Network Ten axes The Project after 16 years on air
Network Ten has officially axed the current affairs program The Project amid dwindling ratings.
After nearly 4,500 episodes and almost 16 years on air, the final show will be broadcast on June 27.
Hosts Waleed Aly, Sarah Harris, and Hamish McDonald will reportedly leave the network.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Drive Live with Genevieve Lacey
Australian recorder virtuoso, Genevieve Lacey, is our Performer of the Week on ABC Classic. Not only a musician, but also an arts curator and cultural advocate, Genevieve has brought her masterful recorder skill to concert halls, museums and parks around the world, using music to unite diverse artforms, from dance to digital media, and even science. Affectionately known as the 'Recorder Queen', Genevieve has been a champion of Australian music for many decades, premiering commissioned works by the likes of Elena Kats-Chernin, Lou Bennett, Andrea Keller and more. This year, she curates the 10-concert Utzon Music Series at The Sydney Opera House, which includes a performance with her long-time collaborator, accordion player, James Crabb. Today, Genevieve joins Vanessa on Drive Live performing two solo works for recorder by Jacob van Eyck and the late Australian composer, John Rodgers. MUSIC: Bravade by Jacob van Eyck The Grey Thrush | Little Jackie Winter & Friends by John Rodgers Performed by Genevieve Lacey (recorder)
News.com.au
2 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘Preachy': The truth behind The Project and Q&A's brutal axings
Once hugely influential within Australian culture, The Project and Q&A at their heights were able to make headlines and not only spark but also further conversations within society. Sadly for Channel 10 and ABC, those days are long behind them, and this week, both networks finally decided to put the ageing shows out to pasture. Launched in 2009 as The 7pm Project with co-hosts Carrie Bickmore and comedians Charlie Pickering and Dave Hughes, the panel show won Gold Logies for Bickmore and for co-host Waleed Aly. By the time Covid-19 had the world in its grasps, viewership had begun to crumble, and year-after-year Network 10 was forced to deny that its once ratings behemoth would be coming to an end. When the news finally became official last week, it was hardly a surprise to many. But that doesn't make it any less devastating for the hundreds whose jobs are now in question at Channel 10, as well as those at ABC now that its own long-running current affairs show, Q&A, is also being axed from the airwaves. 'ABC has a fixed budget, it has to go begging to the government if it wants more,' said media analyst Steve Allen, director at Pearman Media Agency. 'It has to run everything on the smell of an oily rag, they're running multiple radio and television networks all off a smaller budget that most commercial networks, apart from maybe 10, don't have to operate off,' he told 'But the common theme here is that programs have to perform,' Mr Allen continued. 'They have to attract an audience; for entirely different reasons if we're talking Channel 10 and ABC. But at their core they have to be popular. It's more than a decade since The Project was at its height of viewership. Seven and Nine, their news shows are ratings behemoths. They're in the top five programmes every night of the week. 'It's incredibly hard for anyone to compete in that hour or hour and a half, whether that's SBS, ABC or Channel 10. And that's the problem The Project faced. Its ratings aren't going up. Since its stellar cast faded away bit by bit they've tried all sorts of personality and host combinations none of which really worked,' he added. As advertising dollars have continued to decrease over the years, forcing free-to-air broadcast networks around the world to tighten their purse strings and shift their entire business models to compete with streaming, Mr Allen explained that it's likely Channel 10 saw The Project's timeslot as an untapped revenue stream. 'It's contracted out to Rove Productions and one has to assume that they were making money out of it. So I would imagine that Network 10 thought if they take it in-house then they can use the profit margin that was being made to spend on something different.' Some critics have suggested that the death of shows like Q&A and The Project is down, at least in part, to audiences growing tired of having a so-called 'woke agenda' being pushed onto them. But this theory feels narrow-minded, reeks of political point-scoring and fails to look at the real issues behind their demise. After all, The Project featured Steve Price throughout almost its entire run, who regularly butted heads with the likes of Waleed Aly and Sarah Harris over hot-button issues. And we can't forget the storming victory Labour had in the elections last month, dragging the Liberal Party over hot coals on their way to a hugely historic victory that demonstrated very clearly that social media echo chambers aren't indicative of the wider Australian culture. While shows like The Project and Q&A have floundered, more straight-news based current affairs shows like Nine's A Current Affair and ABC's Australian Story have continued to succeed within the shifting landscape. Living within a world where we're bombarded with unsolicited opinions across social media on everything from our own lives to those of celebrities, perhaps the fundamental crux is that when viewers tune into a current affairs shows, what they desire more than anything is news presented to them without any form of bias along with it, regardless of the side they personally stand on. As the demise of The Project became clear, some corners of social media blamed it on the show being 'too left-leaning' and desperate to 'push the woke agenda', while others on the polar opposite side tweeted that it was just a mouthpiece 'to push right-wing agendas to a left-wing audience'. It seems clear that this is why these shows are failing, doomed to be just another relic of TV's past. They hark back to a period in our culture when nuance was not only integral to conversation but valued. We live in a world nowadays where everything is so black and white that it's made merely flirting with the grey area nigh impossible. Shows that attempt balance now feel doomed to try and court both sides, only to end up being abandoned by both. 'Both shows had become stale and lost the essence of what they once were,' said TV Blackbox's Rob McKnight. 'The Project turned from a light show to a preachy show and Q&A left behind the core of what it stood for.' It seems Network 10 have come to the same realisation, with their announcement of The Project's replacement 10 News+, making very clear that one thing viewers won't get when tuning in is any form of opinion from its presenters. 'At the heart of everything we do is delivering news and current affairs that matter to you,' said the announcement. 'No filler. No opinion. Just the facts.' All that's left to see now is whether that sentiment can resonate with viewers so Channel 10 can finally bag themselves a win. As more and more legacy shows begin to fall into obscurity, all eyes are slowly turning toward morning television, an institution for many around the world, including here in Australia. Once a pioneer of the format with Good Morning Australia, Channel 10 has failed to achieve success in the timeslot since the show ended in 2005. Its follow-up show, Studio 10, was brutally axed at the end of 2023. While its rivals have continued to succeed with shows such as Today and Sunrise still regularly reaching millions every weekday, some critics have suggested that it could be the next timeslot to face struggles. Mr insisting that Australia's morning shows have 'nothing' to be concerned about, at least for the time being. 'The audiences for Sunrise, TODAY and ABC News Breakfast are very strong and both TODAY and Sunrise generate plenty of revenue,' he said. 'These shows also help the networks have local programming and connect with audiences.' While initially it may seem all doom and gloom for Channel 10 when it comes to its numerous cancellations over the years, from The Project to their failed attempts at The Traitors and bringing back Gladiators where other broadcasters like the BBC succeeded, media analyst Steve Allen says that the ailing network appears to have finally hit bottom, and now the only way is a slow climb back up. 'Peak night audience across Seven, Nine, Channel 10 and SBS has actually gone up for the first time in a decade,' he shared. 'Not by much, but that's unheard of in recent times. If it has finally bottomed out, then crucially, it means the dollars that these networks have to spend won't erode any further.'
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Organisers of Adelaide's Cabaret Fringe Festival, Beer and BBQ Festival plead for help
South Australia's major events headlined by the Fringe Festival, LIV Golf and the AFL's Gather Round are on fire, but the next level down is on life support. "This actually might be the last year for the Adelaide Cabaret Fringe Festival as we know it," festival director Paul Boylon admitted. It's a similar story for the 10-year-old Beer and BBQ Festival, which has said farewell this year due to skyrocketing costs. "It's just become kind of untenable to pass on the costs of the increases, we just can't keep passing on the cost to our punters in the ticket prices," co-founder Gareth Lewis said. Both events play a vital role in helping fill the winter months, long after last drinks have been called for Adelaide's bumper summer events calendar. "You can't just have your artists hibernate for nine months of the year and then just pop back up in the summer," Cabaret Fringe producer Simone DiSisto said. The Cabaret Fringe Festival began as part of the government backed Cabaret Festival more than two decades ago, the brainchild of legendary arts figure Frank Ford. "His vision back then was we would be the younger sibling of the Cabaret Festival, the terrible younger sibling that would be a little bit looser, but definitely more accessible and very much highlighting the local voices," DiSisto said. Over the years it's been funded by city venue owners, before securing money through the Adelaide Economic Development Agency three years ago. But that funding ends with the recently concluded 2025 Festival and this time there's no coming back without major help. "We've squeezed every cent, applied for every grant and passed the hat more times than a burlesque glove," DiSisto revealed. "We're really looking for big sponsors, big thinkers, game changers, we need the new Frank Ford." The Adelaide Beer and BBQ Festival is also set to turn out the lights in 2026, falling on tough times just like music festivals including Splendour in the Grass and Groovin' the Moo. The festival had 30 artists performing in this year's farewell festival and has fostered the careers of hundreds of others over the journey. Gareth Lewis is sad it's come to this. "I think there's a conversation to be had around how independent festivals are supported, there is a lot of big ticket government funded events going around," he said. "They're great, but there's a role for independent events, you know independent producers like us who make our living selling tickets. "We put bands on stages and we put beers in people's hands and we create these cultural experiences the same as the big arts festival." A spokesperson for the SA Arts Minister Andrea Michaels said the government has committed an additional $8 million to supporting artists and arts organisations with grants for new works. "Further as part of the new $80 million state cultural policy, we are investing an additional $1.5 million from which independent festivals are welcome to apply for funding." Simone DiSisto remains optimistic and is still holding out hope the Cabaret Fringe can be saved. "We've weathered venue closures, global pandemics and like a great phoenix, it has risen from the ashes many, many times," she said. While 2026 looks a bridge too far, there is a glimmer of hope, with the state government holding a meeting with the Cabaret Fringe organisers, while the Adelaide City Council has also reached out to see what assistance it can provide.
