The ‘Fatty Factor’ now threatening MasterChef Australia
Ten might find itself with a Footy Show repeat on its hands — where fans stuck around for host Fatty Vautin for decades and switched off when he was sacked and a new panel formed. Is this the fate of MasterChef with its new judges, Annette Sharp asks.
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Ten’s decision to sack founding MasterChef judges Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris in July saved the network $2 million in salaries — but might the gamble on three unknowns hasten the end of MasterChef Australia after all?
For 11 years, through successive boardroom battles, restructures, voluntary administration, takeover and bail out, Australia’s endearingly hapless third-placed television network held fast to the success of one program as a guaranteed deliverer of revenue and ratings to Ten’s meagre coffers.
That program was MasterChef, a series that in its first season attracted an audience of more than 3.7 million to its finale.
Eleven years on, 992,000 loyal fans were still watching when Preston, Mehigan and Calombaris signed off from the 2019 series yet many believe those viewers will be the first to bail when the program is rebooted in 2020 with sexy new hosts Jock Zonfrillo, Andy Allen and food writer Melissa Leong at the helm.
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Following Ten’s announcement on Thursday that the new-look MasterChef crew had been chosen, news reports rang with one oft-repeated word: “Unknown.”
Not only is the cast unknown, so too is the program’s chances of success and longevity.
Unknown, unknown, unknown.
Ten must be nervous.
It seems the network had little choice but to replace Preston, Mehigan and Calombaris after the three made a joint pact to extract a better deal from Ten with new contracts said to have been worth in excess of $1 million each.
That Ten is rebooting MasterChef at all after 11 seasons shows how critical the show still is to Ten, which looks to be holding out hope the format might still appeal to a young new audience.
The risk is Ten will find itself with a Footy Show on its hands and come face-to-face with a simple truth, discovered by Nine this year: that Fatty Vautin fans were, after 24 years, hanging around for one thing, Fatty Vautin, and would accept no substitute for him.