James Weir recaps Channel 7’s year from hell

The million-dollar Adele flub has snowballed into an even more expensive year for Channel 7. James Weir recaps.

If Australia’s TV networks were a family, Channel 7 would be that bogan cousin who works at the mines and splashes their cash around on boats and really big TVs, flaunting it in the face of your uncle Channel 10 who can’t even afford to see a dentist.

The network is forking out cash for controversy in a series of expensive mistakes. And news of this week’s million-dollar Adele bungle caps off a year from hell.

Jaws dropped when The Sunday Telegraph reported Seven had paid one million dollars for the rights to air the Adele: One Night Only special in Australia, only to cock it up by not following through on the one basic condition. The deal was like a value-pack of Vileda sponges — said to have included the concert, an Oprah interview plus an exclusive sit-down between Adele and Channel 7 reporter Matt Doran, who flew to London, did the chat, got outed for not having listened to the singer’s new album and then had his interview footage held hostage by furious record label execs.

With or without the Matt Doran sit-down, the package deal was not worth one million dollars to begin with. The network was only allowed to air the special a week after the US and, by then, everyone had already read about the juiciest Oprah revelations and watched the best bits in clips on the internet.

When it finally hit Australian TV screens on Sunday night – after a days-worth of internet mockery about the Doran debacle – it pulled in 747,000 metro viewers.

That’s a respectable figure for free-to-air TV these days but it’s not so great when you realise it was beaten by the locally produced novelty reality show Lego Masters: Bricksmas Special, which pulled in 804,000 metro viewers for Nine. (Sidenote: puns are the worst but it’s delightful to imagine all those suited-up TV execs sitting around Kerry Packer’s old boardroom table and repeating the word “Bricksmas” over and over).

Channel 7 paid one million bucks to get beaten by a piece of Lego and then ridiculed on the internet. Finally, we’ve found the one thing that hurts more than standing barefoot on a tiny Lego brick.

If Adele was pissed at Matt Doran, you can only imagine how she’d feel about getting trumped by Bricksmas.

It’s the latest in a series of controversies and pointless spending sprees associated with the network this year. There was the $500,000 that was reportedly paid to secure embattled ex-footballer Sam Burgess on SAS: Australia. It seemed like a total win – orchestrate Burgess’ redemption and get the exclusive scoop with raw revelations about his past drug and cheating scandals.

But those very scandals led to questions about why Seven was trying to make Burgess a prime-time TV star in the first place.

It’s been an expensive and controversial year for Seven’s shows … CLOCKWISE: Katie Hopkins, Sam Burgess, Thomas Markle Jr, Omarosa. CENTRE: Caitlyn Jenner.

Then there was the estimated $200,000 paid for the Katie Hopkins fiasco. The controversial British commentator was flown out to appear on Big Brother VIP and, before even entering the mansion, made headlines for flouting mandatory hotel quarantine rules. It led to mass backlash against Seven for even associating with her in the first place and ended with Hopkins getting axed (and deported) but still paid, without ever appearing on the show. We’ll mark that one down as a loss.

Now, pull out your calculators to add up the dollars used to lure sorta-Kardashian Caitlyn Jenner, almost-royalty Thomas Markle Jr and former Donald Trump hanger-on Omarosa into the Big Brother mansion. Tabloid reports estimate they were paid $500,000, $200,000 and $450,000. (Markle Jr confirmed on The Kyle & Jackie O Show his payment was close to, but “not quite”, the reported figure).

It’s a lot of money to pay for a show that has barely managed to scrape into the Top 20 overnight ratings list.

While Big Brother VIP and SAS: Australia are produced externally by independent production companies, when all that cash is bundled together with the Adele flub, that’s nearly a $3 million bill associated with Seven for controversies and failures that the network has been forced to wear publicly.

Speaking of expensive mistakes, who knows how much Seven will have to pay now it’s being sued by the man the network’s news division falsely identified as being involved in the abduction of missing Perth child Cleo Smith.

But not all controversies cost millions of dollars. Some are just fun bonuses – like Home And Away star Sam Frost publishing an anti-vaxxer video, or Seven news reporter Georgia Love posting questionable memes about Asian restaurants, or Dancing With The Stars contestant Angie Kent pleading guilty to a drink driving charge.

No doubt Seven execs are just wishing they invented Bricksmas.

Twitter, Facebook: @hellojamesweir