Desperate and Dateless: maybe that should be the new title for Ten's The Bachelorette when it goes to air later this year.
In taking the celebrity route with Sophie Monk as its dateless dispenser of roses and affections, the network is desperately trying to recover from the big losses inflicted by its weight-loss reality disaster The Biggest Loser Transformed, the failure of which has blown a hole in the network's slow and steady recovery over the past few years.
BLT, as no one ever called it, launched in mid-March against Nine's Married at First Sight and Seven's My Kitchen Rules. It was meant to anchor Ten's prime-time line-up across the week, but pulled a dismal five-capital-city audience of just 450,000 on debut, barely scraping into the top 20 shows on the day.
Things only got worse from there, as the show shed viewers faster than its contestants could cast off the kilos. Audiences dipped below 300,000, while its commercial rivals were topping a million; on one occasion the show was even beaten into fifth place by a documentary on SBS about great railway journeys.
A fortnight after launch, BLT was shunted off to the bacon-lettuce-and-tomato slot, airing at lunchtimes during the week, where it has sometimes failed even to crack the top 100 programs of the day.
In the Biggest Indignity, the Biggest Loser finale will be aired as a special on an extended edition of the network's panel show Studio 10 on Monday May 1.
Ten will be hoping the new season of Masterchef can get things back on track, but it knows from bitter experience that the impact of one misfiring primetime show can be huge and long-lasting.
On some analyses, the ratings rot at Ten set in with the failure of its big-budget reality show The Renovators in mid-2011. Only in the past 12 months or so has it looked to be regaining significant ground.
But BLT's failure has once again derailed the wagon. Last Tuesday, Ten's highest rating show was The Project, which came in at 15th with just 490,000 viewers. Advertisers demand more bang for their buck, and with a half-yearly financial report due later this week, the network's management will be desperate to assure investors they are on the case.
The Bachelorette is one of the key planks of Ten's prime-time platform, but there's an element of risk that the failure of BLT will have amplified. Last year's second season didn't rate as well as the first.
Injecting a celebrity element in the form of Monk, a popular actress-model-singer-radio host who doesn't take herself too seriously, could be a canny move - even if it does look a bit desperate, on both sides.
Interviewed by Karl Stefanovic on the Logies red carpet on Sunday, just hours after her role in season three had been announced, Monk gave an explanation for her involvement in the dating show.
"My mum suggested it," the 37-year-old said. "She's like, 'You should do that if you can't meet anyone new in the industry'??? and I was like, no. And then I went, 'Actually, yeah, if I want to meet someone down-to-earth and normal, that's how I'd do it'."
Of course, most mere mortals would not think a reality dating show was the place to meet a normal down-to-earth suitor, but Monk sprang to fame as a 19-year-old on the reality show Popstars, which cast and created a girl group, Bardot, from the ground up, so her notion of normal might not be the same as yours or mine.
Besides, there's plenty of abnormal out there in the normal world too. "At least they background check them and stuff, so I know it won't be my stalkers," she said of the casting process for The Bachelorette. "It's the safest I can be."
While Ten timed the announcement to guarantee maximum exposure via rival Nine's Logies telecast, Monk's involvement in The Bachelorette has been teased for a while.
On April 5, Monk appeared as Tom Gleeson's interview victim on the Hard Chat segment of The Weekly with Charlie Pickering on the ABC.
Gleeson noted that she had been discovered on one of the very first reality shows on Australian TV, and asked, "Do you wish you'd waited until a reality show came up that people actually remember?"
"I wish I was in one now, that's a bit cooler," Monk replied.
"What one would you prefer?"
"The Bachelorette," she said, trying to look as if the thought had just occurred to her that moment. "I'm very single."
"Do they have celebrity bachelorettes," Gleeson asked.
"No, they don't. But I could be the first."
Spooky.
Of course, Monk is a reality TV veteran, having also appeared as a judge on the US dating show The Choice, and winning the 2015 season of The Celebrity Apprentice Australia.
But not everything she touches in that space turns to gold, as Gleeson noted.
"Last year you were on the eighth season of Australia's Got Talent, which was also the last season," he said. "Coincidence? Did you drive that franchise into the ground?"
"I don't know," said Monk, "but I'm starting to think I don't make things number one, do I?"
Ten will be desperately hoping this coupling turns out to be otherwise. Anything less than a perfect match could spell big trouble indeed.
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Twitter: @karlkwin
