#Nine and Seven pull knives out over kitchen clash

Max Mason

Neil Perry, Jess Ho, Erez Gordon and John Lethlean are judges on Seven's Restaurant Revolution. Photo: Supplied

The Seven and Nine networks are trading blows over the scheduling clash of their new cooking shows, as media and advertising agencies warn of genre fatigue.

Seven's Restaurant Revolution and Nine's The Hotplate will be pitted against each other on Tuesday night. It is the second time this year that the two leading networks have screened reality shows of the same genre in the same time slot.

Both networks recently wrapped up renovation shows, Nine with Reno Rumble and Seven with House Rules. which split audiences (and prompted criticism from broker UBS last week)

The judges on Nine's Hotplate are Scott Pickett and Tom Parker Bowles. Photo: Supplied

Starcom MediaVest national investment director Andy Taylor said that having the two shows on at the same time created a problem, from an investment perspective, because the market is so volatile.

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Both of the shows will have value, both will deliver fantastic audiences. Cooking shows have been, and still are, the hotspot for audiences. But we are getting to wear-out factor, and to put them head-to-head just increases that, Mr Taylor said.

I'm not sure that the market is in a place right now, after a challenging first half of the year, where a head-to-head strategy is the best position for consumers, audiences, agencies and clients alike. But it will be interesting to see how these two new formats perform after the settling period. Ultimately the audience will be the judge of how it settles out after the first week.

Restaurant Revolution is an in-house production by Seven, and Endemol has produced Hotplate for Nine.

Clashing time slots

A Nine spokesperson said: We are disappointed Seven have decided to schedule their restaurant series directly against ours – as you know we released our launch date over a week before they decided where to put their show. They have also since changed their scheduling plans to ensure the two series are directly head to head.

Nine added: While we're disappointed Seven have decided to put their series directly against ours, we're confident we have a great series – however, in the end the viewers will decide.

Seven hit back, saying Nine's understanding of program scheduling was different from theirs and insisting they had set their launch date months ago. The best thing about the timings is that the audience has a choice from great local productions, a Seven spokesperson said. Restaurant Revolution is a whole new concept around some exciting casting.

On Hotplate. it appears, looking at its promotion, that we were able to help Nine with their promo concepts, but we draw the line at actually producing their show for them.

The biggest beneficiary of Nine and Seven's scheduling face-off has been Ten, whose MasterChef series has improved markedly this year and will wrap up on Monday.

Ten said that it increased its television audience for MasterChef by 16 per cent this year, after launching on May 5 and running up against Reno Rumble until late June and House Rules until last week.

For the month of June, Ten lifted its share of revenue from media buyers, year-on-year, from 18 per cent in 2014 to 23.1 per cent in 2015, according to Standard Media Index.

MasterChef offered viewers a clear point of difference and firmly cemented its position as the most credible, respected and authentic cooking show on Australian television, Network Ten chief programming officer Beverley McGarvey said.

Seven was No. 1 in terms of advertising revenue share over the 2014-2015 financial year, with 40.1 per cent. Nine had 38.7 per cent and Ten had 21.2 per cent.

Managing director of advertising agency Young Rubicam Andrew Dowling said that when a certain concept is popular, it is not unusual for it to be capitalised on across the industry.

The latest iterations seem to be slightly more deliberate in catering to key audiences, and overtly targeting the bigger advertisers the networks would like to attract, Mr Dowling said.

While they can be successful for specific networks, inherently it's a short-term play. and not meaningfully growing the category, he said.

If they were looking for a longer-term view, creative content that entertains requires networks to come up with new formats, new programming. However, that is inherently risky and requires a brave level of investment.

Free-to-air networks need to be prepared to take a calculated risk or they will leave themselves open to more innovative, global and targeted competitors, Mr Dowling said.