Alan Sugar: You're Fired

In what has so far been a blockbuster week for Channel Seven, a slight hiccup was revealed last night when the highly promoted Alan Sugar: The Apprentice bombed. Surely Seven must now give the British version of Donald Trump the Jessica Rowe boning treatment, “You’re Fired”.

Despite Sugar bombing and bombing in a big way with only 583 000 viewers nationally, Wednesday still belonged to Channel Seven with strong performances from Seven News, Home and Away, Today Tonight and Criminal Minds which all attracted around the 1.4 million viewer mark, as well as new series, Crash Investigation Unit and the return of Medical Emergency. Nine’s one hour of Two and A Half Men from 7-8pm returned strong figures with 1.4 million viewers as well.

Hole in the Wall was down on its previous attempt where the game show debuted on August 6 with 1.6 million viewers but after the Olympics the show only attracted 1.2 million viewers in its second outing. These numbers are still healthy but indicate that the shows novelty may all ready be wearing thin like Wipeout’s series return this week which softened with 1.1 million viewers, down since the shows previous new episode on Tuesday July 29 with 1.5 million viewers.

People hurting themselves on obstacle courses or trying to bash through walls unsuccessfully being subjected to a pool has its shelf life. Although Hole in the Wall and Wipeout are genuinely funny, could these similar, novelty series screening in the same scheduele be overkill?

Australian Idol was again Ten’s strongest show with 1.2 million viewers but the network still finished third for the night overall with 22.5% beaten by Seven with 27.9% and Nine with 26.5% of the audience share.