Nine’s long-running renovation TV series The Block is a goldmine. Not only does it consistently attract winning ratings for the television network and a premium for advertisers but the contestants are walking away with more money than anyone has ever won in a single episode of TV worldwide.
Four couples won a total of $3.165m on Wednesday night’s show after the four apartments they had renovated and furnished during the series sold in a thriving Melbourne property market.
According to Nine, this beats the previous world record of $2.522m given away in a champion run on the US game show Jeopardy.
Melbourne couple Darren and Deanne Jolly won the 10th series of The Block, taking home $935,000 after their Darling Street, South Yarra, apartment sold for a record $2.29m. Josh Terrett and Charlotte Ekas, from Sydney, took home $810,000 after their apartment sold for $2.2m. Adelaide couple Tim and Anastasia Ielasi sold theirs for $2.175m and Jess and Ayden Hogan, from the Gold Coast, sold theirs for $2m, earning them $665,000 in take-home cash.
Not a bad pay packet for three months’ hard work transforming an ugly 1970s block of flats into a designer apartment, albeit with camera crews following your every move. The final episode, featuring the four couples watching the auction, won Nine a top ratings slot, too, with an average of 2.02m viewers across Australia’s five capital cities, and 2.87m when the regional areas are added.
It was the number one show in every city on Wednesday and peaked at almost 3m viewers nationally, eclipsing shows on other networks such as The Weekly with Charlie Pickering on ABC which averaged 556,00 in the five capital cities.
Despite being a 15-year-old format and never enjoying the media attention lavished on MasterChef Australia or The Voice, The Block has been a consistent winner for Nine. It is such a money spinner thanks to its integrated advertising packages that the network doubled it to two series each year in 2013 without killing audience enthusiasm.
Created by Nine producers Julian Cress and David Barbour and launched in 2003, when participants renovated a rundown Bondi apartment block, the show moved to Melbourne in 2011 where it has stayed except for the one “all-stars” series that returned to Bondi in 2013.
Barbour has described it as a soap opera set on a construction site, a simple game which is very easy to follow: four couples, four houses, one auction. Nine programmers took it off air between 2005 and 2009, but to everyone’s surprise it returned as an even bigger hit in 2010.
The show will return for its 11th series later in 2015 but for viewers who can’t do without renovation on their telly until then, Nine has produced another show to fill the spot. Reno Rumble premieres on Tuesday, 5 May, featuring former contestants from both The Block and Seven’s rival reality show, House Rules.
