A tense meeting with staff last week has many believing Seven has lost faith in their new cooking show.
It was hailed as a new era for Seven when newly appointed CEO James Warburton signed former MasterChef judges Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan. But even before shooting begins Plate of Origin (or POO as it is known around the traps) is facing major production issues.
This morning Nick Tabakoff revealed in The Australian Seven held a “head of department” meeting early last week which included executive producer David Dutton and director Kate Douglas-Walker. At that meeting it was revealed production would not be ready to start production in the first week of March, as planned.
Now TV Blackbox can exclusively report another meeting was held with the POO production team on Friday where it was revealed Seven has cut the episode run by 10-12 episodes. It’s understood the initial order was for 32 episodes but we understand that has been slashed to approx 20 episodes.
The announcement was made by Dutton, who appeared to be in an ‘angry’ mood, according to witnesses. Despite staff wanting to ask questions we’re told he simply made the announcement and walked out.
Many believe Seven is worried about airing another cooking show after the disastrous ratings for My Kitchen Rules. As Tabakoff reports:
Our spies tell us there is already a full-scale review of POO underway, with one option being to make it more like MasterChef than MKR, forcing major changes to the production schedule.
This reporting backs up what TV Blackbox is being told by sources within Seven.
Just this week Seven announced it would be making an additional $20 million worth of cost cuts after the company posted a $67 million loss for the December half. The reduction of episodes for POO will minimise the risk factor for Seven while keeping costs down for the high-profile production.
These changes come as the network quietly axed its kids television production team last week, as exclusively revealed by TV Blackbox. Staff working on children’s shows Get Clever and Get Arty were informed their services would no longer be required with production accelerated to complete the current run of episodes, although none are currently scheduled in released TV guides.
*Seven has declined to comment
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Haven’t we had enough cooking shows?? Can they make anything else? Enough already, please!
A tad scary making another cooking show with the same creative teams who have produced this season of MKR. I would be very nervous. Let’s see if they’re able to pull a rabbit out of a hat! Good luck.
Is it their strategy to hemorrhage ratings? If it is we know they’re brilliant at it. I would steer clear of another cooking show this year. It’s getting silly now.
Unfortunately, this will be my last MKR … Seven need some new producers as this season & last year have been just awful … it’s no longer about food, it’s all the b… sh… going on …. why in the world would you have Romel & Sophia back, they are just awful to watch …
pity, it used to be a great show & if the same production team are on the new show, I won’t even bother ..
It’s a certain style of making a show…. overlay of contestants cutting onions then go to a green screen interview of the same contestants talking about cutting onions, “today when I was cutting onions…..”.. so on and so forth.. that same blue print of making a reality show is used over and over and over ….
They only know one way to make shows. Unless the creatives change in that place they’ll keep making the same shows year in and year out. They’ve been going downhill for the past couple years.