Ten’s much hyped The Biggest Loser: Transformed will be axed from its Sunday night time-slot following abysmal ratings. However, the show will continue to air at the 7.30pm time slot on weeknights.
The Sunday night slot will be replaced with new episodes of Modern Family.
Yesterday, B&T reported the Sunday night version of the show had managed just 305,000 viewers according to OzTam figures. Putting that in perspective, Seven’s MKR had 1.02 million viewers, Nine’s Married At First Sight scored a season high of 1.19 million viewers and even the ABC’s Grand Designs beat it with 743,000.
To highlight The Biggest Loser’s woes, it was even beaten by Seven’s Weekend Sunrise.
Ten would have been hoping its weight loss show would have continued the momentum from the now complete third series of I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here which had an average capital city audience of 851,000 and was up nine percent from the previous year.
Sunday nights too are elimination nights, which tend to up the viewing average.
How long the network can sustain a program rating around the 300K mark is anyone’s guess and the 2017 season of MasterChef probably can’t come soon enough for the beleaguered network. Ten, thus far, is said to backing The Biggest Loser despite its poor ratings in the first week and said in a statement to media: “We are confident that Australians will embrace it.”
However, it’s clear The Biggest Loser‘s new format isn’t resonating with viewers. Ten revamped the show for 2017, ditching regular hosts Michelle Bridges and Steve “Commando” Willis for Shannon Ponton and Libby Babet.
This year’s format also has less of a focus on morbidly obese contestants and more overweight ones struggling to lose the pounds. One female contestant – who weighed 78 kilos – was even lambasted in the media as not being fat enough to appear on a show about weight loss.
