Lisa Wilkinson’s debut propels The Project’s ratings

Lisa Wilkinson’s debut on The Project last night attracted more than 200,000 additional viewers.

Lisa Wilkinson makes her first TV appearance on The Project after departing Channel 9.

Lisa Wilkinson’s debut on The Project has delivered a ratings boost to Ten, with last night’s show attracting more than 200,000 extra viewers.

At 7pm, 583,000 viewers were watching The Sunday Project, marking the show’s biggest audience to date, 88 per cent more than the 2017 series average. An average 536,000 metro viewers watched across the hour, with 481,000 tuning in at 6.30pm, according to ratings agency OzTAM.

But it remains to be seen whether the ratings boost will be sustained, after considerable hype around Wilkinson’s first appearance. Nine enjoyed a similar, but short-lived spike after her dramatic exit from the Today show.

The star joined her new on-air colleagues Peter Helliar and Hamish McDonald — with Rachel Corbett standing in for Tommy Little — in The Project’s trademark fast-paced dissection of news headlines from around the world, covering topics ranging from online bullying to pandas frolicking in the snow and the $US24 million price tag on a new fridge for Donald Trump’s Air Force One.

And she presented her first story for the program, a heart-wrenching tale of a young Queensland couple whose baby boy was born via a surrogate four months after mum Bec Arena died of cystic fibrosis.

The former co-host of Nine’s Today could not resist a gag about women’s advancement, in a nod to the pay dispute that prompted her dramatic exit from the morning show late last year.

Commenting on a news item about a KFC advert featuring “the first female Colonel Sanders”, She quipped: “Women have finally broken the fried chicken ceiling,” prompting peals of laughter from her co-hosts.

Wilkinson left Today in October after Nine boss Hugh Marks refused her demand for pay parity with Karl Stefanovic, in what was dubbed a “gender pay gap” dispute.

Marks refused on the grounds that Wilkinson’s external endorsement deals made her less available to the network than Stefanovic. It remains unclear whether Ten delivered Wilkinson the $2.3m salary she had sought from Nine.

Her debut on The Sunday Project was littered with cross-promotions, with the network taking the opportunity to plug its other shows in what critics have described as overkill.

Joel Creasey appeared on the show to plug his new role on Neighbours, and the panel crossed to Chris Brown and Julia Morris in the South African jungle ahead of the 7.30pm series opener of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.

Despite The Sunday Project’s strong ratings, it was no match for the tennis, with Seven’s coverage of The Australian Open Men’s Tennis Final between Marin Čilić and Roger Federer attracting an average 1.73 million metro viewers. However, this marked a 35 per cent drop compared to last year’s men’s final.

The women’s final on Saturday, between Simona Halep and Caroline Wozniacki, was down 22 per cent on last year to an average 1.02 million.