Seven’s Sunday Night to air its final episode this weekend

Seven’s Sunday Night will air its final episode this Sunday at 8pm.

The current affairs program was recently cancelled after 11 years, and on Sunday reporters past and present, including host Melissa Doyle, will feature in the episode and reflect on their favourite moments from the past decade of filming.

Sunday Night has struggled over the past few years, not helped by repeated time-slot changes which added to the show’s difficulties in finding and keeping an audience.

Its highest-rating episode from the year was 680,000 metro viewers in February, but with an average of 469,000 and a low of 165,000, the show has failed to live up to its counterpart on Nine, 60 Minutes.

60 Minutes has had episodes pull in above 1m metro viewers over the past year, especially if it screened immediately after  Nine’s flagship reality content Married At First Sight, and has only dipped as low as 470,000.

There has still been no official announcement for what will happen to Doyle, although it’s understood she will stay with the Seven network.

Sunday Night premiered on February 8, 2009. It was initially followed by a live question and answer program called The All in Call, which was then absorbed into the Sunday Night format, before being dropped completely. Mike Munro was the launch co-host, alongside Chris Bath. Doyle stepped into the hosting position in August 2015.

Munro will return this Sunday, along with Matt Doran, Denham Hitchcock, Steve Pennells, Alex Cullen, Angela Cox, Rahni Sadler, Ross Coulthart and PJ Madam, for the retrospective program.

In a statement when the program was axed, Seven’s director of news and public affairs, Craig McPherson, said the decision had been a tough one to make.

“After 11 years at the forefront of our public offering, it is with much sadness I announce the closing down of the day-to-day operations of Sunday Night: True Stories,” he said.

“It has been a very tough decision in a very challenging TV landscape.”