MKR star’s thinly-veiled dig at MasterChef’s ‘bad ratings’

Former My Kitchen Rules star Colin Fassnidge couldn’t resist a thinly-veiled swipe as MasterChef sinks further in the ratings.

Former My Kitchen Rules judge Colin Fassnidge has taken a self-deprecating veiled swipe at MasterChef’s ratings woes this season, telling fans that he hadn’t seen ratings this bad … since his own show, MKR.

The TV chef’s tweet comes as MasterChefsunk to 376,000 viewers across the five metro capital cities for Wednesday’s episode. That’s after this current Fans vs Favourites season opened on Monday to 545,000 viewers across the five city metros – the lowest premiere viewing figures in the 14 seasons of the franchise.

“The last time I seen bad ratings like this on a show ………… I was on it,” Fassnidge tweeted, along with a laughing emoji and a boxing glove emoji.

Former MKR judge Colin Fassnidge. Picture: Toby Zerna

MasterChef judges Melissa Leong, Andy Allen and Jock Zonfrillo.

Fassnidge was among the judges on the final season of Seven’s hit cooking show My Kitchen Rules in 2020, when the show’s ratings sunk to a low of 395,000 across the five metro capitals. By the end of that season, only 553,000 viewers tuned in to watch the grand final – and the show has not been on-air since.

But Ten is certainly not alone in dealing with soft ratings. Seven, Nine and Ten all launched their tentpole family-friendly 7:30pm reality shows on Monday night, with The Voice, Lego Masters and MasterChef respectively, and all are down on previous seasons.

Seven's The Voice has beat Nine and Ten's offerings this week.

The Voice won out on night one, pulling 843,000 viewers – by Wednesday’s episode, they were still ahead but had fallen to 629,000 viewers, significantly narrowing their lead on Lego Masters.

Nine’s Hamish Blake-fronted offeringdrew 672,000 viewers on Monday, which had dropped to 562,000 by Wednesday, while MasterChef has been rating behind them both all week.

And while Seven is winning the timeslot, it’s a noticeable drop from the network’s first season of the The Voice last year, which scored 1.91m viewers for its first episode on the new network.

Seven had dramatically poached The Voice from rival network Nine in 2020. At the time, Nine publicly insisted they were not fussed about losing the long-running show, which they sniffed had become “by far the poorest financial performer on our slate” due to its “declining demographic profile.”

Originally published as MKR star’s thinly-veiled dig at MasterChef’s ‘bad ratings’