Reality TV is far from dead. In 2015 it will multiply across commercial TV screens in an orgy of building, cooking … and of course singing.



In one new hybrid show on Channel Seven the dual genres of food and renovation will collide in Kitchen Revolution: a reality format which will screen every week night until the restaurants built by the contestants are ready for the viewers to visit and eat the cooked by the reality stars. True interactivity.

For viewers, there is the chance to buy in real time the products featured in the shows – such as fridges and drills – and for advertisers there is the chance to have their products featured in the action.

“Ever dreamed of opening up your own restaurant? Restaurant Revolution will give regular people the opportunity to road test their restaurant dream and make it a reality.”

As CEO Tim Worner said: there isn’t a single moment of TV Seven makes without thinking of where the advertisers can fit in. The buzzwords are “highly integrative”.

Kitchen Revolution, in which contestants will locate, renovate and run a restaurant in pursuit of reality glory, is the new addition to Seven’s schedule which is already bulging with The X Factor, Dancing with the Stars, My Kitchen Rules and House Rules.

My Kitchen Rules was the number one show of 2014, now way ahead of MasterChef Australia which was once the king of cooking shows over on Ten. The MKR winner announcement was watched by 3.8m viewers.

Seven says MKR will be back “with more instant restaurant rounds than ever before and a colourful array of new characters”.

Colourful is the key. A showreel indicated the vaudeville “characters “ of MKR created by clever casting are even more polarising this year.

House Rules has done so well for Seven they have commissioned it twice. In 2015 there will be two series of House Rules, following in the footsteps of Nine’s The Block, which already has two series each calendar year. Yes, renovation is still hot, and in TV if it works flog it to death.

Seven’s director of network production Brad Lyons: “We will be expanding the domination of House Rules next year. The second season averaged 2.3m viewers and enjoyed an astonishing 25% year-on-year growth.”

Not to be outdone, Nine will launch “the most controversial social experiment” next year in a new reality format Married at First Sight, in which contestants will be hitched to complete strangers. But more details will be unveiled when Nine Entertainment Co holds its programming launch in early December.

Over two days at Fox Studios, Seven West Media showed off its wares to a stream of advertisers, media buyers and journalists, promising to remain at the top of the ratings until 2020 with a strong offering of multi-channel Olympic sport, Australian drama, Anzac commemoration and of course the real money spinner, reality.

Seven will broadcast the Games of the XXXI Olympiad in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, the XXIII Olympic Winter Games in PyeongChang in 2018 and the Games of the XXXII Olympiad in Tokyo in 2020.

The leading network for eight years, Seven has a 40% commercial share of viewers, leaving Nine and Ten to scrap over the remaining 60%. But what Seven doesn’t have is enough younger viewers. Nine is winning in the key under-50 demographics loved by advertisers.

But it’s not all reality. There is sport, news, current affairs and of course breakfast television in Sunrise, which is still streaks ahed of Nine’s Today.

Adding to its drama slate of Home and Away and Winners and Losers are two new dramas which are star vehicles for the leads from Packed to the Rafters Rebecca Gibney and Erik Thomson.

Thomson returns to Seven in the comedy drama series 800 words, about a widowed writer who takes a sea change with his two teenage daughters. His former Packed to the Rafters co-star Gibney will star in a crime series called Winter.