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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.

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.

50 Responses

  1. “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.”

    And therein lies the problem. Props for giving a different format a chance, but please please please go back to the format of GNWeek and don’t ever try anything like this again.

  2. Looking forward to the return of Good New Week. Did watch Good News World, but it never seemed to hit the mark for me, some parts funny, other bits bland. Possibly wasn’t spontaneous enough? Anyhow, where ever Good New Weeks lands, I’ll be watching. Cheers.

  3. It would be great to see Good News Week back. Good News World (and yes, I did watch every week) had its moments, but didn’t quite have the sharpness or edge of Good News Week in my opinion.

  4. The Monday 8:30pm nights were the best time for it.In A world dominated by crime shows,Current Affairs Shows or the feral trash the SBS sometimes throws up at the same time every week It was a refreshing start to the week this GNW.While they are at it can be suggest They made a Quagmire show in the USA and follow GNW with it every week.

  5. Gone are the days of good drama on Ten when a so called comedy program can get drama points. Just shows how much they care about making good drama.

    And as others have said the over inflated egos on GNW which is the brunt of the program are what has kept me from watching all these years.

  6. hey source – what we didn’t like about GNWorld is that it wasn’t funny (it seemd more like a vanity project for the comedians than a show)
    Bring back GNWeek, keep it tight and news-focused, and you’ll pull 1 million again.

  7. Some people here are forgetting ABC isn’t a commercial network – they’re only interested in *new* ideas, not shows in their final death throws. That ship has sailed.

    I agree with David. Comedy Channel seems more likely.

  8. Had a feeling it may return next year, in either format. It definitely didn’t have a “final show forever” feel to it. Good News World was ok… But some of the sketches were just terrible (Adele from NZ and Australia’s next top male model) though some were brilliant. I hope they keep Sammy J and Randy, their news and house sketches are gold!

  9. Whlst I think the humour is pretty lame and contrived, each to their own.

    As long as Aussies are employed, its good for the viewers and actors here. That’s always a win.

  10. GNWeek was seeing declining ratings, yes. But it wasn’t because of the format itself, it was because of the effort to shift towards a more commercial style. Interviews with “special guests” to advertise an upcoming movie, for instance. If we wanted to see an interview, we’d watch an entertainment news show.

    When GNWeek was at its best, it had an element of variety (often brought in by Flacco and the Sandman – nobody would be bothered if they were replaced by Cal, Tom, Akmal, Sammy J and Randy as the variety element), a bit of real music, and a lineup in which, typically, there would be one comedian and one non-comedian on each side, in addition to Mikey and (at the time) Julie.

    If TEN wants to really get things flowing, they should return GNWeek, say, on Fridays on Eleven in a two-hour slot starting at 8:30 PM, with a bit of variety thrown back in, and then create a new show, Good News Daily, created as a kind of Australian version of The Daily Show. Make it a half-hour show that is shown on the other four nights of the week at 8:30 PM on Eleven. Get Paul to be the main host, with a diverse cast of “correspondents”, which can include Mikey and Claire, as well as some of the other comedians that were regulars on GNWeek.

  11. I stopped watching Good News World because it had Akmal Saleh every week. Paul and Mikey can only carry so much dead weight. When they were on the ABC they were helped out by the likes of Peter Berner, Adam Spencer and Rod Quantock

  12. If the brand can be salvaged, it would be great to see the show go back to its roots on the ABC. It’d be a good fit for ABC2. Glad to see there are efforts underway to return the show to its former glory.

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