I’m a Celebrity’s rating slump sees morale fall in the jungle

Morale on set of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! is at a low as the show’s ratings plummet. Failing to compete with ­rivals Married At First Sight and My Kitchen Rules, the show only ­managed to attract an audience of 555,000 on Tuesday.

Morale on set of I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! is at a low as the show’s ratings plummet.

Failing to compete with ­rivals Married At First Sight and My Kitchen Rules, the show only ­managed to attract an audience of 555,000 on Tuesday night as the D-list cast is slammed by ­audiences.

Despite it’s popular hosts, Dr Chris Brown and Julia Morris, 2019’s I'm A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! has been criticised for it’s lack of A-list celebrities. Picture: Channel 10

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MAFS had a recorded audience of 1,167,000 while MKR pulled 799,000 sets of eyeballs.

A source from the set of the show which is filmed in South Africa told Confidential the bad ratings were impacting the feelings among workers, who work long hours due to the time differences between Australia and the jungle.

“It has been a disaster from start to finish — there has been no budget this year, so all the trials have been toned down,” the insider said.

“Morale is terrible among the crew, they are desperate to be out. Don’t expect there to be another season.”

One well-placed TV insider said the network must be disappointed that the numbers continue to slip.

“While they spruik being happy with how the show is going, they must be disheartened by the number compared to the other shows,” the source said.

“While the show has never done as well as the competition on Nine and Seven, it feels like it is not even competing this year.”

The show debuted to a respectable audience of 1,098,000 — the highest it has ever seen — but slipped to a low of only just over 550,000 viewers this week.

Channel 10 have stood by the show. In a statement they said they were happy with the audience numbers.

“By launching the show in mid-January, we were able to give audiences a premium entertainment alternative to sport. I’m A Celebrity has beaten the cricket every night and it beat the tennis five of the nine nights it was up against it. We set out to redefine the landscape for summer TV viewing and have delivered on this strategy,” a spokesperson said.

The lack of A-list talent has been attributed to the ratings slump.

Social media lit up with criticism over the lack of real celebrities on the show this year, with a large percentage of the contestants from the Ten stable.

Even the “Hollywood” star, which Ten allowed speculation to grow was Pamela Anderson, is a “daytime TV star” from CBS — Katherine Kelly Lang who was voted out this week.

Industry expert James Manning from Media Week said it was not all bad news for the Channel 10 show.

“That has been a long-term trend with the show often behind the other two. The 2019 numbers are down a little, but it is possibly holding its audience better than My Kitchen Rules with both shows well in the shadow of Married At First Sight,” he said.