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'I don't know what I'll do': The Project stars appear heartbroken in first reactions to Channel 10 axing their embattled current affairs show after 16 years

'I don't know what I'll do': The Project stars appear heartbroken in first reactions to Channel 10 axing their embattled current affairs show after 16 years

Sky News AUa day ago

The Project panelists have reacted after Channel 10 confirmed the embattled current affairs program would be gone from the air within weeks.
A Ten spokesperson confirmed to SkyNews.com.au that The Project would end its run after 'almost 16 years and more than 4,500 episodes'.
"The Project will air for the last time on Friday, June 27, ending an incredible run of almost 16 years and more than 4,500 episodes,' the network said in a statement.
"The impact that The Project has had on the media and entertainment industry, countless careers, as well as on Australian society and culture, cannot be overstated.'
On Monday evening's episode, the series' high-profile hosts—Waleed Aly, Sarah Harris, Steve Price, and Sam Taunton—appeared heartbroken during their first show since the news broke.
"16 years is an incredibly long period of time for a TV show. It's a huge success to pull that off, and so many people have contributed to that," Aly said.
"They all do a fantastic job, for example, Kim, who is operating Camera Three right now and look, it is a great shot. She's doing a wonderful job.
"This is the way things work. A huge shout-out, though, to our viewers as well."
'This isn't goodbye, we will see you again more over the next few weeks, but I know and everyone who has worked on the show know these are the best viewers in Australia. It has been a privilege to serve you.'
Channel 10 veteran Sarah Harris, visibly emotional, said she was "so grateful" to have contributed to The Project since 2022.
"My first appearance on this show was as a Dave Hughes funny; I fell over during a media scrum outside court," she said.
"But I am so grateful that I got to sit on this desk and play TV with all of you; it's been such a fun thing to do."
"It's the people that make a show, and The Project isn't just the people on this desk; it is the cast and crew behind the scenes."
Price, who is a guest on Monday evenings, said he doesn't know what he will do without his role.
'This is the best crew of people I worked with. I was 55 when I started here. I'm now 70, that's 15 years. How an old fat guy like me can survive that long? I have no idea. But I'm still here," he said.
"I'm really sad today; Melbourne has lost an incredible investment in its culture with the people who work on this show.
"People who come out with music bands and have written books and were actors will lose the opportunity to be able to talk about their products.
"It won't be able to be done anywhere else. I'll miss it. I don't know what I'll do on Monday nights.'
It is unclear whether the hosts will be deployed to other projects at Ten or leave the network entirely.
The Melbourne-based program features a rotating lineup of regular presenters, including Georgie Tunny, from Sunday through Friday.
The series' original panel consisted of Carrie Bickmore, Charlie Pickering, and Dave Hughes.
And its most well-known lineup was arguably Bickmore, Peter Helliar, Waleed Aly, and Hamish McDonald.
It was during this era The Project and its hosts picked up a trophy case of Logie wins, including Gold Logies for Bickmore in 2015 and Aly in 2016.
Bickmore and Helliar left the show in 2022 amid reported budget cuts and declining viewership at the free-to-air broadcaster.
Ten also faced mounting challenges as The Project's ratings dwindled due to criticism over its "woke" left-wing bias.
A new program called Behind the Lines, hosted by high-profile journalist Denholm Hitchcock, is set to air in July or August.
Ten's new materials describe Behind the Lines as an investigative series that exposes "hidden" stories which matter to Australians.
'Go behind the headlines with 10 News First as our reporters dig deep to uncover the facts, follow every lead, and expose stories that others try to keep hidden," a synopsis reads.
'Hosted by Denham Hitchcock, this investigation series shines a light on issues that matter to Australians – holding the powerful to account with fearless journalism.'
'Real stories. Real impact. The truth told straight.'
Senior journalist Dan Sutton will executive produce the show alongside a fresh high-profile team from rival Network Seven.
This includes journalist Amelia Brace, former Seven Spotlight presenter Denham Hitchcock and former Seven senior producer Bill Hogan.

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Looking for a new book? Here are 10 recent releases
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It's a way to get to know someone intimately without them being there – Coralie studies Adam's library minutely, drinks in every detail of his domestic life – and it's a prelude to a courtship between two well-spoken, educated people with endearing quirks. Adam pursues a career as a political commentator; Coralie wants to have children and be a writer herself. The shadow of inequality and eventual discontent grows despite their best efforts, and as Coralie returns to Australia, she comes to view her life as perfect in every respect, except that it doesn't feel truly hers. Stanley writes in a tradition that runs from Jane Austen to Nancy Mitford, and this charming literary romance queries the endgame in romance fiction, the happily-ever-after, in a way that lingers. Rise and Shine Kimberley Allsopp HarperCollins, $34.99 Following her debut novel Love and Other Puzzles (2022), Brisbane-based author Kimberley Allsopp has written a love story that starts at the end. August and Noah have been married for 10 years. They've begun to drift apart, taking each other for granted, falling into routines that evade problems and short-circuit intimacy. With relationship breakdown imminent, will the couple remain a couple? Will they embrace singledom? Or learn to cope with the disappointments and irritations of life? Or rediscover a way of loving that fictional romance rarely broaches? Rise and Shine is a refreshingly adult book about long-term relationships. It probes the internal landscapes of two partners who question whether their relationship's working (and what to do about it), but it's outward-looking too. No couple is an island, and the book opens to broader family and community, taking in art and music, divorce, friendship, loss, footy, and a dog – all in sweltering Brisbane heat. 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It's cheesy but fun, delighting in hordes of tropes from swords and sorcery, while taking up arms against a world of men (and dragons). New Skin Miranda Nation Allen & Unwin, $32.99 Grunge lit makes a comeback in Miranda Nation's debut, New Skin. It's a heady and intense time warp to 1990s Melbourne, where two university students, Alex and Leah, meet at medical school, beginning a relationship that careens between idealism and cynicism, from exploring who they are and might become, to relieving themselves (of the burden of their own potential) through destructive hedonism. When they meet again years after they've drifted apart, will their passion for each other resurface? Should it? In many ways Nation's novel is a literary throwback, a Gen X love story charting the throes of youth during the years in which 'heroin chic' was a thing. The precise, unsentimental portrait of Melbourne youth culture at the time will immediately seduce and appal anyone who lived through it (raises hand), and for others, it serves as a welcome addition to the contemporary Australian grunge literature from that epoch – Luke Davies' Candy or Christos Tsiolkas' Loaded, say – which tended to be male-dominated. 1945 The Reckoning Phil Craig Hodder & Stoughton, $34.99 The title notwithstanding, much of Phil Craig's study of World War II and its aftermath deals with the war years leading up to 1945. And necessarily so. For what he is examining is the way in which, even as the war was being fought (and his descriptions of the action bring home just how bloody and violent it was), the peace was being planned. It's an epic canvas, ambitious, in some ways even Tolstoy-esque, taking in Europe, the Asia/Pacific and the quiet English countryside. There are many moving parts (possibly too many), but his main focus is on India and the ultimate establishment of the post-colonial state. Two figures loom large: the problematic Subhas Chandra Bose, who spent much of the war in exile in Nazi Germany and was leader of the Indian National Army (which fought with the Japanese), and Colonel Kodandera Subayya 'Timmy' Thimayya, who decided to fight with the British, defeat the Japanese, then negotiate the peace. Two divergent paths, same goal – independence. Along the way he incorporates the tales of ordinary people – such as a very astute English nurse – caught up in extraordinary times. On both a narrative and thematic level, this is skilfully told history for the general reader. The better sporting tales tend to be about more than just sport, and this is the case with Katrina Gorry's record of a sporting life that has taken her to the world stage as a member of the Matildas and current captain of West Ham United. It starts in a Brisbane backyard where 'Mini' (she is five foot one) played no-prisoners-taken soccer against her brothers, played in a boy's side when she joined a club and copped regular sprays on and off the field for being the only girl on the ground. All of which made her more determined. And this is not just a story about talent, dreaming big and success, but grit too. Plus the setbacks, the constant pressure of competing at the elite level and the effect on both her mental and physical health. But woven into this is the unfolding tale of her sexuality, choosing to have an IVF baby by herself and falling in love on Gotland. Not to mention going on strike to get better pay and conditions for the Matildas. Her family looms large, as does the concept of the team. An inspiring tale, tempered by realism. On Democracies and Death Cults Douglas Murray Harper Collins, $34.99 A key contention by British neo-conservative Douglas Murray in this study of the October 7 attack in Israel is that the region, and the West for that matter, is caught up at present in a Manichean struggle between good and evil – terms he endows with a kind of metaphysical truth – between countries such as Israel that stand for Life, and Hamas, which stands for the cult of Death and martyrdom. Not that he hasn't got extensive, boots-on-the-ground knowledge of the complexities of the situation. He's a seasoned journalist who went to Israel and Gaza after the attack and interviewed both victims and terrorists, citing examples – and it's deeply disturbing – of how exultant the Hamas attackers were. But the result is an emphatically one-sided assessment that excuses the horrifying, ongoing slaughter in Gaza of thousands of Palestinian civilians as a necessary war of survival between Life and the cult of Death. And Netanyahu, whom he interviewed, emerges as a dedicated war leader – never mind that the ICC has issued a warrant for his arrest as a war criminal. Highly contentious. Often as not, this jaunty, serious and funny description of life as a criminal defence lawyer reads like dispatches from the law zone. Kalantar, an advocate and public speaker, recalls the day he decided to become a lawyer. He was seven, wrongly accused of making a face to his teacher and betrayed by a classmate, the injustice staying with him. Mind you, he initially took a wrong turn into banking, before an inspiring lecturer guided him into law. It's shot through with lessons from the coalface, especially in regard to making assumptions about accused clients – one, in particular, whom he dubs Genghis Khan, whose responses (through an interpreter) to questioning he completely misread. In another poignant episode, he outlines the way two close brothers fell out over the contents of their mother's will. In many ways, his subject is the human comedy in all its shades of dark and light. Not to mention courtroom stuff-ups and confessional moments such as his ADHD. Serious matters, but told with an ironic eye. In 1802, the father of the smallpox vaccine, Englishman Edward Jenner, was satirised in the papers, one cartoon depicting him injecting a terrified woman who is turning into a cow (the vaccine coming from cowpox). The scaremongering and pseudoscience surrounding vaccination, as epidemiologist Raina MacIntyre shows in this clear-sighted, plain-speaking study, goes back that far. And, after COVID, it has resurfaced again with the rise of anti-vaxxers. Astonishing, when we consider that vaccinations over the last 200 years have virtually eradicated deadly diseases such as smallpox and polio, which are particularly dangerous for children – infant mortality rates plummeting. 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Spirit of rock legend Chrissy Amphlett channelled in Rising cabaret Amplified
Spirit of rock legend Chrissy Amphlett channelled in Rising cabaret Amplified

ABC News

timean hour ago

  • ABC News

Spirit of rock legend Chrissy Amphlett channelled in Rising cabaret Amplified

As frontwoman of Australian rock group Divinyls, formed in Sydney in 1980 with guitarist Mark McEntee, Chrissy Amphlett was renowned for her powerful stage charisma. Her thick, bright red hair; short, black-and-white sailor tunic with suspender belt and fishnets; her "Monster Schoolgirl" persona and sexually provocative stage-writhing, are legendary. And her music is still incredibly powerful. "When you're in the centre of those songs and they're a wall of rage, it feels mythically enormous," says Sheridan Harbridge, who performs in Amplified: the Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett, as part of Melbourne's Rising festival. The word that keeps coming up as I talk about Amphlett with Harbridge and the show's director, Sarah Goodes, is "electric". "People who I've spoken to, her friends and people who saw her, they really describe her as conjuring an electricity that just gripped the room," Harbridge says. "There were no women in rock doing what she did at the time. She was getting up there and giving sex, passion and rock'n'roll, any way she wanted to. With no rules of pandering for men or pandering for women." Amplified, a cabaret, brings to life Amphlett's story through her music. Goodes is quick to point out that the rockstar contained multitudes, beyond her on-stage, rage-filled persona. "At the time you had to pre-empt it, you know. To avoid being eaten alive, you had to kill first," Goodes says. The show aims to let all Amphlett's contradictions — of rage, vulnerability and anger — "shimmer in the air together", Goodes says. Harbridge is drawn to telling stories of the women society has labelled "disobedient". "As a writer, it's always been my sort of manifesto … making sure that their story is on the record." Amphlett rejected feminist ideas prevalent in the late 1970s and early 80s, that dismissed overt sexuality as pandering to a male gaze. "Chrissy was like, 'I don't need to follow any of these rules,'" Harbridge says. "That was her punk." "It's that ancient [contradiction of] women being too sexual or not sexual enough," Goodes says. "It's this impossible shadow-boxing with what it means to be a woman. And she just burst through it and roared. Everyone just shut up and loved it and embraced it." The idea for a one-woman show about Amphlett's life was conceived by Amphlett herself. She'd been working on the idea before she died of breast cancer in 2013. It was Amphlett's longtime friend Simon Morley (of Puppetry of the Penis fame) who brought the idea to Goodes, back in 2018. COVID delays pushed the project back but, eventually, Morley asked Goodes to direct. She was interested, on one condition. "If I can do it with Sheridan," Goodes says. "I couldn't really imagine anyone else who can traverse that tightrope between rock'n'roll and theatre. "You don't want someone impersonating Chrissy," Goodes says. "What [Sheridan is] able to do is channel the spirit of her." Harbridge describes Amplified as a "rock odyssey". The cabaret format allows her to directly address the audience, to conjure memories of what Amphlett was like on stage. "The fans who adored her are as much a character as I am," Harbridge says. "I want it to be a communion of an artist. So yeah, we're in the room together." The weight of responsibility in creating a show centred on the life and music of someone so beloved by fans doesn't escape Harbridge. "People get this distant, shimmering, glossy look in their eyes when you mention Chrissy Amphlett. They go, 'Oh yeah, I saw her in Toowoomba in '88. And she just blew the roof off.'" Goodes has directed numerous plays about other trailblazing Australian women — art patron and founder of Melbourne's Heide gallery, Sunday Reed (Anthony Weigh's Sunday, for MTC in 2023, STC in 2024), former prime minster Julia Gillard (Joanna Murray Smith's Julia, National Tour in 2024). And she says that the key is not in attempting to imitate that person, but in finding ways to bring their essence to life in the room. Harbridge and Goodes hope Amplified: The Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett will offer younger audiences the chance to get to know Amphlett's music and celebrate her as an artist and rule-breaker 20 years ahead of her time; as a pioneering woman who kicked down doors for future generations of women artists to walk through. "I think an artist who enrages at the time, is often giving you a glimmer of the rules of the future," Harbridge says. "Someone who just keeps pushing other people's brains into that kind of considerate sponginess. Until one day, the whole matrix moves. "I know I stand on the shoulders of women like her, who demanded to work in an art form. And now I don't take that for granted." And what would Amphlett think of the show? "That's all I'm worried about," she admits. "I hope we're honouring her. I really hope we are. And I hope we're letting people meet her beyond the 'monster' persona. Which is what she wanted from doing the show." Amplified: the Exquisite Rock and Rage of Chrissy Amphlett runs as part of Rising festival from June 11-13.

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