As Channel Nine's sturdy renovation contest, The Block, starts its 11th season with contestants facing the challenge of the eight-storey 'Blocktagon', questions hang over the future of the country's longest-running reality TV show.
The unceasing parade of reality TV in prime-time has led to what Steve Allen, managing director of Fusion Strategy, calls "reality fatigue". As soon as one batch wraps, a new crop is unveiled. Right now, The X Factor, The Biggest Loser and the Blocktagon are leading the charge for the final ratings stretch of the year, just as The Hotplate shuts off its burners, the final ballad is belted out on The Voice and the last tango is performed on Dancing With the Stars.
As The Block's co-creator and co-executive producer David Barbour notes, this year has been heavily loaded, and arguably over-loaded, with reality TV and especially with renovation and cooking contests.
"It's been a very renovation-heavy year," he says. "We've had House Rules, The Block, Reno Rumble and now The Block again. And it's been an odd year when it comes to numbers - it's been rating cats and dogs."
He's referring to the impressive figures recorded by Channel Seven for its funny animal video shows, such as Cats Make You Laugh Out Loud, which were hastily thrust into the schedule when the heavily promoted Restaurant Revolution tanked in its first week and was pruned back from the anticipated three nights a week to one.
Earlier in the year, The Block Triple Threat took a hammering in the ratings from Seven's popular cooking contest, My Kitchen Rules, which led to questions about the wisdom of Nine pitting it against Seven's powerhouse. In addition, there's been discussion about Nine persisting with running two seasons of The Block each year and exhausting the format.
"All the evidence suggests that The Block will not shoot the lights out," says Allen of the new season. "The trend has been pretty consistent to date, a gentle drift down, minus 2 per cent, then minus 7 per cent, then minus 5 per cent, and that was before we went wall-to-wall reality, with shows end-to-end."
Speculation about The Block's future has been fuelled by the fact that the show's creators and executive producers, Barbour and Julian Cress, have yet to purchase a property for the next season, although Barbour says, "We're in the market at the moment. We're always looking."
Nine's official line is: "We are yet to announce our 2016 programming line-up. The Block has been a cornerstone of Nine's schedule for many years and our producers are continuing to look for the next perfect location."
It's understandable that Nine would be reluctant to pull the plug on a production that has been a tent pole of its schedule, especially since it was "stripped" in 2011, growing from a weekly program to one screening on multiple weeknights.
Even with the industry whispers about its prospects, The Block has demonstrated its durability. Premiering in 2003, the homegrown format was an instant hit. After its third season in 2004, it disappeared until 2010 and Nine has run two seasons of it each year since 2013. So it's conceivable that, even if the network chooses to rest the show and not to face the force of MKR early next year, it could return in the second half of 2016, or the following year.
Whatever the future holds, the factors in play suggest that the producers and the network will be closely monitoring viewer enthusiasm about the Blocktagon.
As Allen notes, "Anything above 850,000 -900,000 viewers would be fine", although Nine would clearly be hoping for a return to the glory days when the show sailed easily over the magic million mark.
The Block premieres on Sunday at 7pm on Nine.
