Is The Kitchen Too Hot For Channel Seven?
I don’t know about you, but I love a good reality TV show. The way that the participants’ lives play out on the screen in front of me entertains like nothing else. But it seems that the real drama has actually spilled out of the TV and into real life, with Channel Seven taking its rival The Nine Network to the Federal Court seeking to prevent from broadcasting episodes of its new show The Hotplate, which Seven claims infringes the copyright of its popular program My Kitchen Rules (MKR).
The article, by Australian media, marketing & entertainment website Mumbrella, explained that Channel Seven’s legal team alleged that Nine imitated the format of its highly successful My Kitchen Rules show, through their production company Endemol, who had managed to obtain a copy of the MKR production “bible” for their show The Hotplate.
Whilst Channel Seven could be genuinely outraged that The Nine Network appeared to be pirating their format for great television, evidence points that this may not be all they have stolen. It seems convenient that this legal action has commenced just as Channel Seven has scaled back the number of episodes of their own reality show Restaurant Revolution, from four to two nights a week. Now I don’t know what Channel Seven were cooking up in their kitchen, but something sure smells fishy to me.
This begs the question; does Channel Seven have a legitimate case?
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Two Contestants from The Hotplate contemplate what a world without multiple reality cooking shows would look like[/caption]
This legal case is built on the claim that Nine and Endemol have substantially copied the format, style and production techniques of MKR. This was achieved through the acquisition of MKR’s ‘Bible’, a highly confidential document used to create and develop the show and its format, on a scene by scene basis. The individual elements in this holy book make up Channel Seven’s intellectual property. Defined as the ownership of your original concepts and ideas, the concept of intellectual property (IP) is key in this case.
As this is not the first time a case like this has been presented, there is a wide variety of academic literature dedicated to the study of IP including the need for protection of television formats. According to Gottlieb, copying a format within a domestic market “can still inflict damage by reducing the audience share of the original program”. This is certainly the case for Channel Seven, whose show Restaurant Revolution suffered considerably in recent ratings with only 522,000 viewers in the 7:30pm timeslot. In comparison, The Hotplate picked up its highest ratings yet with 944,000 viewers last week.
Whilst Gottlieb’s findings do side with the plaintiff, the question needs to be asked, what would happen if Channel Nine won their case? As with any dilemma facing the media in the modern age, the result would be slippery slope, starting with the injunction of The Hotplate, and ending who knows where. For anyone who has ever seen any type of cooking reality television, they will be quick to tell you that when it comes to cuisine on your screen, no show is original.
Variety is the spice of life, and if Channel Seven succeeds in this court case, giving The Hotplate the chop and removing the freedom of choice for Australian viewers, competitive cooking shows will be very bland indeed.
