It all began with MasterChef Australia, which took the British competitive cooking show and made it bigger, more frequent and more competitive. The gamble paid off with the rejigged format becoming Australia’s highest rating TV show, with an estimated 4 million viewers watching the nail biting fi nal of the fi rst series in 2009 and a similar audience coming back for seconds for season two in 2010. The series helped make Ten some serious dough with a slew of sponsors from supermarket chain Coles to telecommunications company Telstra bringing in an estimated A$100 million per season. In February, the company locked in a deal with Elizabeth Murdoch’s production company Shine that would see the format stay with the network until at least 2014. Following Season 2 last year, Junior MasterChef Australia was the next menu item to try out on the ravenous Aussie viewers. In the UK, Junior is made for kids and shown at 4pm on kids channel CBeebies. But with the Australian version, Ten decided to take its kids to primetime and in doing so garnered a regular audience of 1.45 million, beating shows such as 60 Minutes and The X Factor. So what is it about kids cooking that has been won the appetites of so many viewers? “What we noticed right from the start was the enormous impact that the original MasterChef had on bringing a family together,” says Ten’s head of programming David Mott. “It’s one of those shows that you hope and pray puts everyone in front of the TV and part of that was how the show resonated with kids. We did a lot of market research and everything from clients and advertisers through to anecdotal evidence says it’s incredible how it resonated with kids and we saw that as an opportunity to say ‘Well there really isn’t anything like this for kids in primetime’.” It was a bold move. All Australian television networks have to make a certain quota of kids television according to government guidelines but most show it at the regular kids’ hours of early morning and early afternoon. Junior MasterChef, on the other hand, was slotted into the same prime time spot of the main format and drew audiences of 1.95 million for the much anticipated fi nale and it launched with a massive 2.7 million viewers. As cooking and lifestyle shows become an increasingly popular genre of programming in Asia, Junior Masterchef Australia has got tongues wagging, particularly in the Philippines and Singapore, where it concluded on Star World last month. “Junior MasterChef Australia has helped deliver a very strong performance from a ratings point of view, said Joon Lee, Senior Vice President, Content and Communication for Fox International Channels. “The show single-handedly set record ratings for the channel with young female audiences in Singapore, taking Star World to its highest ratings since 2006.” Its success in Australia has also spawned imitators with Nine Network launching Kitchen Whiz in February, which runs fi ve days a week at 4pm and features two teams of two 10-to- 14-year-olds battling it out over a variety of challenges. Carl Fennessy, co-managing director of Shine in Australia, credits Ten’s commitment to the format for it success. “Given there is so much content today and on so many platforms one of the great things that Network Ten has done with MasterChef is they provided it to the audience in a substantial dose so the audience can rely on it and they can really invest in it,” Fennessy said. “As TV viewers we are predominantly creatures of habit and I think it almost becomes a road block in the network schedule and when you get that commitment from a broadcaster and they send a very clear message to the audience, coupled with the fact it is an outstanding quality product, you have the recipe for great success.” But going down the Junior route brought with it a new set of challenges for Ten and Shine, the most prominent of which was the kids welfare. Shine met with NSW Commission for Children and Young People and child psychologists in the lead up to making the series and took all of their comments on board. Key in these discussions was how to maintain the competitive nature of the MasterChef format without upsetting the children or making it too stressful for the young competitors. “We wanted to make it a celebration of what they achieved,” says Mott. “So I remember, in the early days, when we were talking about it we said ‘It has to be like a sports carnival where everyone’s a winner’ and that’s the analogy that we used right from the start, it can’t be seen to be completely competitive – win at all costs.” Fennessy agrees and made sure his production staff where keenly aware of the needs of the young chefs. “One of the things we were committed to is that all of the kids that came to Junior MasterChef would have a positive experience,” he said. “At the same time MasterChef is a competition and ultimately we need to have a winner. One of the things we paid particular attention to was we implemented a points system so there were points for winning challenges or placing in them, but there were points available for improvement, attitude and application so those things helped the kids understand it was not all about coming fi rst.” Adds Mott: “The other thing we said about Junior MasterChef is it has to be a joyous occasion and the judges were brilliant – being on the set you could see their [kids] faces beaming.” Regular MasterChef judges George Calombaris, Gary Mehigan and Matt Preston were joined by new Junior judge, celebrity chef Anna Gare. Matt Preston says that the unadulterated joy the kids showed for cooking was so infectious it has even reformed the approach to series three of the main format. He also says that seeing the effect that the programme has had on kids that were not in the contest is a great source of inspiration for him. “Junior MasterChef’s specifi c impact appears to have been two-fold: it provided kids with positive role models of their own age, showing them what could be achieved in the kitchen,” Preston says. “It also persuaded parents to support their own children’s efforts in the kitchen no matter how ambitious. All three of us love the fact this also helps bring the family and friends together round the table. Something that is important to all of us on the show.” Fennessy says the series has achieved recognition, backed by the popularisation of the term “The MasterChef Effect”, which has been used to describe a boost in food knowledge across Australia and the idea that terms like “plating up” have come into common usage. While the look of the show was still consistent with the MasterChef brand, behind the scenes there were a number of tweaks, tailored for the young chefs on set. The Top 50 contestants – culled from more than 5,000 entrants – were put through a rigorous safety course where they were taught knife skills and kitchen safety. The normal MasterChef benches were also modifi ed with safer utensils and safer induction cookers replaced gas hobs. The kids were also given plenty of breaks and things such as homework were incorporated into fi lming. Stephen Tate, who is in charge of sponsorship integration for Ten also had more to think about when it came to how to incorporate sponsors into the show, a process over which they also took as much care as the other divisions. “We were very mindful of the fact the show depicts children and is aimed at a broad audience so we were incredibly mindful of what we did within the programme,” he says. “There were no sponsors that put their hand up that we felt we needed to reject. The types of industries you’re talking about are the ones that already have quite strong self regulation so they had not approached us to be part of the show. Still we will continue to be vigilant with Junior MasterChef 2 – we will obviously be very discerning.” And they will not be the only ones being discerning in season two, the judges will be back to pick another winner and, if the main competition is anything to go by, season two may well uncover even more talented youngsters than last time, a team of fi fty junior chefs ready to swap crayons and paper for knives and a whisk.