Back in August, just after Channel 9’s “The Block” turned out to be a flop, MacroBusiness hosted a post by Christine Kenneally in which she said:
But last night The Block unintentionally revealed on national TV that property-as-pathology is over. In a private auction where bidders had to pre-register (and were sworn to silence for 24 hours), only one of the four houses was sold.
One can’t help but wonder what the show’s sponsors and advertisers are talking about this morning. McDonalds, Mitre 10, and other companies ran ads in every break, many featuring couples from the show. What about the design companies whose beautiful furniture was featured in the houses that couldn’t sell? What does it feel like to have one’s products prominently displayed in such a debacle? What about the auctioneers from prominent real estate companies who stood up in front of the cameras to show off their fast-talking trade? They failed in front of more than three million people.
Most newspapers ran the story with a photo of the winning couple–that is, the only couple to sell a house, not the couple whose house sold for the most money. But there were surely many shots from the show that they could have used instead, pictures that told the actual story. Maybe a shot of the two sisters who barely saw their husbands or small children for weeks as they worked like indentured servants for the show. As their house failed at auction, their expressions went from stunned to sour. One turned to the other, either forgetting or no longer caring that she was being filmed. That, she said, was “a waste of time.”
Fast forward 3 months, change the city and the Channel and …. it’s the same result:
Victorian contestants Peter Mosticone and Melissa Thomsen have suffered the indignity of walking away empty-handed after the finale of The Renovators. The winner of the ailing Channel 10 reality show was South Australian builder Michael Lynch, who pocketed $100,000.
In a result that mirrored the fizzer finale of The Block, three of the six renovated houses sold at a loss. Mosticone’s half-done house cost a total of $802,083 but could fetch only $770,000 at auction.
Thomsen’s weatherboard made it into the black, with a measly $1145 profit from the $575,000 sale price. Lynch managed a healthy $68,012 for his fibro cottage in the winner-take-all TV competition.
The Renovators result showed that Sydney’s housing market is in the same sort of slump that affected the Melbourne auctions on The Block. Lynch pocketed $25,732 profit from the sale of Luke Pollock’s city terrace, with Ten forced to throw in $5111 to get to the $100,000.
The Renovators has been a huge ratings disappointment for Ten since it made its debut on July 24.
The series, which cost a reported $25 million to produce, has achieved about half of the expected 1.5 million viewers an episode expected by Ten.
Despite the disappointing ratings, Ten is still insisting The Renovators will return next year.
“We have already confirmed at the upfronts (2012 programming launch), that The Renovators will be returning in 2012. However, we will obviously be reviewing the components (of this year’s series) that did and didn’t work,” a Ten spokesman said.
Attempting an over capitalised “flip” in a stagnant market was always going to be a disaster, but it is bigger than that.
“The Block” was a flop on concept but it did do very well on the ratings front. “The Renovators” couldn’t even manage that. Obviously there is a slight difference in format between the two shows and it is possible that Channel 10 got it wrong. It’s also possible over 3 months that viewer interest in housing waned some more.
If this is the case then this outcome also suggests that the heyday of “housing TV” in Australia could be over as well (at least its pervasiveness). Perhaps it is too early to make that call, but I do think that these results have definitely been a psychological blow to the market which is obviously the opposite of the desired effect for many companies connected with these shows. Channel 10 says it will be reviewing components that didn’t work before producing the next season. The problem is that the major component that isn’t working is the housing market itself, I wonder how exactly Channel 10 thinks it is going to fix that…..
I am also wondering where poor Phil Spencer can go from here.