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Late night show for Seven?

The late night landscape is still a place of opportunity.

There are rumours once again of a late night show for Seven.

I say do it. It’s an opportunity nobody is capitalising on, unless we count Tonightly with Tom Ballard, whose numbers -admittedly- are quite awful. But grabbing a loyal late night audience will add to nightly share.

The Herald Sun speculates Seven is buoyed by numbers for the very-economic Front Bar as a model, and is considering a Project-style show. Early discussions with Andrew Denton reportedly ended with him focussed on Interview.

Other names that have sprung up in this area are Lawrence Mooney, Andrew O’Keefe, Darren McMullen from previous pilots but it isn’t clear if the current chatter is news or variety.

There has always been a strong call to revive The Panel although Working Dog are selective about their projects. Let me also throw Roy & HG into the mix. But we should also offer up some female hosts too….

Whether on primary / multichannel, weekly / nightly, Sydney / Melbourne, serious / comedic, with audience / without audience….it’s time to take a few risks.

Any other names, people…..?

42 Responses

  1. “Tonight” shows used to be the lifeblood of local television in the last century – even some regional stations had them; Six Tonight in Ballarat; In Canberra Tonight; Friday Night Live in South East Queensland – but once Bob Hawke introduced “aggregation” and Paul Keating abolished the “two-station rule” the media barons running the east-coast networks took over and we’ve ended up with the so-called “concentration of media ownership” which resulted in all local stations putting all of their resources into news leaving nothing for innovation anywhere else. Maybe some of the ABC MD’s much-hyped “innovation” fund could be directed to late-night variety/talk rather than some of the ideas that have been expressed so far.

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