Bachelor in Paradise to film finale in front of live studio audience
Ten will host a reunion of its Bachelor in Paradise contestants in front of a live studio audience on Monday 29 April.
The “special TV event” will be hosted by Osher Günsberg, and promised viewers their favourites will “spill the tea” and bring them up to date with everything that has happened since Paradise wrapped filming.
The announcement was made on social media this morning, with tickets for the free event already “sold out”.
A Ten spokesperson told Mumbrella the tell-all special will feed into the show’s social media hype.
“The social chatter around Bachelor In Paradise this season has been huge. A lot of people have been wondering what happens after the bachelors and bachelorettes leave Paradise and, for the first time, we’re bringing back Paradise favourites to spill the tea in a Tell All Special. We can’t wait to see what everyone has been up to,” the spokesperson said.
Ten has previously attempted to extend the Bachelor franchise with similar initiatives, however the practice has died off in recent years.
After the first season of The Bachelor in 2013, it ran a two-hour After The Final Rose special, featuring the unsuccessful contestants, and the Bachelor Tim Robards and his then-girlfriend, now wife, Anna Heinrich.
The show won the timeslot for Ten, with 768,000 metro viewers tuning in, which was not as many as the 1.186m who watched Robards choose Heinrich.
Ahead of this year’s premiere, host Günsberg told Mumbrella that in order to stay fresh, the show had to mix things up a bit.
“Anytime you put a second album out you want to keep the things that made the first album great, but you also want a couple of surprises to go with the greatest hits,” he said.
Traditionally, Bachelor in Paradise hasn’t rated as strongly in overnight numbers as its stablemates The Bachelor and The Bachelorette.
Last year’s Bachelor in Paradise premiered to 750,000 metro viewers, while this season – which debuted on 9 April – was down 26% to 553,000.
Last year’s finale of the franchise had 774,000.
Günsberg, and indeed Ten, however, push the show’s social media credentials, and ability to generate conversations in workplaces, online and in social circles the following day, over its overnight ratings.
“Our show itself plays only a part of the enjoyment people get from watching. People watch it communally, they enjoy it together. It’s terrible for the ratings, we see a couch designed for three with five people on it, but that’s the best part about the show. People go to each others’ homes, they watch together, they watch in the group chat, they watch on Twitter. Our show is just part of the experience, the experience includes the conversation that happens when people watch. The audience have become part of what’s great about this show,” Günsberg told Mumbrella.
