Hunted finale a ratings fizzer against The Voice and The Block

Both Seven and Nine launched two of their biggest reality TV offerings for the year this week – and it meant bad news for Ten.

Both Seven and Nine launched two of their biggest reality TV offerings for the year this week – and it meant bad news for Ten.

The second season of Ten’s cat-and-mouse reality series Hunted aired on Monday night.

Back in 2022, Hunted was a ratings hit for Ten, hitting a season peak of 711,000 viewers across the five metro capitals. 549,000 people tuned in to watch the 2022 finale, rising to 602,000 when the winner was announced.

And crucially, last year, other than the Birmingham Commonwealth Games over on Seven, Hunted didn’t face much ratings competition (it easily outrated Nine’s offering in the same timeslot, dating show Beauty and the Geek). Ten also had the good sense to schedule Hunted so it would wrap days before Nine’s dependable ratings behemoth The Block moved into the same timeslot.

One year on, and Hunted’s second season finale seemed to get lost in what was a very crowded night of television on Monday: the FIFA women’s world cup match between Australia and Denmark absolutely dominated the ratings, with an astonishing 2.294 million people tuning in across the five metro capitals.

Hunted star Ben Owen. Pic supplied by Channel Ten

The Voice coach Rita Ora.

Also on Seven, The Voice was the top-rated non-sports or news show of the night, with 789,000 viewers, while The Block fell victim to world cup fever, dropping out of the night’s top 10 with 557,000 viewers (a drop of 165,000 from its season premiere the night before).

But the news was worse for Hunted: just 353,000 people across the five metro capitals tuned in for the finale, rising to 421,000 as it was revealed contestants Holly and Jimi had both won, sharing in the $100,000 prize money.

Those numbers are well below anything the show rated during its first season, and may leave Ten wishing they’d pulled Hunted forward by a week to escape the World Cup / The Block / The Voice ratings avalanche.

Later this week, Ten will take another punt on a series that’s had an interesting afterlife since its first season aired to little interest last year.

Ten will have another crack at The Traitors this Sunday.

The Rodger Corser-hosted reality series The Traitors failed to attract an audience while it aired in October 2022, pulling viewing figures in the 200,000s throughout the season.

Usually, numbers like those would make canning the show an easy decision, but something interesting happened afterwards: a month after Ten’s season finished, the English version of The Traitors became an absolute TV phenomenon when it aired in the UK.

British Traitors fans impatient for a second season even started to track down the Aussie version online, marvelling how good it was.

Ten will be hoping some of that British buzz will translate to Aussie audiences – and put up a good fight against The Block and The Voice – when The Traitors’ second season premieres 7:30pm this Sunday.