HD Heads Up: November 10

New Project for TV3 … Tepid feat … Rules rollover … More movie mania …

MediaWorks is promising a “reinvention” of weeknights at 7.00, today announcing panel show The Project will replace Story in early 2017. lt will combine current affairs and entertainment “in a unique way” with yet-to-be named hosts interacting with guest panelists (including Paul Henry, comedians, and sport, political and other personalities). “The Project is news delivered differently,” MediaWorks’ chief news officer Hal Crawford says. “At its core will be strong, compelling storytelling. We’ll be looking for new ways to explore issues that resonate with New Zealanders, bringing a fresh or unique perspective” …

Cold Feet has been renewed in the UK after sterling ratings and reviews but is struggling to pull off the same feat here. Since premiering a month ago, it’s finished third in the 8.30 hour in TVNZ 1’s most important demographic, 25-54 year-olds. For the first three weeks it couldn’t rate above 2.9% and sunk to a low of 2.3% for episode three. Last week it improved to 3.4%, although viewership halved over the course of the hour. TV3’s Married at First Sight won the 8.30 hour for the first time last week (4.7% of 25-54) and tonight bows out with a double episode …

Said The Telegraph of tonight’s Cold Feet: “Here was one of those Cold Feet episodes in which it seemed as if the universe was conspiring against our favourite upwardly mobile strivers, with creator Mike Bullen demonstrating he could do nasty as effectively as nice” …

The episode of House Rules that was pre-empted by last night’s US election coverage on TV3 will screen 7.30 tonight instead of Road Cops and Territory Cops. In the US, about 71 million people “tuned in to watch the country elect its first reality TV star POTUS” — which was up nearly 5 million viewers on the 2012 election night. Variety reports CNN had the biggest primetime audience (13.26 million) while Fox News was second (12.1 million). The episode of Hawaii Five-O that was bumped last night will air next Wednesday …

NBC has again postponed the controversial SVU episode about a Donald Trump-like presidential nominee whose White House run is thwarted by allegations of rape. It was meant to air October 12 before being rescheduled for October 26 and then November 12. NBC says it will now run next year. “Sources indicate that there is no change in the network’s plan to air it, even with Trump as president-elect,” Deadline Hollywood reports …

Expect a move back to wall-to-wall movies on the free-to-air networks as they plug scheduling holes left by series ending their runs ahead of new-season programming in February. TV3 is reinstating movies on Sundays and Thursdays in the week starting November 20 while it and TVNZ 2 plan to run movies on up to six nights a week over Christmas and New Year. Here’s the HD coming attractions for the week starting November 20: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (TVNZ 2, 7.00 Saturday), Cloud Atlas (TVNZ 2, 12.55am Sunday), The Croods (TV3, 7.00 Sunday), Scared Silent (TV3, 11.00 Sunday), Hostel (TVNZ 2, 12.20am Monday) and Die Hard 4.0 (TV3, 8.30 Thursday) …