Annette Sharp: Lukewarm reaction to comedy spot ending Seven News

Time will tell if Mark Humphries’ three-minute comic slot wins viewers back to Seven’s beleaguered nightly news bulletin — but reaction to his debut on Friday was lukewarm at best.

It’s early days for comedian Mark Humphries’ new 6.57pm News, but the verdict from Channel 7’s viewing audience on its Friday night premiere was overwhelmingly lukewarm, with overnight ratings showing the comedy spot delivered a negligible burp in Seven’s overall downward trending national news figures.

Executives charting the success of rookie Seven news boss Anthony De Ceglie’s First Big Idea will be dissecting the ratings from Friday night for days to come, but will struggle to find a silver lining in the Sydney market where Nine dominated the second half-hour of the news bulletin and convincingly won the slot (All People Cap).

In the Australian comedy capital, Melbourne, there was a noticeable turnover, with some 40,000 switching on for the final minutes of the bulletin — although Seven still failed to pull ahead of Nine during the entire hour.

Once again, as in Sydney, Seven’s ratings fell off a cliff at 7pm as audiences lingered for the opening story of Nine’s A Current Affair before some 75,000 switched off Home & Away.

In Brisbane the trend continued, while in Perth (Seven chairman Kerry Stokes’ hometown), the consistently dominant Seven won the news hours, again with a flutter of interest in the bulletin’s tail-end.

Mark Humphries debuts his comedy clot at the end of Seven’s nightly news bulletin.

The real tragedy, however, was on-air, where a stiff-looking Humphries riffed on the day’s biggest news story — US President Joe Biden’s stupendous gaffes — which had been dissected all day on every media internationally and was, by 6.57pm, looking like very old news indeed.

Like most comedians, Humphries has had the joy of working with writers previously and evidently would benefit from having a few in his employ now at Seven.

Reaction on social media was swift — and not complimentary. Picture: Instagram

Sadly we can’t see news boss De Ceglie finding the coin for that when he’s so preoccupied with slashing Seven’s newsrooms to the marrow.

The spot needed funnier gags and more of them.

Throw in average studio audio and this columnist gives it about a month.

The backlash via social media was also swift and predictably humbling.

Seven spinners, however, were proactively celebrating what they said was audience growth week-on-week in the final five minutes of the bulletin.

Some good advice from Wendy Harmer though: “Many years ago I was hired by Gerald Stone to do a comedy bit in the nightly current affairs show (ACA). Was sacked after a few weeks when he said I took too long to get to the punchline … don’t let this happen to you!”

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