in it to the end. The weather starts to play a really factor, there are some big weather events that are coming,” he continues.

“What I love is once you get to this stage, you start to really get to know the people. You get some really interesting, deeper connections and personal reveals that starts to come out …some really interesting themes get to be explored. That’s why I love this show because it works not just on ‘Who will last the longest?’ but people really questioning what it is to be human and what their experiences are. They reveal for national TV audience some pretty sensitive and delicate things about themselves.”

TV Tonight can reveal there will also be another Reunion episode to follow the season finale on Wednesday May 29.

“We’ll be getting all of the cast together for a studio show. We have a brilliant new host. Unfortunately I can’t reveal who just yet, but they’re a bit of a superfan,” Maxwell stated.

“ITV film literally 1000s of hours of footage. So the reunion allows for unseen footage of things that didn’t make the cut for various reasons. Alone is such a strange show because they are all separate. This allows us to bring them all together for an event really, so that will be going alongside our final episode.”

Even the team within SBS could not pick the eventual winner, Maxwell insisted.

“We were all kept guessing in terms of the actual series itself…..there’s many twists and turns in the final episodes.”

Alone Australia screens 7:30pm Wednesday on SBS.