Could Dream Home steal The Block’s audience? We’ll soon find out
Are you ready for another round of reno shows, this time with a new player on the Seven network.
As construction begins for the Nine network’s ratings juggernaut The Block, a rival show is threatening to take the renovation genre to “new heights”.
Hosted by Scott Cam, The Block is entering its 20th season and has captured audiences with its die-hard couples who renovate an existing suburban home and potentially walk away with huge prize money.
An average of 1.4 million people watched the show per episode last year as five homes in Melbourne’s south-east were transformed into state-of-the-art $3 million luxury homes.
Time to bring in a new player to help out our DIY home renovators?
Celebrity vet Dr Chris Brown is the man, snatched from Network Ten by Seven to host Dream Home, “a brand new competition renovation series” which promises to “feature some of the biggest and most life-changing renovations Australia has ever seen”.
Both shows will require contestant couples to renovate run-down homes, but there are some key differences that may determine who switches channels or stays loyal.
“This year we are doing holiday houses for the first time,” The Block‘s executive producer Julian Cress told real estate website Domain (of which Nine has a major share) about the Phillip Island location.
“Building the perfect holiday home for an Australian family is a new project and requires a new way of thinking,” he said.
Some might say that’s an audacious roll of the dice, as the cost-of-living crisis hits Australians, interest rates remain high and hefty deposits and short-stay costs scare off investors and buyers hoping to secure a weekender.
Over on Seven, couples will go head to head renovating their own homes – or potentially each others’ rooms – in dilapidated suburban homes.
“The stakes are high in any competition, but when it comes to your own home, the sky’s the limit,” one of Dream Home‘s three judges, Sydney Luxe Listings buyer’s agent Simon Cohen, said.
“These renovations will be incredible and absolutely life changing.”
The Block
Both series are in the throes of a tight production schedule, with Block fans posting daily updates on social media of the progress of the five homes on a one-hectare former resort at Cowes on Phillip Island in Victoria, purchased last year for $8.5 million.
Contestants began arriving at the beginning of March, and have been regularly spotted at brand outlets with commercial links to the show.
If you don’t have a boat, the only access to the holiday island is across the single-lane San Remo bridge, which is in the midst of a water pipeline upgrade.
Traffic congestion aside, with a population of 12,000, th island is a popular tourist attraction thanks to its world-famous penguin parade and the Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix.
It sounds like The Block is sticking to a well-worn formula with the same hosts (Cam and Shelley Craft were on the front page of the local paper) and the judges from last year’s season – Shaynna Blaze, Darren Palmer and Marty Fox.
Cress says it’s the best location the show has selected and it has ‘‘been a long time since we’ve had contestants going to market with quarter-acre blocks’’.
It is expected the series will premiere some time after the Paris Olympic Games closing ceremony on August 11.
Dream Home
According to Homes to Love, Dream Home is not exactly new as it preceded The Block in New Zealand between 1999 and 2013.
Seven says there will be six contestant couples, and besides Cohen, interior designer Rosie Morley and Lana Taylor of Three Birds Renovations will judge the show.
Couples are selected from thousands of applications, and are taken by blindfold to an existing suburb to view the home they have to renovate room by room.
Unlike The Block, the homes are owned by the contestants – as Brown alluded to last year – where the pairs could be transforming their own homes or each others, introducing an emotional element to every design and decorating decision.
The main similarity?
One couple on each show will get the keys to a dream home.
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