Joel Creasey’s new dating show Take Me Out is struggling to find an audience as viewers remain loyal to established brands like The Block and Survivor. 

Media industry website Mumbrella has reported that last night’s episode of the show came in as the fourteenth most watched show of the night.

Preliminary figures show 504,000 people tuned in for Channel Seven’s Take Me Out, but larger audiences were watching the other commercial channels. Ten’s Australian Survivor, had a metro audience of 664,000, and Nine’s The Block attracted 987,000 viewers.

The show is a remake of the popular Chinese show If You Are You The One,  which screens on SBS’s Vice channel. That in itself is a remake of an Australian show  Taken Out which aired on Channel Ten back in 2008.

A male suitor is presented to a panel of 30 single women, if they like what they see they leave their lights on, as the potential date is questioned and probed by the host and the women, the number of potential dates drop as each panelist checks out of the potential match.

The shows debut on Monday last week also didn’t fair well coming fourth in the ratings with more people tuning in to watch the ABC’s 7:30 and Australian Story.

Podcast TV Blackbox discussed the show’s challenges in their latest episode, noting that while host Joel Creasey was delivering an impressive performance, the format of the show was not engaging with viewers.

“Joel Creasey as a host is great, he’s charming, funny and there isn’t an entendre he won’t double.” said panelist Steve Molk. “The rest of the show just sits wrong… Take Me Out is tawdry and bawdy without the self awareness of giggles, and the power sits with the gents rather the the thirty women sitting in judgement – who are either too starry eyed or too busy lusting after a date in question.”

Former TV producer Dan Bennet said the show was facing extra challenges because it’s been released earlier than originally planned. Poor ratings on the reality show Dance Boss forced the network to bring the launch of Take Me Out forward to a point where it was competing with established shows on other networks.

“You’ve got to remember as well The Block and Survivor are in the middle their runs, so people are invested in those shows, and sort of getting towards their ends. Which is why they didn’t want to launch this now, they would have wanted to launch it once those shows have wrapped.” Bennett said.

TV producer Jay Cagatay said the show might have lost something in translation. Th panelist agreed that the show’s best feature was it’s campness, describing it as having an Are You Being Served? level of campness.

“Joel Creasey is a fantastic host, he owned that stage” said former Studio 1o producer Rob McKnight. “If this doesn’t work out it’s not because of him, he holds that thing together.”

Take Me Out airs on Tuesday nights at 7:30pm. 

OIP Staff