| The Project | |
|---|---|
The Project intertitle |
|
| Also known as | The 7PM Project (2009–2011) |
| Format | News / Comedy |
| Developed by | Roving Enterprises |
| Presented by | Charlie Pickering Carrie Bickmore Dave Hughes (Mon–Thurs) |
| Country of origin | Australia |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of seasons | 4 |
| No. of episodes | 615 (as of 2 January 2012) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) | Craig Campbell |
| Location(s) | The Como Centre, South Yarra, Melbourne |
| Running time | Approximately 60 minutes (inc. commercials) 30 Minutes (2009-2011) |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | Network Ten |
| Picture format | 576i (SDTV) 1080i (HDTV) |
| Audio format | Stereo |
| Original run | 20 July 2009 – present |
| External links | |
| Website | |
The Project (previously The 7PM Project) is an Australian talk show television program airing weeknights across Australia on Network Ten.[1] The formerly half hour long show premiered on 20 July 2009, and is hosted by Charlie Pickering, Carrie Bickmore and Dave Hughes, with a rotating daily guest panelist. It airs live on the East Coast with delays in other states (as well as Queensland during daylight saving).
Describing itself as an infotainment program, The Project draws its content and comedy from recent news stories. It runs for 50 weeks of the year, taking brief breaks during the Christmas/New Year period.
On 19 October 2011, Network Ten announced that it was to axe 6.30 with George Negus and was to move The 7PM Project to the timeslot; extend it to an hour, and retitle it as The Project. These changes came into effect on 31 October 2011, the show's 575th episode.[2]
Contents |
The series is hosted by comedians Dave Hughes and Charlie Pickering with Carrie Bickmore presenting news stories. Regular guest panellists appearing during the week include Jennifer Byrne, Kris Smith, John Hewson, Tom Gleeson, Steve Price, Tracey Curro, Steve Vizard, Waleed Aly, Meshel Laurie, Lehmo, Dr. Andrew Rochford, Tom Elliott, Dr. Chris Brown, Dave Thornton and Chrissie Swan.[1][3] The hosts are also often joined by several special guests during the course of an episode.
The main content of the show revolves around Bickmore, Pickering and Hughes at the desk discussing some of the news events of the day as reported by Bickmore. This discussion may involve live crosses to reporters in the field or guests via satellite or Skype, as well as in the studio. In addition, the show also features pre-recorded interviews with celebrities, as well as feature stories by the cast.
The Friday episode ends with a Metro Whip Around of upcoming weekend events for the cities of Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, and Brisbane.
| Presenter | Role | Tenure |
|---|---|---|
| Carrie Bickmore | Co-host and news presenter | 2009– |
| Charlie Pickering | Co-host | 2009– |
| Dave Hughes | Co-host (absent Fridays) | 2009– |
Fill-ins for Carrie Bickmore: Nicole Livingstone, Gorgi Coghlan, Tracey Curro, Kathryn Robinson, Sarah Murdoch, Sarah Wilson, Kim Watkins & Angela Bishop
Fill-ins for Charlie Pickering: Andrew Rochford, Waleed Aly, Dr. Chris Brown, Sam Mac & Hugh Riminton
Fill-ins for Dave Hughes: Lehmo, Dave Thornton, Tom Gleeson, Julian Schiller & Denise Scott
Friday the 2nd of December 2011 marked the first time in the show's history that neither Bickmore, Pickering or Hughes appeared at the desk in an episode. This episode featured Kathryn Robinson, Waleed Aly and Tom Gleeson all filling in for the regulars, with Hamish MacDonald acting as the day's 'guest' panellist.
Recurring panellists are subject to change.
Eye on Tuesday: Kitty Flanagan
Resident expert: Tom Ballard
Entertainment: Hyla
UK correspondent: Lucy McDonald
US correspondent: Andrew Günsberg
The series premiered on 20 July 2009[1] and aired as a live broadcast on weeknights from 7:00 to 7:30 pm.[1] Roving Enterprises, the production company owned by Rove McManus and producers of Rove, Before the Game and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? produces the series.[1] The promos of the show used musical samples of Hello from The Cat Empire.
The premiere episode featured MasterChef Australia season one winner Julie Goodwin and an interview with Sienna Miller and Rachel Nichols. During the first season Ruby Rose and James Mathison were credited as part of the main cast, though their contributions were often limited to guest appearances and pre-recorded interviews.[4]
During the 2009 summer, in order to increase the profile of the show, Monday and Friday episodes were extended to an hour, and the program was repeated in a late night (11 pm) timeslot to garner late night viewers who may have missed the show earlier in the night. In addition, from 30 November 2009, the show underwent a small visual revamp. With the lights getting brighter, the set was changed to accommodate a more summery feel with the background displaying a blue sky and the foreground featuring more orange and brown lighting, skewing away from the dark, night-time feel from the start of the show. New titles were also added to fit the feel. As of 8 February 2010, Channel 10 cancelled the late night repeat of the show. Ten's summer late night repeats of 7PM were always a part of its strategy to win more followers for the show, and it will be hoping it has picked some up, who can now be channelled into the single broadcast once official ratings resume.[5]
For 2010's non-daylight savings period, the visuals reverted to display a more night time feel, however not to the extent as was seen in 2009 with orange and brown lighting still accompanying the set. A large screen was also added to the background.
In 2010, Carrie Bickmore and Charlie Pickering were nominated for the Logie of Most Popular New Female and Most Popular Male Talent respectively. Ten announced in June 2010 that the series had been renewed for another year.[6]
On 20 July 2010, the show celebrated its first year on air with regulars Kitty Flanagan and Steve Price and MasterChef evictee, Alvin Quah. The celebratory show commenced with a look back at the shows first moments on air a year beforehand.
For the week starting 27 December 2010, the show went into a summer series entitled The Holiday Project. It lasted for five episodes (as this was the length of time the show took a break) and featured Charlie Pickering and Dave Hughes sitting in front of the set reviewing some of the more popular segments, news stories and events of the show in 2010 while infrequently crossing to the Ten News room for the day's headlines. Carrie Bickmore and all other guest presenters did not feature in the series.
The show returned on Monday, 3 January 2011. However due to the death of Carrie Bickmore's husband, guest presenters replaced her during January. Bickmore returned on Monday 14 February 2011. George Negus effectively finished his stint as a regular guest panelist on the show in January 2011 when he began to host his new current affairs program, 6PM with George Negus (later 6.30 with George Negus).
On 10 March 2011 it was revealed the show scored an exclusive interview with embattled actor Charlie Sheen to be hosted by Nova personality and 7PM Project regular Scott Dooley. It was the only Australian interview with the star and also tentatively the last interview to be conducted with Sheen in light of his supposed breakdown after having his Two and a Half Men contract terminated.
The interview was shown on the show as an exclusive on 11 March 2011 with Dooley interviewed personally on the show the night before. The airing of the exclusive interview coincidentally occurred while Sheen's house was raided by police.
In light of the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, Ten aired a special wedding coverage special of The 7PM Project titled The Wedding Project that ran for an hour on Friday, 29 April 2011. It aired to lacklustre ratings.
On June 9, 2011, 'St Kilda Schoolgirl' Kim Duthie who infamously told media that she had 'slept' with AFL player agent Ricky Nixon, appeared on the program in a pre-recorded interview where she explained comments she made earlier in the day when she told media that she was 'lying' about her accusations. The interview made headlines when an off air comment by Duthie stating that, "everything [she] said, [she] lied about", referring to her interview with the show, was shown live during the episode after the airing of the interview.
Approaching its second birthday, the program scheduled numerous special episodes which are also rumoured to have been scheduled to combat a drop in ratings due to strong competition. From 11 July 2011 and running for a week, various Australian politicians joined the panel and co-hosted an entire episode. Politicians included Prime Minister Julia Gillard, MP Bob Katter and Green politician Adam Bandt.
For the week starting 18 July 2011, the program also invited members of the general public, who have strong opinions on various current events, to join the panel.
On 18 July 2011, the program celebrated its 500th episode. It featured 'Your Chair' panellist Louise Benjamin, Jennifer Byrne and all three regular panellists. Two days later, on 20 July 2011, the program celebrated its second year on air with 'Your Chair' panellist Kim Forrester, Andrew Rochford, and all three regular panellists.
The show commemorated the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks with a series of stories detailing how people affected by the event have coped over the past ten years.
Regular guest Tom Ballard was given a regular Thursday segment entitled 'Resident Expert' in September 2011. It is similar in style to Kitty Flanagan's Tuesday segment in which Ballard discusses a news story, based on a recent scientific, statistical, social or medical study, in humour.
On 19 October 2011, Network Ten announced the program would be moved from 7 pm to 6:30 pm (replacing the axed 6.30 with George Negus), extended to one-hour and renamed The Project. The first edition of the new hour-long program aired on Monday, 31 October 2011.[7]
As in previous years, Channel Ten is continuing to air the Project over summer in a bid to gain more of an audience share, particularly due to the lack of other new content of rival networks. The Project took a quick break over the Christmas period and was replaced by a special 'Best of' series of the show, which is a compilation of previous episodes from the past year.
Since its inception, two special episodes of The 7PM Project have aired. The first of which, The Election Project took a look at the 2010 Federal Election during the count while a second entitled The Games Project, looked at the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
A one-hour special entitled The Election Project, airing on Saturday, 21 August 2010, was the first time the show has on a weekend. It aired to cover the 2010 National Election. Guests included Hugh Riminton and George Negus. The show got 459,000 viewers, ranking 11th for the night.
While Channel Ten showed an hour's worth of the show in the majority of states, Adelaide was only shown 30 minutes due to football commitments. This may have altered the overall ratings for the show.
This was the first time since the mid 1990s that Ten devoted coverage to a national election; usually the network opted to air alternative programming.
The Games Project featured guests including Nicole Livingstone and again ran for an hour with a half hour airing in Adelaide with none of the show aired in Perth and Brisbane. The show aired immediately before the Opening Ceremony and garnered 301,000 viewers.
A third special episode, The Wedding Project aired on 29 April 2011 as an extension of its regular Friday episode for that night. The show aired for an hour in all metropolitan centres, focussing on that days royal wedding. It was hosted as usual by Hughes and Pickering with guest panellists Angela Bishop and Tracey Curro joining the boys at the desk. Bickmore along with Lucy McDonald, Hamish MacDonald and others were crossed to frequently reporting on events live from the UK.
Regular Guests Hamish Blake and Andy Lee, formerly of Rove Live, have appeared to present segments as a visual connection to the activities that they undertake on their weekly radio program, The Hamish and Andy Show, segments presented have included See No Evil Hear No Evil and Hungry Hungry Heroes.
The 7PM Project drew 1.285 million viewers for its premiere episode.[8] Ratings dropped across subsequent episodes.[9][10][11] Averaged over its opening week, The 7PM Project had 0.938 million viewers per episode. The average viewers for the second week dropped to 0.7392 million viewers per episode.
TV Tonight, an Australian television blog, commented that The 7PM Project would not be axed as they believed that the show has not had enough time to "[develop] its format." [12]
After dropping in ratings, The 7PM Project stabilised around the 700,000–750,000 mark, occasionally dropping below 690,000.
The series took until late May to reach a national metropolitan audience exceeding one million for the first time in 2010.[6][13]
On its first broadcast out of the ratings year, The 7PM Project sustained an audience of 826,000, a substantially higher viewership than in recent episodes that averaged around 650,000.
Ratings were still low at the beginning of the year however started to build from late March. The show started to regularly achieve an audience above 700,000 by the end of the fifth season of The Biggest Loser which was also building a viewership. The end of daylight savings in some states was also attributed to its rising ratings (the practice has proved to be detrimental to the performance of early evening programs such as The 7PM Project). The program saw an even greater rise in viewership when the network's flagship reality juggernaut MasterChef Australia returned.
On 3 June 2010, The 7PM Project had a viewing audience of just under 1.1 million viewers. It was the first time the show rose above the million (albeit that same week's Monday episode, which also hit the million mark in adjusted figures) since the launch and managed to win in all key demographics and more importantly, in total people.
Its first year birthday special, airing on 20 July 2010, gained 1,207,000 viewers, winning its timeslot and becoming the highest rated episode of the show since its debut.
The 7PM Project returned on January 3 for the first time in 2011. After a generally low rating summer series, the show achieved 680,000. A week later, due to the 2010–2011 Queensland floods, rival networks extended news coverage which pushed comparable current affair shows such as Today Tonight which airs on the Seven Network and A Current Affair which airs on the Nine Network to be pushed from their usual timeslot of 6.30 into direct competition with The 7PM Project. Despite the heavy news week, the added competition from the higher rating current affair programs pushed viewer ship down to a low of 496,000 on Friday with episodes across the week also down. The 7PM Project came in 36th for the week, averaging out 657,000.
The show averaged just under 1.1 million viewers on 2 May 2011; the first (and only) time the show rose above a million in 2011.
Despite averaging, on the whole, lower ratings than in 2010, the show has stabilised to around 750,000–800,000 per night with episodes rarely achieving above 850,000 and below 600,000.
In its first outing at 6.30, The Project scored 571,000; fourth in its slot and the third highest rating show on TEN for that night.[14]
Bickmore won a Logie Award in the category of Most Popular New Female Talent for her work on the show. Pickering was nominated for a Logie Award in the category of Most Popular New Male Talent for his work on the show.
| Year | Nominee | Award | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Carrie Bickmore | Most Popular New Female Talent | Won |
| Charlie Pickering | Most Popular New Male Talent | Nominated |
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