FAILURE TO raise the required sponsorship has been blamed for TV3’s decision to axe the Apprentice after four seasons and a now-abandoned plan to extend the life of the franchise by that now traditional route - doing a celebrity version. Its demise was covered extensively in the print media yesterday, with the Irish Daily Star giving it a chunk of page three and the Irish Daily Mirror splashing it triumphantly on its front page.
According to TV3 spokeswoman Maureen Catterson, the decision to drop the show was made by TV3’s director of programming Ben Frow. “He just felt it was time to move on,” she said. “Obviously we’re planning the autumn schedules at the moment and he has big things in the pipeline.”
Frow, who made his name at Channel 4 where he pioneered zeitgeisty lifestyle formats such as Property Ladder and Location Location Location, may also be making a timely response to the early signs of a format fatigue that has affected ratings, not just of the TV3 version of the show, but the BBC’s one.
The audience at the end of March for the opening night of the current (eighth) Alan Sugar- fronted series was down more than one million on 2011.
It is not just the Apprentice – flagship entertainment formats from the X Factor to I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! are looking groansomely noughties and will surely have to be pensioned off by ITV eventually.
Yesterday TV3 hinted what once would never have seemed possible – they already had quite enough celebrity formats on its schedules, thank you very much.
The broadcaster now has to decide which of its autumn shows will fill the Monday night slot it has made a point of contesting in recent years.
Production on a six-part partially publicly funded drama set in Galway (working title Taylor’s Hill) will begin shortly, and may be extended into a longer running soap-like offering.
However, coverage of Bill Cullen’s “firing” reflects what has been the great advantage of the reality format – the acres of PR it generates in tabloids obsessed with contestants’ every twitch.
