Channel Seven taking on Channel Nine’s current affairs staple 60 Minutes is essentially the final step in Seven completely usurping Nines dominance in television news.

Furthermore, it was always going to be worth noting exactly how producer Adam Boland would tackle the evening current affairs format. Boland had been successful in revamping Sunrise as a program intimately connected to the everyday lives of its viewers, eventually taking the same technique to the successful The Morning Show. Sure, his late night effort The Night Cap was a bit of a letdown, but his taking on an evening current affairs show seems like more of a natural fit. It was always assumed he’d take the same principles that belie Sunrise to the format, but how it would be executed was the question.

Sunday Night premieres this coming Sunday at 6:30pm and is cleverly launching with a complete humdinger of a launch story, they’re focusing on the death of Britt Lapthorne. Lapthorne was an Australian tourist visiting Croatia where she was soon found dead. It’s an emotive story that resonated highly with the Australian public. And now Sunday Night is showing the last video recording of Lapthorne prior to her death, along with the photo of the prime suspect in the murder investigation. It’s one heck of a story to launch with and kudos to Boland and the folk at Seven for working a story that will garner massive attention for the new show.

That said, footage in the show preview in which family and friends of Lapthorne are shown pictures of the prime suspect simply seems like a cheap way to score footage of angered and upset family members. It’s a technique used on bottom-feeding ‘current affairs’ shows like Today Tonight and its a shame Sunday Night isn’t raising the journalistic bar that little bit higher. Also, hearing Mike Munro decry state that “As a father, this is too close to home as it could happen to any of us” simply feels on the nose and too reminiscent of the low-grade journalism he presented on ACA. It’s certainly possible to talk to every day Australians without talking down to them.

Boland is also continuing the conversation through to the new 7HD show All In Call, an audience Q&A show in which they’ll discuss issues raised on Sunday Night. The show, to air directly after Sunday Night, is certainly an interesting approach to expanding the format. Hopefully Channel 7 actually come to the party and promote it properly with promos throughout the Sunday Night and a message to switch to 7HD to continue the ‘conversation’. It’s initiatives like this that will have audiences finding value in multi-channeling.

Sunday Night has an opportunity to define the Channel Seven brand in the same way that Sunrise has for the past few years. If they can strive to achieve the journalistic integrity that is oft-lacking in commercial television current affairs and utilise the possibilities that its counterpart program offers, Sunday Night can be more than a ratings success.