Gladiators

Buddy, I’m not convinced they’ll even finish showing this series.

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Absolutely not.

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There seemed to be a high attrition toll in this season. In the first six episodes, four contestants and one Gladiator (Viking aka Jett Kenny) got injured while competing, and had to be subbed out.

If they make another series, would they listen to us and fix the problems?

They’re not going to throw more money at a show that has already failed.

Shows that are revived rarely do well in Australia. Look at Big Brother, Australian Idol or Dancing with the Stars. None of these have come close to the success of the original when they were revived on another channel. Survivor might be the exception where the original was a bit of a flop but Ten seem to have made it work long term.

Gladiators is just the latest victim. There might have been some initial nostalgic interest but if you compare it to the big budget Ninja Warrior, it looks a bit cheap. People were sick of Ninja Warrior when it was axed, so there really was no need to have a similar show only cheaper. Australians just prefer new shows in most cases.

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Then 10 are probably lucky that the winners don’t get any prizemoney, as such, then. That’s if the show doesn’t return for a second season (they’ll become gladiators themselves the following season, and thus 10 has to pay them for appearance fees etc).

I think Deal and Wheel will flop as well. Gladiators was the only first casualty.

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It’s going to be a tough year for 10

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They’ve really stuffed this up haven’t they. It’s beyond belief they would make the show without an audience. Heads should roll.

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They probably regret starting a week later than originally planned. It probably still wouldn’t have set the world on fire, but it wouldn’t of has the added pressure of tennis on Nine, plus Muster Dogs and Total Control on ABC.

I thought I read a call for audience members but maybe people weren’t interested?

The audience members were for Season 2 only, i believe,

Given how much Ten has sunk into this, I’ll bet it gets played out in full - even if it’s a late-night burnoff.

Because people are seeing through it as a cheap effort to try and rekindle some retro vibe. Maybe the networks might finally get the message that people don’t want shit remakes/revivals

Didn’t it not have an audience because there wasn’t enough studio space to allow it?

Is that a bit harsh/unfair? I thought its third iteration on Seven in recent years has been a bit of a hit, we’ve seen metro broadcast anywhere from 500k to 900k and would be considered one of the network’s better shows in this time.

But yes, it is not doing 2 million anymore obviously, nothing does, even some major sport finals have struggled to do that since COVID (in fact the only TV programs that sping to mind to do that number in that metric would be Ash Barty’s AO final which was closer to 3m and AFL GFs).

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Along with Olympics and the Matilda’s

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Yes! Haha whoops, absolute brain fade there, sometimes when you think too hard about something, the obvious disappear

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Look carefully at what I said.

I said none of these have come close to the success of the original when they were revived on another channel. The Ten version was close to a flop. Seven did a better job to revive it but nothing like the 2 to 3 million of the original series.

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Agreed, and that first episode surely would’ve had a lot more viewers at the start who dropped off like flies after that disastrous first segment, and again by the end of that episode with how slow it was. I actually thought it rated okay given 10 were getting SBS-level ratings in December.

A few years ago I edited down previous Gladiators series to just the gameplay and cut out most of the talk - much more enjoyable to watch that way. The previous Australian series had 15-17 minutes of actual gameplay per episode while the American series in 2008 had 16-18 minutes. I missed Thursday’s episode so caught it on 10play and fast forwarded through all the chat. It came in around the same time as those previous series, but it obviously it feels even worse when stretched across an 80 minute timeslot. The actual action of this series is on par with the new UK series.

The franchise needs to offer a lot more action per episode than 15-17 minutes if it wants to exist.

I think having the exact same obstacles every episode is getting tired quick.

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Quarter Finals coming up, new gladiator and 2 new games.

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