Australian 'Junior MasterChef' debuts to poor viewer ratings

Junior MasterChef has debuted to poor viewer ratings.

Last night's first episode of the Australian version of the reality cooking competition, which premiered in 2010, disappointed Channel Ten bosses by pulling in only 1.129 million viewers. The second season premiere ratings were over 1 million less than last year's debut episode, which had a 2.2 million-strong audience and was the most-watched show of the night.

According to AAP, Junior MasterChef was only Sunday night's fifth most-watched show behind crime drama Underbelly: Razor, Seven Network and Nine Network's news programmes, and current affairs series Sunday Night.

Following Junior MasterChef was Daniel MacPherson and Zoe Ventoura drama Wild Boys with 1.103 million viewers and ABC1's Grand Designs with 837,000 viewers.

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Last year's Junior MasterChef, judged by George Calombaris, Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan and hosted by Anna Gare, was won by 12-year-old Isabella from Queensland.

Child experts criticised Junior MasterChef last year for placing too much pressure on its young contestants. Soon afterwards, Ten bosses admitted to censoring some episodes of the contest that showed the children crying.