As reality bites Seven and Nine, Channel 10 is making a splash with its ratings hits

WHILE Seven and Nine take their reality fight to court, Ten is enjoying their time in the sun basking in the ratings success of MasterChef and The Bachelor.

TV splash ... The Bachelor Sam Wood has helped Ten to one of its best ratings performances in years. Picture: Channel 10

CHANNEL 10 is rightly basking in the ratings spotlight, taking impressive momentum into this week after the success of reality hits, MasterChef and The Bachelor.

As Seven and Nine cannibalise their evening audiences with copycat programming — escalating the battle to court on Friday — it’s been Ten which has seen its mix of big-branded reality formats shine.

The crowning of Ballina restaurant manager, Billie McKay as this year’s MasterChef winner was a breakthrough for the network, watched by 2.13 million viewers — making it the number one entertainment program of this year and Ten’s biggest prime-time audience since August 2011.

Such was the rush to catch-up on the result, fans also generated a record two million video views on streaming platform, tenplay — the biggest number of video views for a single program on the service since it launched.

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They followed it up with The Bachelor — sensibly scheduled later in the week over Wednesday and Thursday nights — beating out both Seven and Nine’s cooking shows, peaking with a launch audience of 1.28 million viewers nationally; while Twitter engagement saw the show’s hashtag trending worldwide on Thursday night.

This will hopefully roll into solid figures for The Great Australian Spelling Bee, which should find broad appeal with families and Ten’s target demographic of 25-54s.

Ten’s chief programming officer, Beverley McGarvey would not be drawn on her rivals’ reality woes — and legal war — but instead spruiked the impact her network’s line-up had made.

“MasterChef Australia was an outstanding success for us again this year, with its capital-city audience up 14%. Season 3 of The Bachelor Australia has started very strongly and is up 23% after the first two episodes.

We will continue to offer viewers unique and compelling content across the rest of 2015. Tomorrow night we will launch the exciting new family entertainment series, The Great Australian Spelling Bee, and later this year we will introduce the first local version of The Bachelorette.”

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