WE'VE grown so used to MasterChef's huge success that it's easy to forget one crucial thing: no one saw it coming.
''Two years ago I sat here with a bunch of other media buyers watching a pilot and we all thought it was a bit of a yawn,'' says John Alderton, director of research at the Mitchell Group, which buys advertising space for clients.
''I can say pretty confidently nobody picked it, here or in any of the other media agencies. We thought for it just to survive would count as a pretty good achievement,'' he says.
But with the second season of the show about to enter its final week, MasterChef has rewritten the rules on what is possible in the modern television landscape. It has made stars of its hosts, launched the careers of some of its contestants, spawned spinoffs ranging from cookbooks and magazines to DVDs and even CDs. Above all, it has attracted a massive audience, an average of 1.8 million people a night, and in recent weeks has regularly topped the magic 2 million figure.
''MasterChef's ratings have been a game-changer this year,'' says David Knox, editor of the industry site tvtonight.com.au. ''The show is in a television elite with only a handful of peers: The Block, Dancing with the Stars, Underbelly. These were shows that at their height captured our imagination and delivered consistent figures over the 2 million mark, but none of them was a nightly show. In a fractured TV landscape, that is doubly impressive.''
It's not just the numbers, though. The breadth of the audience is remarkable, too.
''Seventy-five per cent of people in this country have watched at least five consecutive minutes of the show this season,'' says Alderton. ''I don't think there's another program this year that's had so many hours, but the bottom line is that to reach 75 per cent of the audience is extraordinary.''
According to Alderton, the show is especially successful with the 13-17 and 25-39 age groups. ''A lot of parents in that age group are working and I think it's educating their kids in how to cook, which is very helpful to the family and very wholesome,'' he says.
That's a view with which Professor Ian Lang, head of film and television at the Victorian College of the Arts, agrees. ''It provides a genuine social service in helping people look after themselves better,'' he says.
He sees other virtues in the show. ''It reflects a sense of a contemporary Australia that is multicultural, not bogan. It doesn't humiliate people in the way that more calculated reality shows such as Big Brother do. It's one of the few shows that families can not only watch together, but will also discuss. It gives those who are not footy fans something to talk about at work.''
According to one senior reality television producer, there's no secret to why MasterChef has struck such a chord. ''It mimics a lot of dramatic conventions,'' he says. ''The drama is mostly about characters facing obstacles and overcoming them, or failing to. What hooks you is identifying or empathising with the characters so that you 'join' their quest. It's basically Lord of the Rings every night.''
What is remarkable is how much the show has evolved from the British original on which it is based. From a straight cooking show, MasterChef has become a kind of meta-reality show, with elements of everything from Big Brother (the contestants' house; the video diary) to The Amazing Race (the trip to London and Paris; the army challenge, complete with hike).
''To make it into the much more successful show it is, they've effectively cross-pollinated a lot of the Fremantle formats into it, intentionally or not,'' says the reality producer.
Adds David Knox: ''The Wednesday team challenges have mimicked The Apprentice Australia, which is also produced by FremantleMedia, right down to the aerial shots of cars and the contestants on the couch at the end of each episode. If only Nine could get Matt Preston to be their new Donald Trump.''
Source: The Age
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