Nine’s big-ticket reality format has had its best ratings week of the year thanks to the massive Block cheating scandal that was revealed over the past few episodes.
Tanya and Vito got a photo of the program’s schedule on a whiteboard at the start of the series and then shared it with one other team. Host Scott Cam has revealed they are going to be penalised, but format co-creator and executive producer Julian Cress told Mediaweek they were never going to be asked to leave.
Cress noted that plenty of people thought that would be fitting punishment.
“We are not an elimination show as others are,” said Cress. “If we booted off every contestant that tested the rule book to gain an advantage we wouldn’t have any contestants left.
“We spend six months casting the most competitive people we can find. It shouldn’t surprise us that when they arrive they play the game as hard as they do. I expect them to try and bend the rules.”
Mark confronts Tanya about the whiteboard photo
Cress said there was never any doubt the behind-the-scenes storyline would be covered at the appropriate time.
“The production can crash through that fourth wall [when cast talk with producers on camera] whenever we like and we are well and truly there now. Our view is we should include everything. Essentially we are a documentary unit. We put contestants into the house, set a deadline for every Sunday and then step back and watch what happens.”
When asked about keeping the whiteboard behind a locked door in future, Cress said that’s something they will now have to do. “It’s never happened before. Imagine the temptation to try and gain an advantage for newcomers to the show who find themselves up against All-Stars who have played the game before.”
Cress said he knew who took the photo and he admitted it wasn’t in the spirit of the game. “It is clearly cheating, but again put yourself in that person’s shoes and the temptation to do that. It’s not surprising that someone grabbed that opportunity.”
The series producer featured on the show last week interviewing Tanya and Vito about the scandal was Dan Colless. “This is his first series and he’s getting quite an introduction, chasing down a story like this. Turns out for a reality TV producer he’s a damn fine journalist,” said Cress. Colless has also worked on 10’s The Masked Singer.
Cress, Colless plus format co-creator David Barbour and his post-production team working on the show back in Sydney had a massive challenge this week covering all the cheating drama plus covering the fit-out of the basements.
“We needed to capture all the drama going on between contestants, but also the audience gets to see the extraordinary imagination, design and execution of the build. We have never done basements before. It’s amazing to think how the contestants, on one hand, are all yelling at each other in a body corporate meeting and then go away and produce the most extraordinary rooms in less than a week.”
The heated Block body corporate meeting
Block contestants: Big challenge, but big rewards
In 2020 one of the couples renovating the properties made over $1m, a record for The Block. “It’s great for the show that it can create millionaires out of battlers,” said Cress. “Tam was a bar manager pulling beers in a bowling club before The Block. Can you imagine the change in the lives for those people?” She and partner Jimmy won $1.066m.
Many contestants on The Block have life-changing experiences from both the work they undertake across the 90-day shoot and then from the money they walk away with. Cress gave us just a couple of examples.
“Alisa and Lysandra were cops from Adelaide. Now they have got a really successful interior design business and a multimillion-dollar successful range of soaps and other items that has gone global. It has been an extraordinary change in their lives, and that is not factoring in the money they won for being on the show twice. [Just over $1m.]
“Another example is Josh and Jenna. When she came on the show she was a hairdresser. She is now a professor of interior design with her own school. That’s amazing.”
See also: The Block – How Kerry Packer nearly stopped TV’s most successful series
Monday in Mediaweek: Preparing The Block contestants, Keeping it real, Impressing the judges, The Block in 2022