MasterChef is having its biggest shakeup yet, with new judges and a revamped contestant format, but Ten's chief content officer Beverley McGarvey says she’d be more nervous about audience numbers if the show wasn’t changing.
The cooking show, back for its 12th season this year, revealed new judges following the high-profile exit of Matt Preston, Gary Mehigan and George Calombaris over pay reasons. Calombaris was also surrounded by controversy for underpaying staff $7 million, which led to Tourism WA pulling its campaign featuring the chef.
Taking over the judging panel is Scottish celebrity chef Jock Zonfrillo, food critic Melissa Leong and previous MasterChef winner Andy Allen.
The new faces join as there’s talk of fatigue around cooking shows, with the current season of Seven’s My Kitchen Rules trailing its rivals in audience figures. Last year, MasterChef’s season finale was down to 992,000 metro viewers from the 1.3 million metro viewers the year before.
“I’m not worried there’s fatigue for cooking shows, I think Masterchef is probably the only real cooking show,” McGarvey tells AdNews.
“It didn't have its strongest season ever last year, but it had a really solid audience and the cumulative was really good. It’s on for a really long time, and the amount of people that watch MasterChef is really large, so we don’t look around at other people and panic about that.
“We learn from what we’re doing, what everyone else is doing, but i think MasterChef is the only real cooking show. Food is a universal theme, it’s timeless, so we just need to be careful to stay pure to that.”
This season, with sponsors such as Coles and Harvey Norman, sees the introduction of the new format MasterChef Australia: Back To Win. Under this format, 24 former contestants return for a second shot at taking the trophy, including season one runner up Poh Ling Yeow and season two runner up Callum Hann.
MasterChef Australia: Back To Win
McGarvey says the return of these characters will help bring back audiences that may have dropped off throughout the years.
“MasterChef contestants tend to go on with their career in food and they live that life, so to see where they are now is really interesting for the audiences,” she says.
“MasterChef has been on for 12 years, many of those seasons were having finales beyond two million, so there’s a lot of lost audiences that are really connected to these people and interested to see where they are and what they’re doing.”
With the big changes across judges and contestants, McGarvey says the team has ensured to stay true to what audience love about the show, while still moving forward.
“Truthfully, I would be more nervous with the series where we haven’t made a change because in this environment you have to be constantly giving [viewers] reasons to come and check you out,” she says.
“These guys are really credible. Jock, Mel and Andy have great natural talent and chemistry.
“When you look at other shows, MasterChef is unusual in that its team hasn’t changed, most of the other big shows, their judging panels do cycle around so it was kind of an anomaly anyway.”
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