The Encore Score: The popularity battle of the reality TV show hosts
Brooke Hemphill crunches data from the Encore Score to find out which Australian reality show has the most popular hosts and the demos they perform strongest in.
While the official 2014 television ratings period is yet to kick off, the battle of the reality shows for the year has already begun with Seven, Nine and Ten coming out the gates early with My Kitchen Rules (MKR), The Block and The Biggest Loser respectively. So far MKR can claim the bragging rights for the highest ratings hovering around the 1.6m viewer mark for each episode but the war has only just begun and the networks will be doing everything in their power to ensure the decks are loaded in their favour.
While the casting of these shows can often make or break a particular series, the hosts, who in some cases have been tied to these formats for several years, also do their part.
Scott Cam
Probably wrong place to be making this point, but what turns me off these reality blockbuster programs is the volume of marketing a viewer has to endure to watch them. I tuned into a random sample of 20 mins of MKR the first night and eight minutes of the 20 comprised non-pogram material (ads and romotions) . . . that’s a whopping 40 per cent of NOT being entertained. Too much!