The Renovators rates better on second night, but The Block still has audience numbers nailed down

Jonathan ChancellorJuly 25, 2011

The second-night ratings of The Renovators won its time slot last night on Channel Ten with 978,000 viewers, picking up 100,000-plus viewers on its Sunday night debut.

It’s good news for Lachlan Murdoch, Ten's interim chief executive and his sister Elisabeth's production company Shine Limited – which is now owned  by Rupert Murdoch's News Limited – as anything too far below 1 million in the ratings would have been deemed a failure.

The winner of Monday night was MasterChef with 1.67 million, followed by The Block on Channel 9 with a 1.48 million audience.

The Renovators is being produced by Shine Australia, which is also are responsible for the lucrative MasterChef franchise.

The genesis for The Renovators was a barbecue 18 months ago at the home of Ten's chief programming officer, David Mott, who was hosting Shine executives to toast the success of MasterChef. The idea was to cross MasterChef and Grand Designs.

Channel Ten's six-nights-a-week reality show, is hosted by landscape architect Brendan Moar, who recently showed off his own style with an inner-city terrace sale.

The judges include Peter Ho from Phooey Architects, who has appeared as a judge on The New Inventors, the builder Barry Du Bois, and Robyn Holt, who was the editor of Vogue Living for about a decade.

When applications closed last year about 12,000 had applied. The final 26 comprise real estate agents, interior designers, builders and tradesmen, and all need to have completed renovations to be considered.

The contestants will renovate six properties over the next three months.

Jonathan Chancellor

Jonathan Chancellor is one of Australia's most respected property journalists, having been at the top of the game since the early 1980s. Jonathan co-founded the property industry website Property Observer and has written for national and international publications.