0/5

7PM and the art of retention

Dave Hughes says The 7PM Project isn't getting any help from Neighbours. But the figures say otherwise.

7pmpOn the weekend Dave Hughes commented that The 7PM Project was getting low figures because of a poor lead-in from Neighbours.

Unfortunately for Hughes, the theory doesn’t hold up.

Last week Neighbours rated higher than The 7pm Project on every night, except one -when The 7PM Project had 1,000 more viewers. Hardly a lift of any significance.

On Monday Neighbours had 835,000 when The 7pm Project had 734,000. By Friday Neighbours had 683,000, but 7pm had 599,000. If anything Neighbours has been tracking well lately thanks to its storylines that saw the Bridget Parker character written out.

The show would do well to avoid talking about figures right now and focus on better content.

In the premiere episode of 7PM James Mathison told the panel he had to sit through an episode of 60 Minutes while everyone was watching MasterChef Australia’s finale, and all Nine rated was a lousy 901,000.

A lousy figure that would suddenly look rosy here.

Last week Hughesy told the Courier Mail: “MasterChef was basically one of the highest-rating shows of all time. For the press to compare our show to that was ridiculous,” he says.

“Channel 10 is a station where the programmers do have a commitment. They are pretty strong with what they believe in. They’ll certainly give it a good run . . . wouldn’t be like Channel 9 which rips things off after about a week and put on another repeat of Two And a Half Men.”

True enough. But in an interview with the Sunday Herald Sun on the weekend he reportedlye said TEN had never expected it to be an instant hit and that it suffered from having Neighbours as a low-rating lead-in program.

“They look at things like us coming off Neighbours, which does about 800,000 and Two and a Half Men and Home and Away come off Today Tonight and A Current Affair, which can do up to 1.6 million.”

Hughesy might also check he is contradicting TEN publicity that often talks up how well the soap performs in its demographics. Last Thursday the network told media “Neighbours easily wins its timeslot in 16-39.” It had zero to say about The 7pm Project.

Week 34

26 Responses

  1. Who cares what that hopelessly unfunny, non-event Hughesy thinks? This turkey of a show will be skewered by Ten at the end of this year. It can’t remain in such a plum timeslot with the numbers it’s getting. I’m almost certain it won’t be on Ten’s schedule in 2010. I agree that Charlie Pickering comes across badly on the show, really pretentious and unlikable. Hughesy, as usual, comes across like an ignorant fool.

Leave a Reply