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Seven hits pause on Temptation Island as The Super Switch flops

What was billed as a return to screens for Temptation Island after a 15-year hiatus has been postponed by Seven amid the failure of Seven Year Switch rebrand, The Super Switch.

Seven announced in May this year it had commissioned a relaunch of Temptation Island, billing it as a ‘sizzling social experiment’.

The casting call for Temptation Island. The crew has now been told production has been postponed.

The announcement came shortly after the sensational success of Nine’s Married At First Sight which saw 1.968m metro viewers tune in for its final episode, the biggest rating across all six seasons. MAFS helped Nine dominate for the first half of the year and came hot on the heels of 2018’s streaming powerhouse Love Island.

In what seemed to be a play to get in on the action, Seven announced Temptation Island with Seven’s head of programming Angus Ross calling it the “ultimate test of faithfulness”.

“It’s a fascinating exploration of the familiar vs the fantasy relationship. Most of us have an ideal mate in mind, and Temptation Island actually allows participants to meet that person and compare it with their present relationship. It then asks the question, will they stay or stray?” said Ross.

However, the show appears to have stalled, with TV Blackbox reporting production has been cancelled.  A Seven spokesperson, however, told Mumbrella that production had been ‘postponed’ on the project.

It’s possible Seven has cold feet in the dating show world after The Super Switch, a revamped version of Seven Year Switch which aired in 2016 and 2017 on Seven, premiered in June to just 308,000 metro viewers. After just two nights on air, it was dropped to one night a week. Shortly after, it was palmed off to Seven multi-channel 7Flix where it currently airs as two episodes back-to-back on Wednesdays. The last time it aired, the first episode brought in 203,000 metro viewers and 140,000 tuned in for the second.

Temptation Island isn’t the first show to get the chop from the Seven lineup this year. More My Kitchen Rules programming which was scheduled for the latter half of the year was shelved, with the show now set to return Q1 2020.

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