These basic fans who constantly ask for FNL don’t seem to realise it’s not what their nostalgia remembers it to be. Not to mention, television has long moved past that type of variety, slapstick style of show. Especially live.
A lot of these people also forget Nine even caved in to the fan service and gave us FNL in the form of Showdown. Sure it was slightly modified, but it was essentially the same, and was literally only created as a result of these same casual viewers (and I say that gently) commenting “bring back FNL” on every social media post. Just like they still do.
Yet, Showdown rated so poorly they axed it as a separate show. By then they had relied on the prize being too important to the game, so production were stuck with being forced to still put it on for the HMs each week, they ended up pre-recording and editing as little of it as possible into a midweek Daily Show.
It’s a dead concept and I’m glad the current team know that. At least for now.
EDIT: Echoing the above comments by
@Tim and
@marquisite, which were posted while I was writing my own. As
@marquisite mentioned, one-off games like The Prize Fight and the MasterCard Challenges are a decent enough substitute, if they have to.