Good news for Good News Week fans
Exclusive: Producers are looking to restore Good News Week to its panel-based roots next year -potentially on a new broadcaster.
- Published by David Knox
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Exclusive: Good News World aired its final episode last night on TEN, but producers are not done with the Good News Week brand just yet.
Producers plan to film a series of live theatre shows of GNW on the road in 2012.
“Good News Week is looking to be back on air next year and it will probably have a new home if that happens,” a production source tells TV Tonight.
Good News World has not succeeded, but was of value to TEN for its Drama points during a difficult year for the network.
“TEN has been a fantastic place to be for us and they’ve been very loyal.
“But this year the team feels like they’ve been treated as the poor cousins, and have been bounced around the schedule a bit.
“Back in the old days (TEN programming chief) David Mott would refer to Good News Week as ‘the little engine that could’ -meaning that he could move it around, make it longer, truncate it ….sometimes you would get the call a week out saying it would be better to run for 90 minutes or even 2 hours at one stage.
“For the first 30 weeks of 2010 it ran for 90 minutes and averaged just under a million people. But we’re in a different environment now and we’ve got to ask ourselves whether Good News Week in its traditional guise has that tune-in factor that’s going to get the people there every week. We believe it does.”
The show’s origins date back to 1996 on ABC, but despite its various incarnations has retained Paul McDermott, Mikey Robins and director Ted Robinson. This year Good News World emerged after an hiatus in May adding pupeteer Sammy J. and Randy, Tom Gleeson and Cal Wilson.
Next year the show is look to return to its roots as a comedy panel show with an O.B. broadcast of live shows, as it has done in the past for events such as the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
“A lot of people who have shit-canned Good News World haven’t watched much of it. What they didn’t like about it was that it wasn’t Good News Week. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, but it’s been a tough year for comedy,” admitted the source.
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- Tagged with Good News Week, Good News World
50 Responses
Maybe a return on ABC2? and it’s a bit tragic that a ‘comedy’ counted as ‘drama’ points…
just dont like Mikey robins…he is not funny….if he went , they’d have at least 6 new viewers i can think of….
The team and the crew worked so hard every week and they deserved a hell of a lot better than they got. Network, fans, everyone. No one gave it a chance.
Lets hope Ch 10 has seen the error of its ways.
Good idea, put it on a channel where i can never hear of it again.
Terrible show.
Someone should just air the original, and vastly superior British version Have I Got News For You- now in its 21st year. It’s a format where the content is equally as important as those poking fun at it, rather than merely about the bloated egos of the panel.
Ten should never have screwed with the format in the first place. Nor should they have kept moving it around their schedule. Because of that, Ten have probably ruined Good News Week anyway, so dunno if it will rate anymore. When will Ten learn to stop screwing around with their good programs, and do all they can to kill them off.
Bring back Good News Week and put on Monday nights on ONE..
I don’t see GNW working on Channel 9 or 7 to be honest. 7 has a horrendous track record when it comes to panel-based comedy shows (and more recently, comedy in general) and 9 has a similar track record of canning stuff and not allowing shows to find their feet.
A return to their original home at the ABC would definitely work, but who knows? I’m just glad the original show will survive in some form.
Well we also have a Comedy Channel….
Maybe it could be a good spot on 11 (Thursday nights at 7:30 or something?)
Yay!! Glad it’s going back to the panel based show, was a lot better and funnier.
They are a great team and even the recent program is pretty good. Good luck guys.
Now which network would be dumb enough to take this on? GNW has always struggled in the ratings as far as I can remember so I think it’s time to put it to bed. And the smugness of the hosts/panelists on this show always made me want to cringe!
Now which network would be done enough to take this on? GNW has always struggled in the ratings as far as I can remember so I think it’s time to put it to bed. And the smugness of the hosts/panelists on this show always made me want to cringe!
The beast that will not die.
What I ‘didn’t like’ about good news world was the fact that Ten put it on at a time that was impossible for people like me to watch, and then wondered why it wasn’t rating.
Hopefully Ten considers its viewers next year and screens GNW at a reasonable time, even 9.30 was fine.
Which network though? I don’t think this show would work on 7 or 9. It would obviously work on abc (and get a constant timeslot).
It’s garbage that this wil be counted as Australian Drama quota points.
Seriously!
“A lot of people who have shit-canned Good News World haven’t watched much of it….” Ummm I saw a bit of it last night and it was totally embarrassing for all involved.
They’re lucky not to have killed the brand entirely.
Fantastic news!
Great idea. Bring back Good News Week!
Keep flogging that horse!
Thank God!
Once more for Execs who haven’t read it yet
Bob Downe (Mark Trevorrow), Sandman, more song singing from Paul and Guests.
I don’t know who thought it was a good idea to have more of Akmal and the puppet every week. I watched the first episode and that was enough, before that GNW was fantastic.
Bring back Sideshow…