Steve Price: The Project axing signals death of free-to-air TV

In June this year, after 15 years, I lost my job on free-to-air TV. The axing was sad for me, but also sent a clear message that the riveting, history-making golden years of free Australian television are over.

In June this year, after 15 years, I lost my job on free-to-air TV.

Network Ten, in their wisdom, decided to axe the panel show The Project and replace it with something called Ten News+ which has been a ratings disaster.

At the time on that Monday night in June, I made the point that I was 55-years-old when I started on the desk back when The Project ran for half an hour and was called the 7PM Project.

By the time we all got sacked, I had turned 70.

I had celebrated my birthday on The Project and had made the point how it was remarkable that an old, overweight, conservative guy like me had lasted that long.

The Project lasted 16 years – a remarkable run – aired for 4500 episodes and made household names out of Sarah Harris, Waleed Aly, Carrie Bickmore, Pete Helliar and many more. That axing for me personally was sad. But it was a clear message that the future of free-to-air TV — which had been changing probably for more than a decade or more — was clearly irreversible.

Free-to-air television — and the dominance of the three big commercial networks Nine, Seven and Ten, plus the ABC — that anyone of my generation grew up with, was finished.

Free TV, as we knew it, is dead.

The Project was axed by Network 10 after 16 years on air. Photo: Channel 10.

To prove the point, look at last Monday’s night-time top 10 free-to-air TV shows. Five — or half — of the shows were news or current affairs programs, two were games shows, one was a movie made 24 years ago, and Channel 10’s Sam Pang show rounded out the most watched programs.

Monday night’s top-rating national TV show was Nine News and, according to the numbers I could find, its total national reach was just over 2 million out of a national population of around 27.5 million.

The movie that made that top 10 was a replay of Crocodile Dundee II, watched by more than 1.4 million people. Given how bad the sequel was, coming sixth in that list of the top 10 was quite an achievement.

If you look at that mix of free-to-air programs, it’s not hard to work out that free TV is now the marketplace of older Australians, with many unable to afford to pay for Foxtel or streaming services.

This is not something to celebrate, but a time to reflect on the golden years of Australian television in the 1970s and 1980s. How good was TV back then? What a family bonding thing a night in front of the box was for us all.

It is also one reason behind the federal government’s decision recently to mandate local content be funded by the streaming giants such as Netflix or Prime Video.

Sam Pang Tonight was among the top watched shows on Monday night.

The way it will work if and when the legislation passes is that a streaming service that has more than one million subscribers can choose to invest 10 per cent of their total expenditure — or 7.5 per cent of their total revenue — on local content.

No-one knows exactly how these streaming giants will react to these new regulations, but I suspect not well if at all.

Looking back at those golden years of Aussie TV and the family habit of watching the

6 o’clock news followed by a games show and an Australian-made soap opera or cop show, it makes you realise what we are missing out on as we mindlessly scroll through streaming services trying to find something to watch.

The 1980s were a high watermark for Australia’s appetite for miniseries including some of my personal favourites such as Bodyline starring Gary Sweet as Sir Donald Bradman, showing how the English used brutal bowling tactics to bring down the greatest batsman of all time.

Gary Sweet as Don Bradman in ABC miniseries Bodyline.

There was also The Dismissal in 1983, looking back to Gough Whitlam’s sacking by Sir John Kerr, as well as A Town Like Alice, that went to air in 1981, the Thorn Birds, Vietnam and The Great Bookie Robbery. All these productions were made in Australia, gave some of our best-known actors a start for what turned out to be international careers — including Nicole Kidman who starred in Vietnam — and gave the whole family something to watch.

And it wasn’t just miniseries, as good as they were. Remember A Current Affair when host Mike Willesee asked the Opposition leader John Hewson what the GST would do to the cost of a birthday cake? Or Richard Carleton asking Bob Hawke how it felt having blood on his hands after knifing Bill Hayden before the 1983 federal election?

It was riveting, history-making TV. And you had Jana Wendt and the late great George Negus on 60 Minutes same time, same channel Sunday night.

ACA as well as what was then the ABC’s Nationwide and Nine’s 60 Minutes were must watch current affairs and news programs, not the dodgy tradie-chasing offerings we get today.

Free-to-air back then wasn’t all politics and news — we had some of the greatest entertainment shows ever. Sunday nights at 6pm wasn’t complete without Ian Molly Meldrum and his cowboy hat telling us to “do yourself a favour” when plugging some band’s latest musical release.

The Footy Show led by Sam Newman was must-watch TV.

For 17 years, starting in 1991, we had Rex Hunt kissing fish and releasing them on Rex Hunt’s Fishing Adventures.

From 1994 to 2019 the blockbuster of all TV sport shows was of course the simply named The Footy Show. Sam Newman was a non-woke, in your face superstar who made great TV, made headlines, rated through the roof and was an unmissable Thursday night treat.

Think about it for a moment — Newman, Wendt, Willesee, Molly, Rex, Ray Martin, I could go on. The Front Bar aside, give me an Aussie free-to-air TV show or a star to rival that lot.

I bet you can’t.

Dislikes

•Pauline Hanson using a sandwich press to heat up raw wagyu steak in her office for Barnaby Joyce.

•Inflation on the march again, crushing any hopes of an interest-rate cut with a rise even possible next year.

•Victorian parliament considering another apology to indigenous Victorians with a special sitting on December 9 – why?

•Premier Allan’s private office costing taxpayers $18.7m a year in wages and employing 83 staff.

Likes

•Robert Irwin winning the US edition of Dancing with the Stars — a global star in the making.

•Hilarious scenes as federal parliament suffers a blackout mid-question time during a debate on climate change.

•Crazy idea of lowering regional and country road speed limits from 100km/h to 70km/h sensibly dropped.

•Australia’s summer of golf kicks off this weekend with the PGA at Royal Queensland, and next week it’s Royal Melbourne and Rory McIlroy.

Originally published as Steve Price: The Project axing signals death of free-to-air TV