Ten pulls the plug on George Negus
Ten is to axe its brave news experiment of 6.30PM With George Negus and replace it by stretching The 7PM Project to one hour and starting it half an hour earlier. It will now be known as The Project with the new lineup starting a week on Monday.
Negus will remain with the network but will not be attached to a specific program. He will be a regular panellist on The Project.
In a press release making the announcement, Ten’s chief programming officer David Mott said: “The move to expand The Project from a half hour format to the hour reflects our belief that this type of contemporary, informative, fast-paced, funny, yet relevant news offering is what best connects with our audience.
“We’re incredibly proud of George and our 6.30 team, both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. 6.30 has been a high quality, credible, and thought provoking news program for the network. The decision to discontinue 6.30 was a commercial one and in no way reflects on the quality of George, the program or the team. We are grateful to George for establishing and steering this bold experiment over the last 10 months.”
Before the George Negus program – which was originally in the 6pm timeslot – launched, executive producer Tony Ritchie told Mumbrella that he was hoping for an audience of half a million.
http://youtu.be/CNz4rhTyGOg
However, the upmarket news show struggled to break the hold of the Nine News and Seven News bulletins, and when it moved to 6.30, Today Tonight and A Current Affair.
Yesterday it rated a metro audience of 340,000, the 31stmost watched show of the day.
A spokesman for Ten told Mumbrella that in part because of vacancies created by next year’s new show Breakfast there would be no journalist redundancies.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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It seems like Ten should shoot for a bookend news format – a breakfast show, and a breakfast show format show at night. I know Nine failed with This Afternoon a few years ago, but if they expand the Project out much further, it will essentially be that anyway.
It’s a shame – 6:30 was a decent show, despite George’s unique presenation style. But good news that nobody will lose their jobs.
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The Project has hit a good groove so it will be interesting to see how it goes in the longer format. It will be up against some stiff competition at 6.30, including SBS World News for those few of us who like to know what’s really happening in the world.
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Wow, 10 seemed pretty confident of their news strategy a year ago at launch. No surprises here
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Poor career choice George. Pity.
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NEE-EEE-EEEIGH!
Wow, they flogged that dead horse for a long time.
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George Negus is still Australia’s Top TV Presenter and Current Affairs Expert, and with his great sense of humour, The Project will only get 10x better!
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It was the best and most informed news show on free to air tv…Sadly the dumbing down of the Australian public continues…..
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We can’t wait to see “The Negus Family” show with George and his spunky sons Serge and Ned, and the Mother with the sexy legs that all the boys love…
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That’s a shame. Thought it was a good current affairs show that actually covered current affairs. Also a great way to get the kids interested in news not the latest fat busting diet.
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Say what you want about 630 but the talent it has unearthed are extraordinary of particular note Dani Isdale and the next big thing in waiting Hamish MacDonald.
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Darren hit the nail on the head in the first post when he said “6:30 was a decent show”. It’s just decent, but it’s not great. When you stand Ten up against nine & 7 they do much better with their news output, but they have been trying to fill the gap between the commercial sector and the ABC & SBS.
I’m a little surprised they have completely axed it, I thought they may have replaced Negus with Hamish Macdonald before quitting just yet. Negus is a great broadcaster, but I feel he’s be better for a Breakfast audience. There have been great inconsistencies with the content and script writing on 6:30. Lately, some of the news items seem like they’ve been blatantly ripped from ropey PR & press releases, with interviews provided by a commercial entity like it was advertorial. The choices of whats been covered from news day to news day has sometimes been astonishing.
All that said, Ten have a hard job sitting between the likes of 7 & nine and the ABC & SBS. With the Aussie viewer makeup the way it is, they are playing with the 3rd rail of newscasting, get it wrong and they’ll get stung, get it right and their where all the power is. If they can pull in and keep hold of a smarter audience and they will command more ad revenue per viewer, then they needn’t worry so much about the likes of nine and 7 killing them in the ratings.
I’m keen to see how the new formats go, commercial TV can do great news. Channel 4 in the UK have proven this for years. I’m not sure for Ten that the idea of having two news shows together works for them? I’d have one solid newscast at 6:30 or 7 and softer quality programming around it, then later in the evening when the kids are in bed have a lighter 30 min ‘Project’ type show when the more mature audience can sit down, take stock of the day and also have a laugh. For that I’d of thought you’d be looking at a 10:30 slot.
6:30 was a good effort and although they’ve pulled it for ‘commercial’ reasons it’s probably a good thing considering some of the content. You can tell they have a good team of people working at Ten, I just think they can do better.
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‘The 6:30pm Project’ |or, ‘The 7pm project’ at 6:30?? lol
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He’s been going downhill for years; 9, 10, but he could always join Alan Jones at the bottom.
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They should have addressed the dinosaur–er, elephant–in the room and ditched George, not the entire show. Wasn’t too bad apart from him.
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Agree, Hamish McDonald will win a Walkley for his fresh and innovative and more community based reporting from Afghanistan and he only got the format opportunity thanks to George. No-one questions the quality of the Negus programming but big questions must be asked of how 10 ever thought this was going to work on what has always been the youth channel. Babow!!
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Disappointing, enjoyed actually having a current affairs show on at that time.
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Totally agree there are no surprises here. George’s style was never one to suit the likes of ten. I thought from the beginning that he would have to lose what it was that he brought the news world in the first place – true investigative journalism, albeit with a unique style – in order to fit into anything in a time slot for a highly commercial channel. It would have been nice to let SBS and ABC share the load of ‘real’ news delivery for once…
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George Negus is great – but 10 was never going to be a good fit
go back to the ABC George. – we miss you there
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I watched Ten’s News, 6.30 and 7PM Project tonight and it is simply becoming a case that too much news is overworked and tiresome.
The lengthy news bulletin that precedes George’s show struggles through as it recaps stories a few times making it feel very padded out and battling to fill its full timeslot
Then George arrives often with a different slant on the same stories with a few other things thrown in but it often feels very droll as he looks up at the camera listfully wishing he was still wearing a safari suit reporting from the Middle East
Then the 7pm “quipfest” Project with its pile of carefully written quips in front of each transient commedian, each try to make the previously covered stories funny with lame screwed up face smiling attempts to make previously heard news into flat comedy. I think the appluase is added to cover up the sound of the scripted jokes dying.
A whole hour of the “quipfest” with a procession of standup comedians using journos as straight-guys whilst they try to wring a forced laugh out each and every story will be nothing but cringe-worthy and painful.
George will be stuck in the middle of the scripted banter and like the others will be slagged for having anything other than a throw-away quip.
How can all of this possibly be an improvement?
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Totally agree with JC — astonishing that a year ago Ten thought it would be a great strategic move to spend millions of dollars on more general news programming. Because there’s such a scarcity in general news. Screw Masterchef, if I was Lachlan I’d switch 11 to a 24/7 news format and invest more shareholder funds in foreign news bureaus and Middle East correspondents. Viewers and advertisers can’t get enough of that stuff.
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Genius Johnny! Do you live in Australia? Switch Eleven to a news channel! It’s the only thing that is working and actually meeting its targets for TEN…..Not to mention there is already a 24 hour news service on FTA.. You can find it at the south end of the ratings reports…..
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Am I the only person who suspects the 10 demographic and Negus are somewhat poles apart? I’m surprised it lasted this long to be honest.
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Unearthed some strong talent but not sorry to see George go. One of the most over-rated, holier than thou journos going around.
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Years ago, when he hosted “Foreign Correspondent”, Negus introduced a show wherein Pakistani makers of bagpipes explained that the subcontinent has a long history of making and playing bagpipes, over several centuries at least and, perhaps even longer, and that various peoples of southern Asia were playing similar instruments before the Scots did. At the end of the segment Negus said, “Pakistanis making bagpipes! What next?” The man either failed to watch his own show’s story or was incapable of following its gist.
The Negus show failed to attract viewers because the host is a smug, arrogant, ill-informed, partisan, irrelevant humbug. Putting him more often on the Project will just help that show’s decline.
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A failed attempt to bring ABC/SBS-style left wing pap to commercial TV.
I’m not in the least bit surprised it bombed.
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