The Bachelor fans call to 'retire' show as applications open for 2022

The Bachelor Australia is officially set to return in 2022, with applications for season ten opening on Thursday night.

According to the casting call, Channel Ten is on the hunt for “single women and men looking for a shot at true love”, seemingly hinting at a bisexual Bachelor for the very first time.

The Bachelorette made reality TV history last year when they cast Brooke Blurton as the franchise’s first Indigenous and openly bisexual lead alongside both male and female contestants.

While The Bachelor may be following in its footsteps this year and create another huge win for diversity, a number of social media users have called for the show to be cancelled after abysmal ratings.

Season nine starring Jimmy Nicholson received the show’s lowest premiere ratings with only 482,000 viewers, compared to 681,000 the previous year.

Bachelor Nick Cummins, aka the Honey Badger, had the biggest premiere with 940,000 people watching, while season three’s Sam Wood had the highest rating finale episode, with 1.48 million people tuning in.

“The last two series bombed! Maybe time to retire this show!” one person commented on Facebook.

“Hope the format of this show is changing, it feels a little out of date?” another added.

“Please pick someone good this year!” a third added, followed by someone else who suggested casting “real people that actually wanna find love and not just Insta followers”.

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“The reason why this franchise is crumbling is because they keep looking for the perfect person,” a different user shared. “When you get real, people will relate and tune in… Get rid of the ‘media, perfect’ girls.”

Although some people requested that they include mature-aged contestants on the show for the first time, the casting call says they are looking for people aged between 23 and 40.

Meanwhile, a number of former contestants took to the comments on the Instagram announcement to joke about applying again.

"Shall we apply? Looks legit,” Jimmy Nicholson wrote while tagging his partner Holly Kingston, while she replied, “Will get my application in by this evening”.

“Imagine if I applied for something like this,” Ashleigh Freckleton joked, followed by Laura O’Loughlin who said, “Me for Bachelorette!”.

The Bachelor’s recent casting call announcement comes after former Bachelorette runner-up Todd King revealed his ideas for shaking up the franchise.

The reality TV star shared his thoughts on Instagram and said that the show’s lead should have 24-hour access to the mansion.

Todd also suggested that a live stream could be set up in the mansion for fans to watch online, single dates could be extended overnight, and group dates could have fewer contestants involved so greater connections can be formed.

As well as having older contestants, he believed it would be a good idea to cast participants who live in the same state as the Bachelor or Bachelorette so there’s a better chance of things working out.

Host Osher Günsberg recently spoke with Yahoo Lifestyle about the future of the reality TV franchise and where he’d like to see it go next.

“There are so many challenges to dating now that didn't exist five years ago, and there were so many challenges that didn't exist five years ago before that,” he said.

“As far as using your phone, pressure to have a video call, pressure to send a picture or use pictures or the visual medium or meeting for the first time using text versus actually speaking to each other and hearing someone’s tone of voice.

“This is how people meet and interact before they see each other now, so having modern dating reflected on-screen in some way that can work in primetime TV, I think would be brilliant. For me, I think that’s what I’d really like to see.”

Season ten of The Bachelor is set to be filmed over 12 weeks between May and July this year.

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