Jackie O to take on TV star in rival dating show
She’s one of our most popular voices on radio, but she’ll come head-to-head with a famous TV star in a dating show battle.
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The latest battle for TV ratings is expected to pit blonde against blonde when radio’s Jackie “O” Henderson takes on Samantha Armytage as the big name presenters of rival dating shows Stranded on Honeymoon Island and The Golden Bachelor.
Two years after the honeymoon ended for contestants, Seven has finally found a slot in its schedule for the Endemol Shine production Stranded on Honeymoon Island which is narrated by Henderson.
There has been much conjecture about why Seven has taken so long to broadcast the expensive program which has been described as a cross between Married At First Sight and Survivor and sees producers match strangers looking for love before abandoning the couple, still dressed in their wedding garb, on a deserted island with few distractions.
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The last thing the network would want to do with a copycat (and possibly inferior) reality show is pitch it into direct competition with either of those two established programs.
What a crack programmer constrained by budgets might do is hold onto the program and strategically schedule it against – or immediately ahead of – another dating show, one which has had its own gestational issues – in this case The Golden Bachelor hosted by one-time Seven breakfast star Armytage.
The producers of Nine’s Bachelor have had their own teething problems with The Golden Bachelor.
These have included delays in finding an appropriately televisual 60-year-old+ bachelor, problems creating chemistry among older contestants and issues with the Sydney location.
Seven network programmers will be hoping they’ve found a sweet spot in the year for Stranded on Honeymoon Island after shooting it in 2023.
Jackie “O” recently announced the program is slated to air this month.
The KIIS FM breakfast star who was absent from her radio show for three days last week due to illness – she had the flu – and was off again this week when her radio partner Kyle Sandilands, a fellow Seven star, called in sick on Thursday, should by then be sufficiently recovered to hit the airwaves in earnest to plug the show.
Huge blow for TV star as show faces axe
The Seven Network is tipped to axe long-running reality show Dancing with the Stars after the forthcoming latest series wraps in July.
A week before the 22nd season of the program is due to have its premiere comes word the broadcaster has decided to cancel the show.
Such a decision would be a devastating blow to the career of host Sonia Kruger.
According to industry sources Seven is no longer prepared to foot the bill for the expensive reality show for which production costs are estimated to come in at around $1 million an episode.
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That would explain why recent seasons have occupied just five weeks of Seven’s production schedule and not 10 weeks as was the case back in the program’s production heyday from 2005 to 2009.
Seven’s bean-counters have looked at the program and, we hear, decided the sun has set on the format – again.
Having launched the show in 2004 Seven cancelled the broadcast in 2015 after ratings softened.
Ten picked it up in 2019 and 2020 showcasing the talents of Amanda Keller as host before cancelling the program.
Many were surprised when Seven renewed the show the following year in 2021 – the decision largely motivated, insiders said at the time, by the return to the network of Kruger in 2019.
Kruger was co-host of the original local series alongside Daryl Somers.
The cancellation of Dancing brings to three the number of Kruger-hosted programs Seven has ditched in recent years.
This follows the network poaching Kruger from Nine signing on a seven-figure contract that made her one of the highest paid women on Australian television.
Kruger was initially hired to host Big Brother which has since moved across the dial to Ten and golf show Holey Moley which was axed after one season in 2021.
With only The Voice still on air, Seven finds itself under pressure to find a prime time vehicle for the versatile frontwoman.
On Friday, the Seven Network denied DWTS was under review or to be axed.
Chairman Kim’s in-flight entertainment
ABC chairman Kim Williams appeared to be in terrifically high spirits as he took to the air on board a Qantas Dreamliner flight from Sydney to New York last month.
While this column can’t confirm whether Williams sidled up to the nation’s top brass in the Qantas’s chairman’s lounge prior to his flight as experienced and pampered chairs routinely do, this column can confirm Ita Buttrose’s successor wasted little time slipping into his complimentary Qantas jimmy-jams for the 22-hour haul to the Big Apple via Auckland.
According to eye witnesses, it was an upbeat and talkative Williams who boarded flight QF3 to New York.
The ABC on Thursday clarified Williams’ Sydney-New York May 16 business class flight was not funded by taxpayers.
A spokeswoman furthermore said the ABC chair was travelling “alone on non-ABC matters”.
The statement suggests Williams will be picking up his own tab.
While Williams’ selections from the dinner menu drew little reaction – the options of seared snapper with vegetables, Korean braised chicken with rice or beef fillet with chimichurri with a selection of cheeses to follow, apparently equally distracting to all – his in-flight entertainment choice did prompt chatter.
Not for the passionate classicist a catalogue of pre-flight downloaded arts documentaries, BBC news programs and stimulating audio compilations.
While the ABC chairman’s Kindle did keep him entertained for a good portion of the journey it was the media boss’s film selection that brought chortling from nearby travellers.
Williams, who was chief executive of Foxtel for a decade until 2011, has long been a supporter of Australian content and homegrown talent so his choice of a Nicole Kidman film was not surprising.
Some squirmed in their seat when he hit play on Babygirl, a raunchy film in which Kidman plays a sexually frustrated woman drawn to a younger man who dominates her.
Our eyes in the sky were unable to confirm whether Williams made it through Kidman’s first torrid scenes and into her first bowl of milk, or he decided it was a little too much for aircraft viewing.
No word on what he was doing in New York although his trip did coincide with the New York Upfronts preview season.
Networks battle it out for investigative spoils
Nine’s statement on Thursday concerning the creation of a dedicated longform current affairs and investigations unit appears motivated, in part, by recent strikes against the media company by rivals Seven and Ten.
The news that 60 Minutes’ executive producer Kirsty Thomson will head up Nine’s new unit is seen as an endorsement of the woman who lost the support of veteran reporter Liz Hayes before Hayes quit the network in February.
Two months later Hayes turned up at Seven’s Spotlight for a one-off guest appearance, a move seen as a public rebuke of Thomson and Nine which last year axed Hayes’ Under Investigation series.
Following Hayes’ not so subtle swipe has come Ten’s decision to launch its own news investigations unit.
Claims Ten will invest $20 million in the unit have spurred talk the unit would come at the expense of Ten’s much-depleted The Project.
Having recently poached reporters Amelia Brace, Bill Hogan and Denham Htchcock to Ten’s new investigations unit, Ten news boss Martin White might want to cut out the middle man and simply hire Hayes who had her TV start at Ten four-plus decades ago.
Originally published as Jackie O to take on TV star in rival dating show
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