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Eddie McGuire's Hot Seat extended to an hour in 2017 as Nine plans to save show

Ebony Bowden

Eddie McGuire's Hot Seat will be extended to an hour in 2017 as the Nine Network tries to boost the show's slipping ratings.

The long-running game show has taking a battering since Seven pitted The Chase Australia against Hot Seat in the 5.30pm time-slot last September.

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Nine Melbourne's head of programming and production Tim Cleary confirmed to Fairfax Media McGuire's show would be extended rom 30 minutes to an hour in the new year.

"Hot Seat will be bigger than ever in 2017. While we've refreshed the show, we haven't strayed too far from its origins."

"There'll be more questions, lifelines, a new level of strategy that will test the players and more ways to win money."

Hot Seat regularly drew as many as 699,000 viewers in the capital cities just days before The Chase Australia premiered in September 2015. 

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But within a few days of the rival program's launch, ratings for Hot Seat were down to 520,000 while Andrew O'Keefe's The Chase Australia was sitting on 613,000.

A cat-and-mouse ratings game has ensured ever since. As of Thursday night, O'Keefe's program had 474,000 to McGuire's 389,000.

The Chase Australia has paid dividends for the Seven Network after it took a gamble on the one-hour long quiz show.

The two programs are hugely important to the networks as they lead into the evening news. It's speculated that The Chase's popularity has aided Seven News in pipping Nine News in the 6pm ratings battle.

However it's important to note that Hot Seat and The Chase Australia start at different times, with The Chase's hour-long format scheduled for 5pm each night ahead of the Hot Seat's timeslot of 5.30pm.

In an attempt to buoy The Chase's ratings, Seven measures the show's ratings twice – once in the first half hour and again in the second half hour. 

This is frequently done for big television events such as The Block finale, where a "winner announced" ratings peak is issued along with a lower, sustained ratings number.

By this measure, only 314,000 people in the capital cities were watching the first half hour of The Chase on Thursday night compared to the 474,000 watching between 5.30pm and 6pm.

McGuire has helmed the format since it debuted on the Nine Network as Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 1999.

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