Is Seven ditching the Midday Movie?
2025 marks a big change in the land of daytime TV.
- Published by David Knox
- on
For decades now, extending back to the 1960s and later with host Ivan Hutchison, Seven has been the home of an old fashioned Midday Movie.
It’s been a staple for seniors and retirees across the country.
But all of that will change come 2025 when a new one hour Seven News bulletin screens, following The Morning Show extended to 12pm.
Chief Content Officer Brook Hall told TV Tonight the change was part of an overall programming plan.
“We’re leaning into the key stuff that differentiates us from other media players, that’s Live, that’s local news, entertainment, sport,” he said.
So what happens at 1pm?
“It’ll be a mix. Sometimes it’ll be movies, sometimes it might be encores, sometimes it might be ob docs,sometimes it might be quiz. A range of stuff.”
Seven also has a 7flix channel -although at present it has Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes at midday.
Could be a programming opportunity for a multichannel…?
- Tagged with Seven News, The Morning Show
27 Responses
Hi David,
Just a question re the 4pm news bulletin in Melbourne. Is it on hiatus at the moment as it seems to be coming from Sydney – do you know what is going on? Thanks
11.30am and 4pm bulletins will be national over the holiday period due to changes to the schedule with test coverage.
On one hand, thank god they’re dropping the Lifetime movies during midday. On the other, the replacement being an extension of Morning Show (aka “advertorials + sloppy news”) and more 7News is just saddening.
Thats like 9 hours of 7News (4 if you exclude Sunrise). The hell, man?
I haven’t watched a midday movie since I left my first job at a TV repair shop in the ’60’s. I was a gopher. A TV was always left on “soaking” in the background and switched to the movie at lunchtime. People like consistancy so “a range of stuff” instead of a movie might not cut it.
Quiz shows seem to get higher ratings then prime time shows so maybe another quiz at 1pm,
My all time favourite mid day movies Me Myself I starring Rachel Griffiths. It’s plot similar to Sliding Doors. Buying the Cow that has many funny scenes. Last but not least Betraying My Husband featuring Jacqueline MacInnes Wood best known for Steffy in Bold and the Beautiful.
I recall, around 1969-ish when at TCN9, we skipped a whole year of DOOL to get closer to US broadcast. Nobody noticed. No phone calls.
Gees do we really need an extra half hour of The Morning Show? And what’s the bet 9 will follow suit with Today Extra. The last half hour is usually rubbish anyway.
Maybe they could change 7flix to more7. That way it would be a bit more generic and could be a mixture of programs. They could even air Shortland St. Having said that I admit I don’t watch during the day but it’s obviously a thing for plenty of people.
I think the midday movie differentiated Seven from other players. They are seriously out of touch if they think viewing audiences want more ‘news’. People are sick of the negativity
what i would like to Channel 7 do is on 7 Two show NBC Today at the time it airs in america and also show NBC Nightly News mid morning Followed by ITV’S News at 10 and in the early hours ITV Evening News
Gone are the days when Midday meant a movie on 7, Ellen DeGeneres on 9 and Dr Phil on 10. Daytime TV in Australia is evolving into an era of repeats and game shows, That’s certainly not going to change anytime soon.
I do wonder why Seven hasn’t considered airing the previous night’s Home & Away as a post midday-news filler. If they want to go down this repeat route, They might as well go with “Australia’s #1 drama”…
Dr Phil used to be on Nine when they first had the CBS output, later Ten (2008 from memory). Nine also had decades long runners in Days of our Lives and The Young and The Restless. Ten was always The Oprah Winfrey Show and Judge Judy.
At that time, the Home And Away audience are either at school – or are just getting out of bed.
“We’re leaning into the key stuff that differentiates us from other media players, that’s Live, that’s local news”
ABC, SBS and Ten all have news around that time and I feel like the daily news bulletin is probably one of the more interchangeable genres on TV. Guessing there’s a business reason for this decision though $$$
The line before indicated an overall programming strategy for 2025, it’s not specific to 12 midday. You also need to look beyond FTA.
Who knows, maybe 7 will put in their place scrpted content which they made
/pause for eruption of laughter
Back in my days, I used to watch a few midday movies during the school holidays. However, as my viewing habits have changed, the amounts of midday movies shown during weekdays are slowly diminishing due to the rise in streaming services like Hulu, Stan, Netflix, P+, Amazon.
Nowadays, I don’t watch a lot of midday programming these days. Midday programming is just encores of tentpole shows.
I suspect Network 10 will also revamp its daytime lineup in 2025. 10 should take advantage of the gap left by the removal of the midday movie and introduce ‘Days of Our Lives’ or another one of the US soaps they’ve recently acquired.
Seven’s Midday movie has had a chequered past across many timeslots and of course in the early days every city was different. In Melbourne, in the late 60s it was an 11am movie. Then in the early 70s Seven had a 10am movie then a game show at midday and another movie at 12.30. Later, Seven shifted the afternoon movie to 2.00pm to accommodate game shows and Homicide re-runs in the midday-2pm block. Then they shifted the movie to 11.30am sometime around 1975 for a year or so, before returning it to midday.
Seven would have had other variations in other cities, as well. In Perth, Seven still had daytime soaps like Days Of Our Lives and The Young And The Restless in the early afternoon until the late 1980s even though they were on Nine elsewhere.
In 1989, the ‘midday’ movie was moved to 1.30pm to accommodate the Bert Newton Show and The Power, The Passion. This was reversed when both those shows were axed.
A timeslot icon. However yes they’ve been made-for-tv titles for many years now. They used to run some Hollywood mainstream ones a decade ago. But in recent years reality encores seem to be in favour. Good to hear they’ll still air movies but just a little later, maybe they can find some better ones though. And agree about 7flix, really need to utilise the channel better. The Great Ivan Hutchison, right up there with Bill Collins, even Margaret and David on SBS extended gratitude and a tribute in the mid-90s on-air upon his sad passing.
Aren’t Seven’s “Women in Peril” Midday Movies typically of the variety seen on the Lifetime Movie Network (Channel 411 if you’re somehow still on Foxtel)?
I’d assume it’d be cheaper for Seven to extend The Morning Show to 12pm (which no doubt provides time for another advertorial or two) followed by an hour-long midday news bulletin then a “House of Wellness” or something to fill the gap until The Chase UK. Not particularly inspiring but then again, is daytime programming on the other channels really any better in this regard?
Nine will probably follow Seven’s lead before overly long by extending Today Extra to 12pm, moving/extending the news bulletin on afterwards then filling the gap at 1pm with a fairly disposable filler program until the UK game/quiz shows kick in at 2pm. Ten will probably do well with its access to the Paramount library and soaps.
“We’re leaning into the key stuff that differentiates us from other media players, that’s Live, that’s local news, entertainment, sport,” He forgot to mention cheap. Most TV and Radio news services run the same news from morning to midnight, so it is not like this will be some breaking / investigative news service. It will be cheap to produce and fill the air time and maybe squeeze in a bit of PR stories for extra revenue.
I don’t watch the midday movies, but I always have a chuckle to myself when reading the TV Guide summary. If Americans consume this rubbish in large numbers, then it is no wonder that America is such a frighten and conspiratorial country.
They are mostly Canadian romances, mysteries and Christmas movies from Hallmark and others. Nine showed them too for a long time. Can’t see commercial news full of advertorials and sensationalist petty crime getting many retirees away from the ABC though. It’s Buffy The Vampire up against Gossip Girl on secondary channels.
I didn’t think the midday movie had been a regular thing for a long time. Mind you all this news is a way to basically scam the local content rules. They basically pull together an hour of news when the morning shows start play it on a loop till 1 in the afternoon apparently, play it again at 4, 6 and 10 repeat tomorrow.
Seven screens them regularly, though heavily repeated. Hallmark and those cheerleader/babysitter trashy murders that a US network specialises. Mystery Woman, Jane Doe, Darrow & Darrow and Hailey Dean mysteries were watchable. Nine shows Reel One romances and Christmas romances from Canada (which start today) when they aren’t repeating evening TV at lunch.
Given midday was where they were running encores of their tentpole shows, the midday movies have been fewer and fewer over the years anyway.