When The 7PM Project premiered on July 20, 2009, it promised to do “news differently”. Its trio of hosts – stand-up comedians Charlie Pickering and Dave Hughes and radio newsreader Carrie Bickmore, who had developed a TV profile on Rove Live – were aged in their 20s and 30s and provided a fresh, youthful alternative to long-standing nightly news shows such as The 7.30 Report (as it was then called) and A Current Affair.

Dave Hughes (left), Charlie Pickering and Carrie Bickmore in the early days of The 7PM Project.

Unabashedly pitched at an audience of younger consumers – Millennials then aged in their 20s and early 30s – the first episode featured an interview with MasterChef Australia winner Julie Goodwin, former Australian Idol host James Mathison reviewed storied current affair show 60 Minutes, and Ruby Rose interviewed Sienna Miller for the film GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

It was, as Dave Hughes and Carrie Bickmore recalled in a 2017 interview for

© Brisbane Times