Demise of The Project points to troubling trend for free TV
The reason for Network Ten’s axing of long-running current affairs program The Project points to a troubling outlook for many shows on free-to-air television.
After weeks of rumours, Ten confirmed on Monday that it will wind up production on The Project this month at the cost of almost 100 jobs.
It will be replaced by a new “in-depth news, current affairs and insights program” called 10 News+.
The Project, which debuted in 2009, was aimed at younger viewers, offering a lighter and innovative look at news world events.
In an address to staff this week, Ten president Beverley McGarvey revealed the difficult decision to cancel it after 16 years came as younger viewers turned away from traditional TV toward social media.
“It’s really just evolution and we didn’t think we’d ever have this problem,” McGarvey told staff at the network’s Melbourne studios.
“We didn’t think we’d be here for 16 years, but as you all know those younger demographics, in particular, who really made the show … thrive in the beginning have just evolved and they’re watching different platforms and they’re watching different services.,” she said.
“For those reasons, unfortunately the show just doesn’t stack up any longer.”
You might like
In 2010 The Project had 1.1 million viewers across Australia’s capital cities. By last weekend, it was drawing an average national audience of 270,000 across the regions as well as the capital cities, according to media commentator Tim Burrowes’ Unmade newsletter.
Media experts Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson, writing in The Conversation, said as increasing numbers of young people stopped turning on TVs, The Project became consumable in bite-sized chunks on social media.
But despite the shift to consumable social media segments, The Project failed to remain viable for Ten. McGarvey said the decision to end it was not made lightly.
“It’s something we’ve thought about for a really long time. And I mean years,” she said.
“We have worked over the years to try to change things a little bit and evolve things – as you have all done – and unfortunately we’re at the point now where it just doesn’t make sense.”
Data last year from OzTam – Australian media’s official audience measurement source – showed viewership of commercial free-to-air channels among children and teens has fallen dramatically in recent years.
The report showed that since 2009, the daily viewing time of Australians aged four and under decreased by 75 per cent, from an average of 69 minutes to 17 minutes.
Children aged five to 12 decreased their average free-to-air viewing time by 77 per cent over the same period, from 66 minutes to 15 minutes.
Free-to-air viewing by teenagers aged 13 to 17, meanwhile, plummeted a whopping 80 per cent, from 64 minutes to just 13 minutes.
“The most unsettling thing about the closure of … The Project is that it might come to be seen as the moment commercial network television gave up on young audiences for news programming,” Dodd and Ricketson said.
Stay informed, daily
“If that’s what’s happening, it’s a worrying thought. Bringing news and current affairs to young audiences is exactly what The Project has done so well over its 16-year lifespan, and it’s hard to imagine how the channel will replace it in ways that work for audiences already disengaged with mainstream media.”
The axing of The Project came as the ABC confirmed the cancellation of its long-running current affairs panel show Q+A.
ABC news director Justin Stevens confirmed the axing on Wednesday.
“Discontinuing the program at this point is no reflection on anyone on the show,” he said.
“We always need to keep innovating and renewing and, in the two decades since Q+A began, the world has changed,” Stevens said.
“It’s time to rethink how audiences want to interact and to evolve how we can engage with the public to include as many Australians as possible in national conversations.”
Panel show Q+A has been axed as part of an ABC restructure. Photo: ABC
“It looks like commercial and public networks are coming to the same view – that panel-based current affairs programming is a turn-off for audiences, regardless of whether they’re young or old”, Dodd and Ricketson said of the Q+I and The Project announcements.
“This is especially troubling because the closure of each program means the loss of another media town square, where the capacity to listen to, and learn from one another, in civil ways also disappears,” they added.
The final edition of The Project will air on June 27. McGarvey said that Ten did not expect ratings to “quadruple” when its replacement launched.
“We’re not doing it because we absolutely believe that suddenly the audience is going to quadruple at that time,” she said.
“It’s really about servicing the audience in the timeslot that exists in this environment from a free-to-air point of view.”
McGarvey praised the team behind The Project, saying it did “great things for Australian culture”.
“It did a lot of great things for the media landscape, but I think more broadly it did great things for Australian culture and not many shows resonate in the way that The Project did,” she said.
“That meant, for all of us, it was very high profile, people liked to talk about it.”
