Ten is pushing MasterChef Australia Mega Week in a bid to face down timeslot competition from The Voice and the quietly consistent House Rules.
Since the cookery competition kicked off two weeks ago to 874,000 viewers – down on 2013 – it has struggled against its rivals.
The show has been averaging around 900,000 – around half viewers Nine's The Voice is repeatedly notching up.
So will the Mega Week, featuring guest chefs Maggie Beer, Alla Wolf Tasker and Ollie Gould, be enough to claw back some viewers?
Media buyers think it won't do any harm.
Claire Butterworth, Sydney trading director at MEC, said: “Having a guest chef every night will definitely help. The ratings should, at worst, remain flat. They are, however, up against the last week of blind auditions on The Voice.”
Lucy Formosa-Morgan, head of trading at PHD, added: “Against a juggernaut like The Voice, the numbers are to be expected. And on Thursday nights when it has some clean space, it's doing well. I think it will grow slightly this week, and it will help the network promote the rest of its programming.”
Theo Zisoglou, trading director at Match Media, said: “Despite a softer launch than 2013, MasterChef is performing well when you consider it's providing Ten a higher share of FTA TV audience when comparing the last two weeks with MasterChef versus all of March. If last night is any indication, Mega Week will pay off with a slight increase in audience.”
In terms of promoting its shows, the consensus is Ten is improving but could do better. The network understands this need. The problem is that it also has to put as much of its available capital into better programming.
Formosa-Morgan said: “When you've got The Voice or My Kitchen Rules, it's a lot easier to promote your other programming. Ten has not had that and doesn't have the same sized marketing budgets either. It has not done a huge amount of promotion for Mega Week and I think Ten could have got the word out better, but that comes back to not having the eyeballs on the network.”
MEC's Butterworth said that Ten was investing more in marketing, realising that it's own platform "no longer has the reach that is once had" by spending on radio and outdoor to drive better reach. "But turning a ship around like this is going to take time.”
“Ten needs to broaden its marketing plans outside of the network,” added Zisoglou. “No point preaching to the choir, so while promoting its programs on air should help maintain its audience, what it really needs is growth. Ten must look at bigger, more cut-through campaigns. It is the challenger brand in the market and should push some marketing boundaries when promoting new shows.”
Last week, research associates Arry Tanusondjaja and James Martin, from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, argued that Ten needs to promote its shows more widely.
Ten suggested such advice "was not news".
“We have publicly acknowledged that we need to work at promoting and marketing our content more effectively and consistently, so this isn’t news," said a spokesperson. "We’ve already increasing our marketing spend this year and we’re looking at new ways to promote our content and reach more people.”
The Network declined to elaborate on how it was promoting MasterChef Mega Week.
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