On Duck Dynasty, American Pickers, And The Rise Of The No-Frills Show
A new genre of TV has been sweeping through America -- and Australian networks are starting to catch wind of it.
Not too long ago, there were clusters of US pop culture we could confidently -– and, okay, proudly — dismiss as being Only In America. No longer.
The Dave Matthews Band tours Australia regularly and actually sell out their shows. Country music acts safely considered Heartland American, like Alan Jackson and Tim McGrath, have amassed huge followings here. Halloween is actually a thing in Australia now. And in March, Major League Baseball (yes, baseball) will be opening its regular season in Sydney.
More telling, however, is that on several evenings last year, more Aussies were watching a reality show called American Pickers on 7Mate than Channel Ten’s ‘main’ station — and even more than the ABC.
In fact, during the last official week of ratings last year, six of the top 20 most-viewed shows on Australian digital television were what you could describe, with the utmost respect, as No-Frills TV.
7Mate Ratings Report
American Pickers, the third most-watched show last year on digital, now even regularly out-rates Neighbours on the chart. This, despite the fact the majority of episodes airing on 7Mate are usually years behind what’s airing in the US, and have also usually already screened on Pay TV in Australia. Many of these shows are cheap schedule fillers — but that seems to matter little to 7Mate’s audience.
Digital Channels Are Finding Their Niche
The most successful of the Australian network’s digital channels are well-communicated brands that maintain definitive identities. 7Two is renowned for lifestyle programming and British drama reruns; Ten’s Eleven offshoot is the home of youthful series such as Glee and Supernatural; ABC2 brings us edgy cable shows and local comedy series, like Josh Thomas’ Please Like Me; SBS2 acts as brand extension of its mothership – it will air the excellent Canadian series Orphan Black next month. And, whether by design or accident, 7Mate has been quietly tapping into a booming, mostly unscripted cluster of American programming.
It’s a rare growth area for free-to-air. Amazingly, 7Mate’s American no-frills reality shows — such as Hardcore Pawn and American Restoration — are drawing between 20-30% more eyeballs than they were 12 months ago.
Deflated Economies, And The Rise Of The No-Frills Show
New York Magazine described the movement of No-Frills shows (they call them “redneck reality shows”) as a boom in “weird-job shows, especially those in tune with a deflated economy.” On this pile you can lob programs such as Storage Wars, Swamp People, Operation Repo, American Restoration, Hardcore Pawn and American Pickers. All of course air on 7Mate, and usually draw anywhere between 200k to 300k Australian viewers.
‘Swamp People’, about professional American alligator hunters, finished its fourth season in July.
The genre itself can be seen as an antidote to the aspirational, gaudy-living brag fests like Keeping Up With The Kardashians, and the steadily eloquent and modest incarnations of Real Housewives. With the homogenisation and gentrification of major US and Australian regional centres – substitute Woolies for Walmart, or vice-versa – series that exploit the declining number of places that are geographically or culturally unique are also in demand. Think Alaska’s Ice Road Truckers, South Dakota’s Full Throttle Saloon, Kentucky’s Turtleman and Call of the Wild, and Oregon’s Ax Men.
The roots of the genre can be traced back to the arrival in 2008 of the series My Big Redneck Wedding. Then came such recession-friendly delights as Redneck Island, Redneck Rehab, My Big Redneck Vacation, Mud Lovin’ Rednecks and Rocket City Rednecks, a series based around a family of redneck engineers living in Alabama.
The best of them, although wrapped up in garish caricatures, often possess a sweet, almost wholesome moral heart. At their worst though, they are shoddy, unoriginal, blatantly staged, mean-spirited shams.
Then there is Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, which lies in a compelling genre all of its own.
Compared to other No-Frills shows, American Pickers plays down its cultural stereotypes. It features two charismatic but low-key men from Iowa who travel around the US in a modest white van, and search for unusual, forgotten curios in people’s garages, attics and spare bedrooms. They then on sell the items to hotels, bars and interior decorators.
A local spin-off called Aussie Pickers aired earlier this year on Foxtel.
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The Australian Experience
Aside from American Pickers, 7Mate’s other big draw card is Pawn Stars, which is based around a family-run business in Las Vegas, and debuted in the US in 2010. It spawned the unoriginally named Hardcore Pawn a year later, based around a family-run business from Detroit. And let us not also forget Cajun Pawn Stars, and its family-run business in Louisiana. OK, let’s.
The most popular reality show in the US right now is of course Duck Dynasty, centred on a hairy, God-fearing family of entrepreneurs from Louisiana. In America, Duck Dynasty has now surpassed all comers and averages about ten million weekly viewers.
The Louisiana-based stars of the family-oriented series, which revolves around their quirky but “wholesome” business and family life, are tabloid favourites. Family patriarch Phil Robertson is now also a best-selling author and Fox News stalwart, after some blatantly offensive comments about homosexuality. The family has also just launched a line of guns, natch.
In Australia, where it airs on Foxtel, Duck Dynasty averages about 50,000 viewers a screening, which is enough to push it into Foxtel’s daily ratings top ten chart. It can’t be long until it the reruns make it onto 7Mate’s schedule.
It’s telling that Seven has announced the launch of a rare new first-run Australian series to air exclusively on 7Mate. The show’s title? The Bogan Hunters. The name, dare we say, speaks volumes.
