So no prize then.
Did they forget about Nickelodeon? Missed out on an extra 10k ratings.
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Also, whilst the presentation of the Gladiators revival may have been alright in my opinion, I didn’t like how there was little or no tense background music during the events, especially The Eliminator. C’mon, couldn’t they have just used a rearranged/reimagined version of the original UK /Australia background music?
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Premiere episode was just under 400,000 with top 5 rankings in all key demos.
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So is that “meh” or “good”? 
What’s the context for those ratings - what numbers would AO get for example? ta!
Last night’s first episode was shown across three channels, so the number looks OK.
The primetime session of Australian Open usually gets 500,000 to 600,000 metro viewers depending on match-up.
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I think it has to contractually, though. Considering there is no prize money, just the ability to become a Gladiator lmao.
My issue is the choice of events. I understand that Atlasphere’s takes a lot of room, and might come back in season 2. But come on, where is Guantlet? It’s not on the list on Wikipedia.
But do they back up and watch tonight? 
The show was number one yesterday in 10’s target demographic for its main channel of under 50s.
There is usually a drop off to the second episode even for a well received show. Could depend on the competition a bit as well.
Some recent launch episode numbers:
Bachelors 224000
Dessert Masters 477,000
Big Brother 274,000
My Mum Your Dad 290,000
Love Island 167,000
SAS 464,000
Traitors 216,000
Million Dollar Island 409,000
Rush 301,000
Blow Up 288,000
Summit 401,000
Idol 413,000
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Is Gladiators on three channels again tonight?
But it was repeated this arvo on 10 at 2pm, and also on 10Peach at 5pm to the lead up to the Neighbours repeat.
The same four games, three episodes in a row. Seriously?
If we hadn’t glimpsed a few others in the promos you’d think they’d only bothered getting those four. As far as I can tell, there’s eight of them - and a shame that a lot of the classics didn’t come back.
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Is there no gauntlet or hanging tough on this series? If not, then it will just get old and boring very quickly.
I think this show would have been better scheduled for December.
From the promos it appears Hang Tough yes, Gauntlet no.
The Edge (new game introduced in the UK revival) features in the promos here, as does Tilt.
It was the same 4 games again tonight, just in a different order - Powerball > Duel > Pyramid > Wall before the challengers go head to head.
Another sign that 10 is doing this on the cheap.
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Thoughts after two episodes -
Positives:
- Liz and Beau are great; enjoying the humour they’re bringing to it all
- The Gladiators are all great too, very personable and none of them look out of place
- Having the Gladiators play different events instead of restricting them to only the strength events or agility events like previous series did
- Episode 2 was far better with stronger contenders and Powerball as the first event
- The Pyramid is the largest ever - most other series internationally have 9-11 steps whereas this one has 12.
- I don’t mind the locker room scenes in moderation
- I like Hammer being the referee, however…
Negatives:
- Hammer takes far too long to do the ‘3, 2, 1’ every time. It needs to be a lot snappier.
- The ‘crowd’ of a dozen contender and Gladiator families look like they’re a tour group who have accidentally wandered onto the wrong set. Either don’t have them, hide them, or give them a proper viewing area
- Way, way too much filler - contenders and Gladiators being introduced and re-introduced before the first event and throughout the show, too many locker room scenes, score recaps, drawn out referee spiels. They need one or two extra events to fill the 80 minutes, which would help to solve the other issues above.
- Some of the Gladiators in the locker room scenes haven’t even competed yet after two episodes.
- My understanding is that all 6 heats will have the same four events plus Eliminator, with Hang Tough and Tilt introduced in the quarter finals. I hope that’s not right and that they introduce The Edge and/or Whiplash next week.
I notice that one of the two EPs for this series is the co-creator of Gladiators, who also produced the 2008 American Gladiators. I can only assume then that he was heavily involved in this series and not credited in name only (i.e. the final product is not just Channel 10 going rogue with the format) as there are many similarities to the 2008 American series, notably:
- Baskets in Powerball worth 1 and 2 points instead of 2 and 3 points
- The same Gladiator playing against both contenders in Duel
- ‘Contenders’ instead of ‘Challengers’
- The overly blue set
- The eliminator course and focus on the Pyramid
- Going to ad breaks after the referee’s spiel and before the event starts
- Similar competition structure
- Similar Gladiator costumes
- Stuntcasting the contenders based on a similar attribute (e.g. firefighters, and next week there are sons of past Gladiators and ‘over 30s’ as contender pairings)
- The filming structure - with the same four events in the heats, I assume they taped the Duels for all the heats together, then all the Powerballs, Walls, Pyramids then Eliminators which is how AG 2008 was taped rather than episode-by-episode.
The other EP is the “head of Unscripted Television at MGM Studios” from America. Gladiators has always been very expensive to make, so I wonder if this their attempt to make a version that is cheaper and more sustainable to sell to smaller markets around the world. Regardless, they really could’ve done with an Australian voice in there heading it up with them to ensure the nostaglia aspects matched the old Australian series. Things like the changes to Powerball points, challengers, set colours, and different Gladiators in Duel are small things that would have made it feel more like Australian Gladiators and wouldn’t have cost much to change.
I still enjoyed the two episodes and a lot of the issues are not going to be able to be fixed in this series, but I hope they get a second series to fix those things up as there is a lot of potential for a great version of the show based on the quality of the Gladiators themselves.
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According to socials, 10 has decided to move forward the new season premiere of Australian Survivor to Monday, January 29.
How many episodes are there in this season of Gladiators? It has been mentioned on air that there are six heats, then quarter final(s), semi final(s) and final. Tonight 10 will show heat 3. I wonder if 10 will air double episodes sometime during next week?
They could try moving it to Friday or Saturday once a week. 
This now means they will need to make up a week between Survivor and Celebrity somehow. I assume they will just reduce the episodes of Survivor for a few weeks to stretch it out.
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