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THE problem with Channel 10 is that everyone else is doing what it used to do - only better and with more famous stars.


Let's be honest, Channel 9's ratings juggernaut The Voice is just Australian Idol with better gimmicks and much, much bigger names.

There's no doubt Ten's pioneering work in proving that cooking shows could dominate prime-time ratings inspired Seven to cook up My Kitchen Rules.

After all, before MasterChef Australia, no one had dared to serve up this genre outside the doldrums of the daytime schedule.

And Big Brother, well it may have a new host in Sonia Kruger and a new network but, aside from that, it's exactly the same show that Ten once made headlines with - sans nudey bits and turkey slapping, of course.

Once upon a time, Ten stood out from the commercial TV crowd by focusing on the youth market with its shameless embracing of flashy reality TV and US dramas.

The radical move was a massive money-spinner and, for a time, Ten was riding high on the crest of the youth dollar.

But sadly for it, Nine and Seven have jumped on board the reality gravy train and suddenly viewers are spoilt for choice.

You no longer have to watch Ten to see a bunch of nobodies plucked from obscurity to become pop stars.

Or B-grade celebrities having their second stab at the spotlight on a reality show.

These days every commercial channel has started to look like Ten.

And Ten - once the new kid on the block with rebellious ideas - has started to seem like a tired old cougar, desperately trying to hang on to its youth.

Ten has certainly made some colossal mistakes this year.

There's no doubting Everybody Dance Now was out of step and that Ten did it, and us, a small mercy in showing it the stage door.

But axing The Circle rather than that clanger, Breakfast, is a mystifying decision.

And don't even get me started on the casting of that overrated buffoon, Paul Henry, for that rumoured $1 million pay cheque.

For me, the beginning of the end for Ten was when it turned its back on Idol and Big Brother - the very franchises that had stood it apart and made it a success.

I understand why Ten did it.

People were over Mark Holden's touchdowns and Marcia Hines' motherly wisdom.

Idol felt tired and stale.

And Big Brother -though many would like to believe viewers switched off because its reputation had been sullied by scandal - suffered the same problem.

Viewers had simply seen it all before.

But the success of The Voice, X Factor and Australia's Got Talent shows there is still a huge appetite for TV talent shows.

And Nine's resurrected (almost carbon-copy) BB shows people still love to see bogans fighting over Tim Tams.

In retrospect, Ten would have been better off resting Idol and Big Brother rather than cutting them altogether.

Sadly, that ship has sailed.

And its more recent stabs at reality have been more sink than swim.

I Will Survive and Don't Tell the Bride, however, are not bad shows.

But most people will never get to know this fact because they've never bothered to tune into a single episode.

Ten's reputation as the TV loser - after being beaten squarely by the ABC for weeks - has viewers treating it as though it's the child in the playground with lice. No one wants to go near it.

The same thing happened to Nine in 2006 when it was faced with a a steady stream of flops such as Canal Road, Viva Laughlin and The Nation.

People stopped watching because they didn't trust the shows to stick around. And, sadly for Ten, there's no reason to take a gamble on it when people can get their fill of reality goodness over on Seven and Nine.

So how can Ten win us back? Certainly it cannot keep relying on Modern Family repeats and various incarnations of MasterChef to get people watching.

Like every entertainment veteran of a certain age, perhaps Ten needs to wait out the bad press until it's in fashion again. Or consider a radical facelift.

Siobhan Duck is a Herald Sun journalist