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Rumours Sunday Night, Today Tonight under review.

Network is said to be considering the costs entailed in two current affairs brands.

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There are rumours two of Seven’s current affairs shows Sunday Night and Today Tonight are in the budget crosshairs.

The Australian reports both are under review by network bean counters.

Today Tonight still airs local editions in Adelaide and Perth where they win their timeslots, but entail considerable costs.

Meanwhile Sunday Night is hardly having its strongest year, costing in excess of $300,000 per hour. The show is now in its 10th year.

Last week executive producer Hamish Thomson left the network.

Seven declined to comment.

6 Responses

  1. Seven to cut Today Tonight, so that they can not split their 6pm News Ratings into 2 separate “segments”? And have one ratings segment for the whole hour? Wishful thinking, I know. Haha 😛

  2. Probably got caught out recycling too many stories from other outlets. If it really costs as much as $300,000 a episode to make Seven really aren’t getting value for money given the crap stories Sunday Night produce week after week. I doubt very much TT would cost that much to make, probably already share reporters from Seven news. Would it cost them that much to get rid of TT and replace it with a one hour news bulletin given it’s already been chopped to 20 minutes? 10 minutes of sport is too long but they have to fill out the bulletins somehow.

  3. The Adelaide edition of TT generally runs at 20 mins now as they extend the news to 40 mins. If they want to save money in the news budget, stop wasting our time with 10 mins sport, especially as a headline news article. It’s not important information, and they don’t represent other hobbies. I don’t see a nightly scrap booking or gardening segment. If they have to keep sport, drop the in-studio presenter and leave it with the main presenters. You generally need subtitles to understand Adelaide’s Bruce Abernathy or Mark Sodastrom.

  4. I don’t understand why Today Tonight would be that expensive. Most of the time they are just visiting supermarkets, running after a dodgy person or doing a profile piece on a business. If they really wanted to tighten the reigns, get rid of the sport segment. I don’t know how often the sports guy in Perth appears but he sits at the desk and introduces the story as well as doing the reporting work.

    As for Sunday Night, I agree with Poida that the added tagline is strange.

  5. I’ve never really warmed to Sunday Night, and the tagline “True Stories” is just bizarre. One would like to think every story they cover is true, which makes the title redundant.

    1. My thoughts exactly! This “add on” title makes no sense & reminds me of an old Hamish & Andy parody show called Real Stories. I used to dip in to the show every now and then, with 60 Minutes the original and the best. However, there’s no appeal to Sunday Night this year & the have been pulled up by Media Watch for false exclusives and recycling stories. Mel is better off leaving this show to focus on her radio gig at smooth fm!

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