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Is it curtains for Good News World?

Tonight's episode of Good News World may well be the last for the forseeable future.

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If you’re a fan of Good News World, or more likely Good News Week, you may want to tune in tonight for the season finale.

It may be the last you’ll see of the show for a while.

The TEN comedy show hasn’t yet been renewed for 2012 and after dire ratings (last week just 165,000 viewers) the prospect of returning isn’t great.

TEN endeavoured to reinvent the show mid-year from the panel-driven Good News Week to the sketch-based Good News World, described as “Saturday Night Live meets The Daily Show with an Aussie twist.”

The format has undergone change numerous times, including from 30 to 60 minutes, from ABC to TEN, and versions as Good News Weekend (1998) and GNW Night Lite (1999). It was even brought back from the dead after 8 years off air!

So it may yet have another life if it isn’t renewed.

It’s a swift fall for host Paul McDermott who only last year was nominated for a Gold Logie Award, but McDermott is a great talent (especially when paired with Robins) so I hope there are new projects for 2012.

It airs at 10:30pm tonight on TEN.

36 Responses

  1. bring back Julie McCrossin! im remember her in the 90’s shows and she was sharp, smart, witty and knew how to pull Paul and Mikey down a few pegs. She is far more entertaining than the daft, uninteresting Clare Hooper.

  5. We want a week from Australia, not a world! TEN seems to have fallen away from “You asked, We listened”! You hear us, but it’s like your tone deaf! Or just can’t face the facts!

  8. I didn’t go much on the first 2 episodes of Good News World, but it found it’s feet and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it ever since. Paul (as always), Cal Wilson and Sammy J and Randy, in particular, have been outstanding.
    It would be a travesty to lose GNW – regardless of the format.

  9. To be honest, it isn’t that bad. The format isn’t perfect but its still an entertaining show with talented people. To me, the greatest GNW related achievement was the apparently poorly rated Side Show on ABC. Ill always remember that show as an excellent production that was truly ambitious and visionary. Side Show would have cost thrice as much but for me its an all-time great.

  11. The original format was the best (meaning the one from a decade or more ago). There was never any need to fix something that wasn’t broken.

    If ratings were dropping it would be due to repetitiveness (something Ten is famous for) or poor timeslot selection. Monday night was never particularly good, ‘variety’ shows do well on Fridays or Saturdays, even Sundays.

  13. Is there any chance at all of Good News Week returning next year? Or are we saying goodbye to the format again as we know it? I wish Channel 10 would stop ruining shows like this, they’ve done it to BB, Idol, SYTYCD etc 🙁

  15. I know hindsight is 20/20… but I would put a fair whack of cash on the fact that if they kept GNWeek on-air on monday, and then also produced GNWeek, and played it on another night, there would have been a different audience reaction.

    I believe the backlash was mainly due to the fact that the loyal viewers had something taken away, rather than the quality of the new product.

    Australian audiences are bizarre like that.

  17. There used to be two versions of Good News Week, both played each week – one was more political satire, and one was more entertainment based. I preferred the latter, though I don’t know if it was the more popular.

    When it returned they tended to stick with the political satire side of things. I wonder if they should’ve instead gone the other way.

  18. Am I the only one who gave World more than a few minutes of the first episode and actually liked it enough to be a regular viewer? It seems like it.

    Sheesh.

  20. Good News Week used to be an excellent Saturday afternoon’s entertainment at ABC Pyrmont for the filming. How I used to look forward to the email from “Bobby” saying my tickets had been assigned.

    But I agree, Good News World is a very, very poor cousin. Paul McDermott seems to try very hard to pull it all together, but it’s just not there.

    Regardless, I’ve already switched into repeat mode until ratings return next year.

  21. It seems like nobody gave it a chance after the first week. I stuck ith it and found it really enjoyable. I’m a big Sammy J and Randy fan after this series.
    The biggest problem was the similar title. If they’d called it something completely different and let it stand on its own it may have done better, but instead it just pissed off the fans of GNWeek and didn’t attract anyone who didn’t like GNWeek.

  23. Anything up to 1999 was brilliant with the Variety guest stars and performances, Bob Downe, Sandman and Flacco – anything since has been a very pale imitation – all talk and jokes and no entertainment. This last incarnation is just rubbish – only took one show for me to realise that.

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