Ten's news and current affairs strategy has taken another beating, with the extended version of The 7pm Project floundering on its debut and pulling in only 571,000 viewers.
Monday night (31 October) was the premiere of newly renamed The Project, a one-hour version of the nightly comedic current affairs program. The show drew a meagre 571,000 viewers for the night, according to preliminary overnight ratings from OzTam.
The longer The Project replaced 6.30 with George Negus, which was axed two weeks ago for "commercial reasons". 6.30 had been suffering from poor ratings, pulling in only 340,000 the night before its cancellation was announced. 6.30 had been garnering higher ratings last week, including 501,000 last Monday 24 October.
According to Ten, The Project's ratings in the first half hour, 480,000, was up 32% on the average ratings of 363,000 for the last four weeks of 6.30. Ten also said The Project delivered a 45% increase in the 6:30 to 7:00pm time slot last night in the 18 to 49 demographic.
Three weeks ago The 7pm Project had been rating between 643,000 and 728,000 viewers.
Ten's poor ratings run continued last night with its highest ranked program, Junior MasterChef, managing only 19th position with 599,000 viewers.
US comedy series The Big Bang Theory again delivered for Nine as the highest watched program last night with 1.39 million viewers. Celebrity Apprentice's two episodes ranked second and ninth for the evening with 1.22 million and 963,000 viewers respectively. Nine News and The Mentalist also cracked the top 10 for the network.
Seven's programs in the top 10 were The X Factor, Seven News, Today Tonight, Home & Away and Body of Proof.
ABC's Monday night current affairs line-up saw the broadcaster place six programs in the top 20.
Across the main channels, Nine was first for the second consecutive evening with an audience share of 24.1%. Seven was second with 21.8%, followed by the ABC with 15.3%, Ten with 11.5% and SBS had 3.3%.
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