The Block Australia loses one fifth of its viewership

Is the sun setting on The Block? Australia’s favourite reality show has seen a significant drop in viewers since its glory days. Find out why.

Scott Cam and Shelly Craft from The Block. The show has dropped 20 per cent of its audience this year. Picture: supplied

The Block might be back, but ratings are sliding substantially amid viewer complaints the show has become “one big ad”.

Channel 9’s flagship show, now in its 19th season, has traditionally been in a league of its own in the TV ratings department, leaving Channel 7 and Channel 10 to grapple over second place.

Now more than six episodes in, The Block’s ratings are down 20 per cent year-on year, in a dramatic fall for Australia’s long time favourite reality program.

On Friday, Seven’s My Kitchen Rules comfortably widened its lead on number one, scoring 622,000 five-city metro viewers, according to OzTAM figures.

Scott Cam at The Block 2024 media launch in Hampton, near Melbourne. Picture: Nine Network.

My Kitchen Rules host Manu Feidel. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The Block had 526,000 metro viewers. A decent result – enough to be the second most watched show on Australian TV for the evening – but a far cry from the million-plus audiences of the show’s heyday.

It was followed by 463,000 viewers for Channel 10’s improv comedy Thank God You’re Here, and 402,000 for ABC’s Hard Quiz.

This is a massive shake-up, even from 2022, when The Block drew 867K viewers on launch night, to MKR’s 503K, and The Masked Singer’s 598K. It was also the only tent pole show to pull more than one million viewers.

The same is not true in 2023.

My Kitchen Rules 2023 teams. Picture: Seven/

Although the Sunday room reveal episodes of The New Block are faring well, viewership numbers aren’t holding up from Monday to Wednesday.

During the week, more Aussies are tuning in to MKR, with 19.5 per cent more of the national audience doing so for episode six.

“The collapse of The Block is seriously bad news for Nine, as it was one of their biggest shows and the bookend to the year for them,” an industry insider told Confidential.

“A decline of more than 20 per cent year on year is a major issue for them. It comes hard on the heels of the failure of Rush, The Summit and Parental Guidance, the axing of Ninja Warrior and the ongoing decline of Lego Masters. No matter what claims its executives make publicly, Nine is now just the MAFS network.”

Indeed, a quick look at the numbers over the years shows the program has been losing viewers pretty consistently for a while now.

The last time 3 million people watched The Block was for the finale of season 1 way back in 2003, while the last time more than 2 million people watched the show was for the finale of season 7 in 2013.

And, although 1.4 million Aussies tuned in to watch the finale of season 18 last year, a premiere hasn’t attracted more than a million metro viewers since season 14 in 2018.