Viewers' true idol was a renovator's delight


Viewers' true idol was a renovator's delight, By Peter Gotting,
Marketing Writer - 29th July 2003
(Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald)


Australians still enjoy watching wannabe popstars humiliate themselves on television, but not as much as perving on four couples as they try to out-renovate each other.

This year's most successful regular program, The Block, just got bigger, with 2.4 million viewers tuning in to the Channel Nine reality show.

The Block's block, a building in Bondi in which four couples renovated four apartments, was open for inspection on Saturday, giving hundreds of nosey Sydneysiders a preview of the finished results.

Sunday night's The Block even beat last Monday's Big Brother finale, when 2.27 million viewers watched Regina win its third series.

Channel Ten's centrepiece program for the second half of the year, Australian Idol, was watched by 1.65 million viewers on Sunday night, winning its timeslot against Channel Nine's 60 Minutes and Channel Seven's new show, Deal or No Deal.

About 10,000 young people auditioned for Australian Idol, a talent show which will secure at least one ambitious singer a record contract with BMG.

But media analysts said Ten would have hoped for a debut audience closer to 2 million.

Ten is hoping Idol will help it retain its dominance of the under-40s audience. It earned more than 50 per cent of the 16- to 39-year-old audience.

The result was pleasing for McDonald's, Telstra, Nestle, L'Oreal, Sakata and Sony, which paid more than $1 million each to sponsor the show.

Idol was not quite as popular as Seven's similar Popstars series in 2000, which attracted about 1.75 million for its first episode.

But media analysts said the best was yet to come.

"The interesting bit [of Australian Idol] doesn't start until a few shows in - when [the viewer] gets to vote," said John Sintras of Starcom Worldwide, a company which advises advertisers such as Sony.

"The whole talk value of the show is still to come - the water cooler value."

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