Ninja Warrior will beat Seven’s Spartan, despite ‘undeniable similarities’ in promos, Nine programming boss claims
Nine has come out swinging against competitor Seven, declaring its highly successful Australian Ninja Warrior franchise will easily beat Seven’s alternative offering Spartan.
Nine’s programming director Hamish Turner told Mumbrella: “[Seven is] obviously keen to emulate [the success of] Ninja, but you have to question where the line of appropriation and imitation is.”
He flagged the “undeniable similarities” in the way the two programs were being promoted and noted “we’ll just have to keep an eye on that”.
Despite the potential cross over, Turner said Ninja is “the original and incumbent” and predicted Spartan would be unlikely to dent Ninja’s record-breaking ratings.
“It was a phenomenon last year, so we would hope that it definitely comes back meeting what we did last year – but that was a phenomenal result, so anything in that ballpark would be more than welcome.
“But I think the thing with that show is it actually becomes a better show in season two. You have people coming back trying to conquer the course again, there’s new characters and actually the story-telling is a lot deeper and richer because you have those characters that return trying to conquer Mount Midoriyama. So it shifts in terms of the tone and treatment, but for me it becomes a better show, and we’ve seen that in the US.”
He also noted in the US, Spartan acts as a companion, rather than a competitor, to Ninja – and gets nowhere near the numbers.
Turner said a lot of Nine’s programming successes last year – which saw the network win across the key advertising demographics and almost overtake Seven in total people for the first time in over a decade – stemmed from its bold and original commissions. It would be more of the same this year, he said.
Love Island, which has been commissioned specifically for its multi-channel 9G0 and online 9Now platform, will be a highlight this year, Turner said.
“It’s also a commission for our business, which is focussed on being a cross-platform business. Audience anywhere at anytime. They were the fundamentals around that commission,” he said.
Turner flagged Ten’s The Bachelorette, starring now Love Island host Sophie Monk, as the best non-Nine program last year, noting it was a risk, but she’s great TV talent and Ten’s numbers for the series spoke for themselves.
Aside from looking forward to Love Island, Turner said he always looks forward to Married at First Sight – which has been performing strongly after a debut audience of 912,000 metro viewers.
“It was strategically scheduled last year in an environment to engage a demographically rich audience and it delivered upon that. And I don’t think we could have predicted the way viewers fell in love with that show,” he said.
“We are really pleased with the first week of Married at First Sight. The show debuted up strongly on its 2017 figures and is performing very well both in the key demographics and also on 9Now, where it is the clear number one on the OzTAM VPM rankings.
“Married at First Sight is a true performer across all platforms and we are also very pleased to see the new 9Honey/Married chat show Talking Married is also drawing strong audiences on our multichannel 9Life.”
Nine is clearly in the lead now with Seven getting increasingly desperate. It’s going to be a long, tough few years for the poor folks at there as they struggle to comes to terms with lower audience shares, lower revenue shares, decreasing market size and higher costs. Ouch.
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Spartan is a better looking product than Ninja and being a team competition should make for better stories, better TV and therefore ratings.
Last year’s Ninja was a fraud and broke the trust of it’s audience. It got boring watching sacrificial chumps falling in the water all the time. How can you string people along for god knows how long and not get a winner!
After beating it to death to try and re-coup the massive investment with 3-5 eps per week last year, Nine need to talk this year up to try and sell ads at inflated rates. They owe tarps all over town on a disappointing cricket season and Married doing 900K will be costing them make goods as well. Ninja is their big hope to gain ground on Seven for 2018.
However with big shows and events for Q1 and Q2, (MKR, Comm Games, House Rules) Seven will own the first half and get a major jump on Nine. It will be catch up for Nine once again. Seven wont make the same mistakes it did last year and give Ninja or the Block clean air.
Nine would be crazy putting Ninja in anywhere before Q3.
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I must say Ninja was a very enjoyable watch…..and I, for one, am looking forward to its return. Advertisers will support it as it delivered last year….the question is will it grow?
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Ahhhh bless.
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Spartan is all about team work and has multiple competing people on a course – if anything it’s more like It’s a Knock out. Ninja Warrior is a copy off the Netflix series Beast Master.
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Sasuke (the original Ninja warrior show from Japan) started in 1997 – way before Netflix existed.
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America didn’t get someone to finish the ninja warrior course for 7 seasons…. the whole point is it is supposed to be so hard only the best of the best can finish it.
There was a winner. The person who got the furthest in the last round.
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