All Stories FeedSunday Night shafted for 3 months
Recently it was reported that the new season of Dancing with the Stars would premiere at 6:30pm on Sunday July 5 -a timeslot that has been home to Sunday Night.
The move left question marks over the future of the new current affairs show.
Today it is confirmed that Sunday Night will be off air for the next three months.
The move comes at a crucial time for the programme, which had been building a steady following recently. Last week it won its slot with 1.27m viewers. This week, it didn’t air in Adelaide at its usual time, so it managed 1.15m. Some weeks it has bettered 60 Minutes.
Current affairs shows of this scale do not come cheap, nor does a variety juggernaut of the size of Dancing with the Stars. Seven is more than aware of the trouble the variety show had “sharing” its audience with Australian Idol last year, and that Seven News (Sunday) is its biggest audience of the week. If it can retain a big chunk of them with Dancing it will be rapt.
Sunday Night has had to find its feet on air this year, getting the chemistry right between Mike Munro and Chris Bath, finding a tone between Ross Coulthart’s investigative stories and light content from Grant Denyer, and juggling the role of a studio audience. The All in Call on 7HD was also axed after a handful of attempts.
Munro even switched networks to do Sunday Night, now it won’t be on air at all…
Source: news.com.au
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Only One Problem if they were to put Dancing With the Stars on a Wednesday Night.You would lose Earl,How I met your Mother and Family Guy
that would be nice family guy repeats at 6pm.
Better yet dump that crap known as Today Tonight for It..
I love the Griffins
With DWTS and PTTR due to retun at similar times, why not leave SN in place, but follow it in the 7.30 slot with Rafters to try and drive a nail in the 60 minutes coffin on a Sunday night. Then Dancing could go back to the Tuesday slot and re-build its Tuesday night audience.
No Sunday Night is returning. The three month period is allowing them to tweak the show and also able to record some more stories.
I’m glad Sunday is gone, should be taken off air!
I’d rather watch DWTS anytime!
Next we’ll see 7 wanting to compete with ten’s 6pm simpsons repeats, so they’ll put their 6pm news bulletin on hold for 3 months to air repeats of family guy.
good to see seven staying loyal to a show (Bones) that has rated so well for them since its resurrection a year ago and leaving it on Sundays where it is rating well (1.3 million!). They’d only stuff it up by changing the night or time and lose viewers just like svu has.
i think Bones is rating more than what homicide rated in the 8:30pm Sunday timeslot! Bones repeats will probably return to follow the new episodes when Castle concludes and City Homicide will return to Mondays when Desperate Housewives concludes in August.
As I’ve said before, the smart decision would be to shift Bones to Wed 8.30pm, its already established as Seven’s crime procedural hour and Criminal Minds only has something like 4 episodes to go anyway. That way they could have kept SN where it was at and just had DWTS lead straight in to Castle, which is exactly how it airs in the US (DWTS 8pm-10pm, Castle 10-11pm).
Is Seven so confident in their news brand that they can afford to do this? My prediction is that Nines news brand will increase in trust and confidence due to the disrespect Seven is giving viewers.
Echoing most preceding comments, I feel that this is an extremely bad decision. Surely Seven’s supposed “flagship” current affairs program takes priority over DWTS? SN has only started to rate solidly over the past few weeks, and now people who are looking for a current affairs fix are going to flock to 60 Minutes. Plus DWTS will have to compete with the final weeks of the similarly family-oriented Merlin and the ratings behemoth MasterChef, not to mention Nine’s 6:30 sap-fest. We already saw Dancing under-perform on Sundays last year.
I’d say that is most likely Craig. They’ll probably just go back to Bones repeats at 9.30 once Castle is finished. I think a 6.30 start will work quite well for Dancing, but as others have noted, it’s not a good move for Sunday Night which is just establishing itself
Castle – net week is ep 6 and there are only 10 eps in the first season
Surely DWTS will be 6:30, Bones 8:30, Castle 9:30?
Still a bad decision to cut SundayNight
I hope it has a major re-tool before it returns. I liked the concept – live, with audience, etc – but it never worked. It needn’t have been live and the audience (who were never actually really factored into the show) were dropped soon enough.
The balance bewteen Ross Coulthart and fluff – some of which hasn’t even been to Today Tonight standards – has been painful. They should get Mike and Nat to do more stories, and have some structured in-studio interviews.
Also the set appears too big and drafty, with its hosts plonked in the middle on dodgy chairs.
Guy, I guess the problem with Seven having named the show “Sunday Night” is that it kind of limits the nights on which they can schedule it
don’t watch either show, but stupid stupid stupid move… there, that’s my thought anyway
guy, well i guess whatever they upset someone. i’m just saying that when it comes down to resting bones or resting SN i’d rest Bones. it’s not a serial and other networks do it to their big procedurals all the time. resting a building CA show is insane.
and bones might have to take a few weeks off anyway. episode 1&2 of DWTS are usually scheduled to go for 2hrs15mins but last year episode 2 went for almost 3 hours and this year there are more dancers!! so something (bones or castle) will have to bend.
i guess the most ideal situation would be for them to wait for bones to finish naturally. but i understand that DWTS has to co-ordinate with the UK, US, and NZ versions of the show because of the professional dancers &judges.
@ Jerome
Although this decision is bad and i too think it is there is no way Bones should be rested mid-season. We have waited long enough and the fact is this is Seven’s #1 Overseas drama and you want them to rest it. Go away.
As for Sunday Night It shouldnt even be rested. I have known for weeks now but this decision is wrong and would be one of Seven’s worst programming decisions. I love DWTS but to remove SN for it is a bit much.
Seven never should have put it on Sundays. It should take over from TGYH and Criminal Minds which are both finishing up in the next few weeks. Seven have made one bad decision. Wednesday would have been the perfect fit. Oh well Seven have done it again! I support Seven but this……
wow, 7 really treat their viewers well. Sunday Night was promising, and something that I watched most weeks- now it won’t be on at all, so I’m assuming they’ll probably lose their audience.
@skydoggie
next year it will be all the cast from sunrise and all the the cast from better homes and gardens
Ryan think you will find that’s their typo not mine. DWTS certainly doesn’t go for 7 months.
months i mwnt
hey david the link 2 the article says 7 monthes not 3
Dancing with the stars? Who is left? What’s after D Grade Celebs?
Seven have a night just sitting there waiting for this kind of show – it’s called Saturdays!
oh well. i wouldnt say it has been a great start for them. 2 good rating shows dont make a season. once merlin came in. that was always going to beat it.
Definitely a bad move for the longevity of Sunday Night.
If Dancing with the Stars does perform in that slot, and pulls better retention out of 7 News than SN, then it’s in even more trouble.
seven put all this time and effort into sn and successfully build a strong following, so what sevens answer? lets just take it off for three months and hope everyone will come back? fat chance! also i dont see why dwts or any other reality show needs to go more than an hour.
Bad decision Seven. Sunday Night will struggle to find its audience once DWTS finishes, its not a good idea to ‘rest’ a current affairs show, particularly when its new and you’re trying to build an audience. I expect 60 Minutes will sail to greater heights with this news. Not to mention you’d think people would be sick of DWTS after something like 8 seasons, but they never are.
This could be fatal for both dancing without any stars and Sunday night they should just put it on Tuesday night like they used to it wouldn’t exactly have much competition from 9 with homeflop
Typical of Simpleton 7 to shelf a half decent intelligent program for its simpleton viewers…60 minutes is still number 1 in my books..
terrible decision. i would have done 6:30 SN, 7:30 DWTS, 10:15 castle. and rested bones for 10-11 weeks. keeping bones there just means that they will have to find a replacment at the end of the season. if bones was rested and started again it would take them all the way to rating week 39.
they should have done this last year instead of the outdoor room. it felt silly having a family show running until 10:30 on some occasions.
Rutzie,
Just over 1.5m avg for season 1.
Ok thanks Brodie.
ITT first season in 2006 was on Sunday, it then moved to Tuesday in 2007 for season 2, then season 3 in 2008.
I think this is a good move. Starting it earlier this year means it won’t clash with Idol. Also will it run for 2 hours every week? David correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t It Takes Two in it’s first season have the 6.30-8.30pm Sunday timeslot and if it did could you please tell me the average ratings for it. Thanks.
For some reason I remember Dancing With The Stars being beaten week after week by Idol last year. One would think you’d try to hold Sunday Night in its slot because regardless of whether I think Mike Munro getting a prostate check is current affairs, lots of people do and it’s not rating terribly, then move Dancing With The Stars to somewhere it’s not up against Idol (est 1.3m weekly) and Random Act Of Karlness (est 1.4m…optimistically).
It’s like Sunday is the only appropriate night for light entertainment.
Nice way to treat your new ‘flagship’ current affairs show, Seven! Why not leave SN on at 6.30 and have Dancing at 7.30?
I have been aware for 2-3 weeks that Sunday Night will be rested. Given the Bones/Castle double have been rating so well, there is no way they will be split just for DWTS, and therefore Seven need to find another timeslot for the program. It also means however that DWTS will be occasionally be shown in Adelaide or Perth at 7pm, 7.30pm or even 8.30pm due to the twilight AFL fixtures involving Adelaide or Perth teams as part of the AFL broadcast deal.
I watched Sunday Night for the first time last week and enjoyed it. I was going to tune in again this week, but now I know it’s going to be given the boot for Dancing With the Trashbags I will reconsider. The last thing I need is to get into a show only to have it taken away again. Thanks 7.
I think this could be a bad move, maybe shift it but being a news show it should not be removed, especially when it’s building an audiance.
What a truly bizarre decision. Just bizarre.
Is it a job requirement these days for TV network programmers to find out what the public wants, then do the exact opposite?