The Project probably becomes very questionable financially at just half an hour, especially if it is the first half hour that you are keeping.
If Ten wants to pull viewers across from Seven and Nine then they need to take them head on and make it easy for people to adapt. That means having news at 6pm - play to people’s habits and give them a better version of what they are already used to. I think a snappy, really well presented half hour of national news at 6pm with a 5 minute local window would be well received as an alternative to the drawn out and rather stale bulletins on Seven and Nine.
It won’t smash the ratings but it would make a statement about Ten’s ambitions and has a far better chance of helping grow Ten’s early evening audience than persisting with Feud.
The question is, are people actually making the start of the 6pm bulletin? People get home later from work, people live further out from city centres and traffic is certainly not improving in any of the major cities.
The ratings suggest more people are watching the 6pm news around 6:30-6:45. Certainly more people are watching the Project from 7pm than from 6:30.
Although it probably won’t ever happen because of the amount of resources needed to produce a quality national edition of the show let alone (at least) five local versions, I wonder how adopting the format of “The Project” would work on a local level?
I personally believe most Australians would still vastly prefer local news over national news in the early evening, but perhaps Ten needs to try presenting it (faster paced graphics, presenters speaking in a “more conversational” style, etc.) in a different format for the younger demographics.