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Source: ONE News
Australia's Channel Ten has been hit with a wave of criticism for its decision to split the grand final of MasterChef into two parts.
The episode, which screened in Australia last night, was split in two by another reality show, The Renovators.
The channel staggered the two and half hour finale from 6.30pm to 7.30pm and began the finale again at 8.30pm concluding just before 10pm.
Fans took to online messageboards and Twitter venting their anger.
"How dare the Ten Network try to manipulate us like this. We are not children to be told what to watch and when to watch it," raged one post.
"Months of watching Masterchef and I'm a little
disappointed with the final. Might be b/c the momentum of the show
was interrupted," wrote another.
Another Twitter user said, "Turned off and went to bed after Ch 10
tried to inflict that Renovators rubbish on us."
"After 15 ad breaks, 7 montages of 'the journey' and some other TV show I didn't want to watch, I felt like I should win MasterChef," said another.
The Renovators has been rating poorly in Australia and the move was believed to be to try to boost its ratings.
Despite the backlash, the MasterChef final episode was still the second most viewed programme of the year, pulling in 2.66 million viewers. However according to the Herald Sun, that's far fewer than when Adam Liaw won last year's series and 3.964 million viewers tuned in. The previous year 3.74 million people watched Julie Goodwin defeat Poh Ling Yeow.
MasterChef Australia screens in New Zealand on TV ONE at 4.55pm weekdays .
