While no confirmation has yet been made, it is almost a certain fact that Nine will look to renew its series, Celebrity Apprentice Australia for a second season after what has been an unexpectedly successful first.
While the first and only season of The Apprentice garnered modest ratings and little attention back in 2009, the celebrity edition of the show has fared much better thanks to its stripped-at-7PM format which has proven a success for Nine this year.
It has constantly hit viewership numbers comfortably above the magic million mark (except for the odd one or two) and has even scored more successful numbers when Nine splits hour long episodes up into two seperate codings. As it happens, the 7PM-7.30 edition of these episodes have been faring 200,000-300,000 viewers better than the latter half.
While a renewal was on the cards since the successful launch, which garnered more than 1.3m viewers (now a constant benchmark for the series), questions have been floating about whether a 2012 edition would feature celebrities or regular people. After a recent AdNews interview by Nine CEO David Gyngell, it is becoming more and more evident that a 2012 edition would in fact be a second celebrity season.
In the US, The Apprentice ran six regular seasons from its first season in 2004 until its sixth season in 2007. Due to negative criticism and low ratings, the show changed to a celebrity format and remained so for three seasons from 2008-2010. The regular season was revisited for the show’s tenth season, but after disastrous ratings, was reverted back to the celebrity edition from this year with creator Donald Trump announcing that the regular edition of the show had been scrapped permanantly.
From this, it would be obvious to suggest to Nine not to revisit the regular format; especially after such an entertaining season!
As mentioned, the show and subsequent news from its ratings for Nine has been good. It is now the second out of two reality shows that it has managed to successfully strip at 7PM after The Block; an experiment it began this year after Ten; who infamously used the strategy from 2001, abandoned 7PM stripped reality back in 2009.
It’s a pity Celebrity Apprentice doesn’t last for weeks…
Nine is almost certain to continue the strategy into 2012 with The Block set to take the helm from early next year and its first season of Big Brother to continue it in August after the Olympics (and you never know, we may just see Celebrity Big Brother back again…?!).
More will be revealled, along with more information on Nine’s other reality television 2012 hopeful The Voice, on November 23 when Nine is set to have its 2012 programming launch.
The Celebrity Apprentice continues this week from Monday to Thursday at 7PM before concluding at the same time on Monday 21 November on Nine.
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