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7:30 drops Clark & Dawe, but they remain with ABC.

After 11 years with 7:30 John Clarke and Bryan Dawe are bumped to a new timeslot deep in the ABC schedule.

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2013-02-04_1001It’s been rumoured for some time and now it’s clear, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe have been dropped by ABC’s 7:30, but have been retained in a weekly stand-alone comedy spot.

They will now be seen at the new time of 6:56pm Thursdays on ABC1.

Confirmation of the change follows on-going speculation about whether they would be returning to the current affairs show.

Last year Clark and Dawe marked 25 years of their mock interviews, 11 of which have been with 7:30. 

ABC had previously denied it would be dumping the duo, but it’s now clear that rumours of changes to 7:30 were on the money (that’s almost worthy of a mock interview in itself).

Segments will also be played on ABC Radio and ABC News 24, and be made available via the ABC website.

Last year John Clarke told TV Tonight part of the charm of the segment was always in seeing the host reaction at the end of the segment, first set in stone by Jana Wendt.

“It would cut back to her and on a couple of memorable occasions she wasn’t there because she was under the desk! It was a great gift. Imagine trying to buy that response! It’s just a genius idea.

“But it’s a gorgeous thing that we do. We love doing it every week, we’ve never gotten sick of it,” he said.

Jana Wendt added, “No other segment could have allowed a current affairs show to admit that parts of what purports to be serious, isn’t.”

7 Responses

  1. This seems like a soft axing from ABC. It’s a way for a network to gradually back out from a particular program when much of its audience is rusted on. SBS did a similar thing in order to get away from Letters & Numbers by replacing it with Countdown… But where’s Countdown now? Axing complete.

    I kinda like the Insiders idea (replace the awful Talking Pictures segment), but about 25% of the time Clarke & Dawe isn’t about politics.

  2. When I was watching 7:30 last Thursday, with its reports about the bushfire and flood disasters culminating a terrible few weeks for this country I thought how appalling and in bad taste it would be if they tried to end the show with Clarke and Dawe’s “comedy” spot. Like other readers of this site, I had lost hope that they would be ushered out the back door, and we could finally have serious news and current affairs.

    How refreshing it was that the show ended with an intelligent report about an issue of interest for the viewers.

    Whenever I saw Clarke and Dawe’s lame attempts at “humour” and “satire” I thought about that Frontline episode where the host and other staff on the show tried to get rid of the comedy segment, and when they thought they had succeeded, the comedy guy came in for his regular segment saying he had been saved because he was mates with the station manager.

    Hopefully Clarke and Dawe’s departure from 7:30 will be a precursor to their boning from TV altogether. The public are over this type of infantile nonsense.

  3. I am afraid I never got the joke….the few times I did watch them…it made me cringe…and I did not understand why it was on a current affairs/news program….just me I guess….

  6. It saddens me that TV execs are so obsessed with novelty. Clarke and Dawe are just as sharp as they’ve ever been, so why bone them? It’s the same with Roy & HG – they should have been at the London Olympics. There seems to be a theory at the networks that anyone who’s been doing something for a long time and is really good at it should be kicked out.

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