Following a year of plummeting ratings, The Bachelor and Bachelorette host Osher Günsberg has revealed what he hopes to see next year on the once-thriving franchise.
The 47-year-old said the 2021 The Bachelorette, which made history for casting Brooke Blurton, the show’s first ever Indigenous and openly pansexual lead, was “easily the greatest season of the show we’ve ever made.”
“To show an Indigenous, bisexual woman who is searching to be loved in the way that is meaningful to her and meeting other men and women who are also searching to be loved in a way that is meaningful to them, that is a reflection of interactions and relationships that happen in our community every day,” he told Yahoo.
Osher acknowledged there are relationship challenges now that didn’t exist five years ago, and said it’s important for “modern dating” to be shown on-screen.
(Ten)Osher acknowledged there are relationship challenges now that didn’t exist five years ago, and said it’s important for “modern dating” to be shown on-screen.
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“As far as using your phone, pressure to have a video call, pressure to send a picture or use pictures or the visual medium or meeting for the first time using text versus actually speaking to each other and hearing someone’s tone of voice,” he said.
“This is how people meet and interact before they see each other now, so having modern dating reflected on-screen in some way that can work in primetime TV, I think would be brilliant. For me, I think that’s what I’d really like to see.”
Osher said the 2021 The Bachelorette starring Brooke Blurton was “easily the greatest season of the show we’ve ever made.”
(Ten)Despite the latest season of The Bachelorette receiving widespread praise for casting Brooke, ratings didn’t reflect the network’s historic decision.
Last month’s finale pulled in the smallest audience on record, with just 439,000 metro viewers for the final 15 minutes, and just 361,000 tuning in for the lead-up.
The premiere night pulled in the lowest audience in history, attracting just 397,000 viewers (5-city metro), while Nine’s The Block raked in 851,000 viewers.
Last year’s season, which saw sisters Elly and Becky Miles vie for love, the finale ranked slightly better, but still only had 573,000 metro viewers tuning in for the finale.
By comparison, the 2019 Bachelorette finale, featuring Angie Kent, drew a whopping 992,000 metro viewers.
Meanwhile, this year’s season of The Bachelor, starring Jimmy Nicholson, was also a ratings flop. The July premiere drew in a bleak 482,000 viewers from metro cities across Australia.
It still performed better than its Bachelorette counterpart though, pulling in 629,000 metro viewers for the finale. However, this was still down from 879,000 viewers for Locky Gilbert’s season finale in 2020.
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