7PM and the art of retention
Dave Hughes says The 7PM Project isn't getting any help from Neighbours. But the figures say otherwise.
- Published by David Knox
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On 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.
26 Responses
@steve, i agree charlie comes off as such a pretentious person, badly.
alot of people watch 2 1/2 men the ratings say that
i dont understand hughes is very good in before the game but uncomfortable in 7pm
I love Neighbours and the 7PM Project. I watch them both together. Don’t have much love for Biggest Loser (although I liked it when Bob and Jillian were involved) and Master Chef though.
Oh.. and it was very good to see Tony Martin make an appearance the other night. Hopefully we can see him back again.
Yeah blame Neighbours? Does he forget that The Biggest Loser, Big Brother and Masterchef have done well with even lower lead-in’s from Neighbours! Heck, even Friends and The Simpsons have done better than the 7pm Project. The reason why Hughesy’s show is tanking is because it’s crap – plain and simple!
Maybe the low figures are due to the fact 7PM Project is horrible.
Charlie is an unlikeable toff, Hughesy isn’t funny and Carrie adds nothing to discussions, so the whole thing is pointless.
Guest hosts are also a problem, last week they had woman beater Matthew Newton on. What are they thinking?
Even when they do get it right with a guest host, like they did last Friday with Tony Martin, they throw the annoying Jane Hall on the panel as well so she can interrupt any decent conversation happening.
Advice would be worry less abouts what’s on before you and look at what you’re on.
I’d say Ten weren’t too happy with old Hughesy because at the start of the show tonight the first thing he said was how good the episode of Neighbours was before it and how much he loves Ten and that he watches the network all the time. I’ve never seen someone backtrack as fast as that.
Lead ins really aren’t as important as they used to be. Television is viewed far more by people who want to watch a programme rather than those who can’t be bothered to change the channel. Hughesy is waay off base here.
The fact is 7PM is a little more niche than people like to think, and I say that as a guy who watches it every night. It is ironing out the kinks still, but doesn’t seem prepared to do what really needs to be done. They’ve finally realised that it works better with a panel of four, and the guests who stay for the whole show are an improvement, but – and again I say this as a fan of the guy – Dave Hughes needs to go. He just doesn’t work for the programme. Carrie and Charlie are refreshing, intelligent and funny, with Carrie effectively working as the straight man for the other two, but Hughesy sometimes seems to be wishing he were anywhere but where he is.
The funny thing is, three people have really proved themselves on the programme, to the point where they are mentioned in the ads – Tom Gleason, Kitty Flanaghan and Ryan Fitzgerald. Replace Hughesy with one of them and put James Mathison on the panel permanently. Heck, even Jane Hall works better than Hughesy.
The show works. While it’s amazing that TEN is actually giving it a chance (which I’ll bet is more to do with Roving Enterprises than anything else), the show needs to get the balls to make the necessary changes, and realise that it’s never going to be a MasterChef ratings winner.
This is the thing.With a handful of exceptions over the Years Prior to the 7pm Project,Masterchef,Taken Out,Big Brother and those Jamie Oliver cooking programmes Ten has over relied on the Likes of Seinfeld,Everybody Loves Raymond and Friends for a 7pm offering to follow Neighbours.Give it time to find an audience
How pathetic that the network supports crap like this (jobs for the boys again!) but ditches other good local and overseas shows after 1 poor rating episode … brainless!
Jack!
hughsey does seem to lack knowledge in the topic being discussed a lot of the time, obviously you can’t be an expect in everything, but anyone can do their research, which it seems he can’t even do when it comes to talking about the rating of his own show. Often when Charlie is trying to discuses a topic hussy interrupts with some joke. there isnothing wrong with being funny and a lot of the time he is, but it’s annoying when he interrupt when Charlie is trying to have a genuine conversation and alot of the time hughsey’s jokes seem to be dismissive of the subject.
i wonder how low it will get. as the days get longer Home and away will drop from 1.2 to a bit over the mil, 2.5men also loses about 100k, how much will 7PM lose? they also have to compete with the rise of GO! and ET. i think it will be getting wely averages of 550k.
I am confused as to why the show still seems so rough. How have they not ironed out the kinks yet?
In theory I think the format of the show is fine, but it just isn’t gelling as it is. Losing or adding panel members is the obvious answer.
Persisting with a sub-par show and insisting that people will tune in eventually seems ridiculous. The first night rated well, the show sucked, people went back to Home and Away.
Fix it.
I have to admit, I thought the 7pm projected sounded like a bad idea. This comes from the general disappointment factor a lot of Australian comedy brings and I have never liked Dave Hughes in the least.
However I have had it on series link on my foxtel for quite a few weeks and look forward to watching it every night. It is actually a good and entertaining show. I actually don’t find Hughesy annoying on it. Even though saying this a few months ago would make me feel like needing a rape shower, I actually find him funny and not annoying on the show and Carrie Bickmore is refreshing. It’s nice to see a attractive female personality, who is actually genuinely delightful and entertaining. So often female personalities in Australia aren’t attractive in any way, and rely on crude humour and bad attitudes to get out there. There is no schick and she is just genuinely delightful and entertaining. She’s also very nice to look at.
I hope the show sticks around for a while, it’d be a shame to loose it to repeats of sitcoms. I think a problem comes from it is a show you can really like but don’t need to watch every night, and so it will just take time to build up a strong regular audience.
I still don’t know who watches two and a half men. My images of the audience goes back to last year. We’re in the smoking garden laughing and taking about, ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,’ and she thought we’re talking about two and a half men and proclaimed, “that charlie sheen sure is is wicked” … after about a minute of pleasantries, she slid back into the the dark ditch of despair and pokie machines from where she came.
People are going to watch something because they want to watch it, not because there is a program on before it that they like. It’s not fair to blame 7PM’s bad ratings on Neighbours because if people just aren’t interested in 7PM, they’ll turn over to something they’re more interested in, such as Two and a Half Men and Home and Away.
Like has been said the 7pm Project is a lead in to Talking About your Generation and it rates well, Neighbours was a lead in to Masterchef and that rated well, the days where we got up out of our chairs and click to another channel are over, people use there remotes now from the comfort of their sofa’s, yes in some cases lead ins help (especially for the 5:30pm to 7pm getting dinner ready time), however I bet Australian Idol does well after the 7pm Project this week.
Lead ins are not the be all and end all, in fact the people who watch Neighbours are in a way the very people that the 7pm Project are targeting too watch anyway, the Online, Social Networking, YouTube watching audience (hence the go to our Website too watch the interview in full stuff).
If lead ins did it all then The Big Bang Theory would be blitzing the ratings on Mondays having 2 X Two And Half Men episodes leading in to it.
the poor 7pm project team, the numbers are getting harder to spin with each coming week.
first they talked about good demos and tp’s then they started losing loing tp’s so they talked about winning 16-39, then H&A beat them so they said they beat 2.5men in 16-39, then 2.5men beat them so they talked about increasing on neighbors. now they can’t even say that without making headlines.
Cue the Hughsey bashers.
I for one don’t really care about the 7pm project…I’ve tuned in a few times. Its ok. Nowhere near the level of Jon Stewart or CNNNN, but better than repeats of trashy American sitcoms.
When Andrew Denton’s new show Hungry Beast premieres on Wed September 30th, it will probably be more of the “news, but not as you know it” flavour that 7pm was going for. And yes, I’m aware there’s differences between the shows, but for the most part they target a similar audience (see the show’s tagline of “A weekly, topical TV show and daily web program,”Hungry Beast is a new look at the world based on one instruction: ‘Tell us something that we don’t know”.)
If people want to watch they will watch despite the lead in from other shows. Prime example is the success of Talking About My Generation whose lead in show is… the 7PM project!
Dave Hughes was always a bad choice for this show. Too many people don’t like his humour so these are probably the people who aren’t watching.
Lead in’s have nothing to do with the success of a show. I watch plenty of shows on FTA and Fox that have horrible lead-ins. EG, The factuals before PTTR, or the rubbish for City Homicide. A show will get good ratings if it is a quality show.
Hughesy is an idiot. No is he serious. BB, TBL, MC have all come off Neighbours as a lead in and rate very well. He said it himself, MC is one of the highest rating shows of all time…and guess what it had neighbours as a lead in. Also as David pointed out, Nieghbours wins ten favourite 16 – 39 demo easily, 7PM doesnt win any. Even last year, at its worst BB was doing over 800k and taking out 16 – 39 so Hughesy, dont blame Neighbours. I like the 7pm Project but can see why it doesnt have mass appeal, maybe he should just accept that.
whilst the ratings for this Neighbours are indeed better than 7pm project, those ratings are not that great, and are down year on year for the past few weeks.
but again demos are the saviour of Neighbours, even if it does get them fairly easy as there is not much to compete for that demo in that time slot.
Even though it’s technically low ratings, I don’t think the 7PM Project’s a show that needs high ratings to survive. It’s going to be a slow burner until it hits its stride, and then will find a solid loyal audience.
Maybe, if it does suffer a downturn, it will shuffle hosts. I’m not sure if Dave Hughes is as ideally suited as they had hoped.
I don’t think Dave Hughes was putting Neighbours down or saying that 7pm Project is rating higher than Neighbours, in fact he says in the article that Neighbours rates about 800,000 which is obviously higher than 7pm Project. His point is that Neighbours gets about half the viewers of Today Tonight and A Current Affair, and therefore 7pm has half the lead-in. Home & Away always drops from its lead-in of Today Tonight and Two & A Half Men mostly drops from A Current Affair. Adding to the problem is that the lower audience of Neighbours are soap viewers and a lot would turn over to Home & Away.
All shows at 7.00pm on Ten struggle because of the lower lead-in compared to the other networks, and I think Dave Hughes was just saying that Ten realize that and are prepared to give the show time to find an audience.
I like 7PM but think it would do better at 6.30PM. Giving us an alternative to ACA & TT and their copycat stories and paid for advertiser stories.