The ratings are in: The Sunday Project’s embarrassing viewership drop
At the start of this week, only 198,000 people tuned in to the beginning of The Sunday Project.
The embarrassing blow for Channel 10’s current affairs program follows weeks of dwindling ratings.
Half an hour into the show, which is championed by Lisa Wilkinson and Hamish Macdonald, 326,000 Aussies tuned in.
Although the episode featured Lisa Wilkinson enjoying a sit down interview with Kylie Minogue, the show struggled to attract viewers.
In recent weeks, the 58-year-old co-host has flown around the world to interview A-list guests for the program.
However, guests including David Beckham, Bradley Cooper, Serena Williams and Nick Cummins, have made little difference to their ratings battle.
According to one media expert, attracting less than 200,000 viewers is a sad achievement for such a high-profile show, reported The Daily Telegraph.
Yesterday, a Channel 10 spokeswoman defended the show, saying the ratings were not a problem.
“It’s great to see more and more people discovering The Sunday Project as reflected in its solid audience growth. Packed full of all the latest news and entertainment, the show attracts the big names and, as we’ve always said, delivers news differently — it’s a nice news alternative to kick off the week,” she said.
Although the spokeswoman highlighted that the show is up 17 per cent on last year’s numbers, a media expert said the figures should be significantly higher now that Wilkinson is on board and there is a significant line-up of big name interviews.
“It is not a good look for the show which somehow gets huge interviews, bigger names than the weekday shows,” the insider said.
“It has been a pattern of low numbers in recent weeks with the Serena Williams chat, the Honey Badger (Nick Cummins) chat and now this.
“Dropping below 200,000 is significant in the industry. As much as Ten would be outwardly pretending it wasn’t an issue, behind the scenes they would not be happy.”
In an interview with Confidential, Wilkinson defended her show’s struggling ratings.
“There are very few programs on Australian TV who can say that their numbers are up. I do not understand why those reports are out there. I cannot worry about that. I worry about putting the best possible show together every Sunday night,” she said.
This week, Weekend Sunrise and Weekend Today both managed to out rate The Sunday Project.
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