by Nick Place
Comedy gets clever
October: Those Chaser boys have subverted their way to another hit with CNNNN (Chaser Non-Stop News Network), a sharp, knowing poke at American cable news networks.
Premiering in September, the politically savvy CNNNN brought us satirical news reports, fictional interviews and a banal newsbar that scrolled headlines from the ridiculous to the sublimely observed: ‘Howard clarifies retirement plan: “Meant I’d leave when Peter Costello turns 64.” Amnesia victim grateful guest on This Is Your Life. Old person buys DVD player.’
Over at SBS, the ABC’s original subversive prankster, John Safran, has been whipping up his own laughs with John Safran’s Muscial Jamboree. The ten-part series started in June and has been stirring up all sorts of trouble for exclusive nightclubs, record companies, organised religion and the government.
Morning TV battle heats up
November: Kerri-Anne Kennerley is like the bad guy at the end of a horror film – she’s taken bullet after bullet, shown all signs of being dead but somehow, just when you turn your back, bursts back to life for one more assault.
Her latest TV project is Mornings with Kerri-Anne, a program set to challenge Bert Newton’s Good Morning Australia in terms of audience share, celebrity interviews, wonder exercise equipment and miracle cleaning products.
After a string of recent flops on Ten including the ill-fated Monday to Friday and game shows Greed and Moment of Truth, Nine and Kennerley are hoping Mornings will last the distance.
Those at GMA seem to have taken the threat seriously, offering up a $40,000 car in their first major viewer competition in over a decade.
Seven must be finding this jostling quite amusing, with its repeats of A Country Practice clearly beating both the morning talk shows.
ON DEBUT
> Spin – program on extreme sports
> B.Y.O. Kitchen – cooking and travel program with Surprise Chef’s Aristos Papandroulakis
> The Looney Tunes Show – cartoons hosted by Holly Brisley
> The Club – reality/viewer participation show creating a local footy club out of nothing
> Business Breakfast – early morning finance program
> Generation 7 – lifestyle show for teens
> Dynasties – documentary series looking at famous Australian families
> Don’t Blame Me – Children’s drama series
> Body and Soul – health and lifestyle
> The Fugitive – televised version of a radio promotion hosted by Matt Tilley
> Location Location’s Amazing Homes – Deborah Hutton takes us through some weird and wonderful homes
> Eight Days a Week – series following the fortunes of several small businesses
> Sportswatch – with Bruce McAvaney
> Dossa and Joe – comedy series starring Michael Caton and Anne Charleston
> Auction Squad – home makeover show hosted by Johanna Griggs
> Guinevere Jones – an Australia/Canada co-produced children’s drama series
> Dog Eat Dog – game show with actress Simone Kessell as host
> Consumer Dimensions – hosted by Susannah Lobez
> Flipside – sketch comedy series
> Australian Temptation Island – reality show
> The Legacy of the Silver Shadow – drama series about four children
> Shafted – short-lived game show hosted by Red Symons
> Bad Cop, Bad Cop – sitcom starring Michael Caton
> twentyfourseven – series set in the office of a fashion/gossip magazine
> Undercover Angels – Ian Thorpe assigns good deeds for Jackie O, Simone Kessell and Katie Underwood to arrange
Winners and losers in sport on TV
September: What a big year it’s been for sport on TV – both on and off the fields of combat. There’s been a glut of sport on the box, with the soccer World Cup making a rare appearance in Australian prime time, and the Winter Olympics, the Commonwealth Games from Manchester in England and the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships all keeping sports fans up late.
But the real action has been taking place in the off-field deals. The biggest change saw Channel 9 join with Ten and Foxtel to take over coverage of Australia’s most popular TV sport, the AFL, from long-time broadcaster Channel 7. The deal, worth an estimated $450 million over five years, sees Seven without football for only the second time since coverage began in 1957.
But Nine wasn’t entirely happy either. Kerry Packer is still seething that, mainly due to his absence through illness during negotiations, Ten has ended up with all the finals, including that one day in September, until 2006.
There have also been teething problems. Nine put together an impressive line-up, headed by ubiquitous host and Collingwood President Eddie McGuire, and rightly trumpeted the coup of securing highly respected ABC caller Tim Lane. But Lane had concerns over what he perceived to be McGuire’s conflict of interest when calling Collingwood games and, when it became clear that neither the network nor Eddie had any intention of pulling him out of Magpie matches, Lane chose to jump ship.
Still, while losing the football was undoubtedly a bitter blow for Seven, the impact was softened when the network won the rights to the Spring Racing Carnival from Channel 10, returning the brilliant Bruce McAvaney to centre stage.
Rampaging Roy Slaven and HG Nelson were the surprise hit of the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. So it was no surprise when they were given the reins again for the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City with their show The Ice Dream – with equally brilliant results.
Thorpedo a fish out of water in TV pond?
May: Ian Thorpe has made the transition from swimming star to TV host in one of the more bizarre television offerings of the year, Undercover Angels.
The premise sees Thorpe as ‘Charlie’, sending his three glamorous ‘Angels’ – Jackie O (the blonde), Katie Underwood (the redhead) and Simone Kessell (the brunette) – out to perform good deeds.
Critics have canned the program as ‘Cheap. Sick. Fake. Irritating. Garish. Yet with all that, still impossibly boring,’ and said of Thorpie’s performance: ‘One day Thorpe may be as good on TV as he is in a pool, but that day certainly isn’t Sunday anytime soon.’
Yet more than 1.7 million tuned in to the show’s debut last Sunday night.
Reality check
March: Is the boom in reality TV over already? This year there’s been a number of reality failures and shows on shaky ground.
Nine’s Fear Factor has been cancelled after a mere four weeks, Marry Me, The Mole and The Fugitive are flailing and Aussie versions of overseas formats Survivor and Temptation Island are both struggling to live up to expectations.
Instead, networks seem to be turning to drama with a string of new shows including Seven’s Marshall Law, Nine’s Young Lions, Ten’s White Collar Blue and the ABC’s MDA set to debut mid-year.
But Seven’s head of creative development for drama, Bevan Lee, believes the drop in reality TV’s fortunes has less to do with lack of interest and more to do with declining quality.
‘Reality shows are failing not because people are sick of them but because the ones that are coming out are so crappy,’ he told The Age.
Noice, different, unusual …
June: They’re self-absorbed, scatterbrained and at times hilariously grotesque. But Kath and Kim, the ‘foxy moron’ mother and daughter duo, are a large part of the reason the ABC is going through one of the most successful periods of its history.
Kath and Kim, and other programs including Australian Story and The Big Picture, have been consistently attracting over a million viewers in the mainland capitals, greatly boosting the ABC’s overall ratings position.
Kath and Kim has also appealed strongly to viewers in the 16 to 39 age group, a rare feat for the ABC, and its debut episode in May achieved what few other new Australian comedies had done before, coming second in the ratings against some stiff competition.
Given Kath and Kim’s success,
it’s hard to believe the program nearly didn’t make it to air, pulled off at the last minute before it was due to go into production in March last year.
Nevertheless, the series has not gone without criticism. The general opinion of the show’s detractors could be summed up by a recent letter to the Green Guide, which described Kath and Kim as ‘a barrage of witless clichés about the supposed cluelessness of outer suburbanites’.
MEMORIES
> Kerry Packer’s Nine Network buys TV Week outright, acquiring the remaining half share from the Kerry Stokes – backed Seven Network and PMP Ltd.
> A controversial anti-drink driving advertisement featuring notorious criminal Mark ‘Chopper’ Read has been voted by Australia’s advertising industry as the best television commercial of the year.
> Telemovie Secret Bridesmaids’ Business, starring Helen Dallimore and Vince Colosimo, screens on the ABC.
> Actor Gwen Plumb dies aged 89.
> Craig McLachlan stars as Stuart Diver in Heroes’ Mountain, a dramatisation of the Thredbo landslide.
> The Secret Life of Us tackles the sensitive topic of abortion when Alex (Claudia Karvan) discovers she is pregnant to former boyfriend Rex (Vince Colosimo).
> Former host of the ABC’s Recovery Dylan Lewis wins Celebrity Big Brother.
> Ex-Home and Away and E Street star Simon Baker stars in US legal drama The Guardian.
> Eddie McGuire hosts the year’s top-rating single event special, Test Australia – The National IQ Test, which was watched by 2.77 million viewers.
> Holly Valance waves farewell to Ramsay St, while Neighbours celebrates its 4000th episode.
> Wendy Harmer is the first solo female host of the Logies.
> Foreign Correspondent celebrates its 10th year, Burke’s Backyard its 15th.
> After eight years and 21 telemovies, forensic psychiatrist Jane Halifax (Rebecca Gibney) calls it quits.
> Former AFL player Rob Dickson wins Aussie Survivor and takes home $500,000 for his efforts.
> Nine drops its long-standing motto of ‘Still the One’, but still ends the year on top of the ratings.
> Media Watch returns to our screens with David Marr as host.
> Gold Logie: Georgie Parker
> Hall of Fame: Mike Willesee
NEWS
As a breeding ground for some of Australia’s most recognisable personalities, and launching pad for the rest of the night’s viewing, our news services have played a central role in the story of Australian TV.
And now, here is the news
Competitive, informative, high rating, high stakes: the world of TV news is a tough one, but you wouldn’t know it, watching the calm, manicured performances of Australia’s newsreaders.
Perched in front of an autocue and moving little more than their lips, they tell us about the day’s tragedies, warm our hearts with miraculous stories of survival, and give us the lowdown on who we should tip on the weekend.
Australia’s first newsreaders were former radio entertainers with clipped accents, impeccable diction and an air of even-handed authority. It was 16 September 1956 when Chuck Faulkner read Australia’s first-ever prime-time TV news bulletin for TCN-9 in Sydney. He was soon followed by the ABC’s James Dibble, and then in November 1956 the inimitable Eric Pearce began to push the early boundaries of newsreader comment with a subtle lift of an eyebrow.
TV news reports were basic and unquestioning, and official government statements were often considered fact. Visuals were shot on black and white silent film with no on-camera or voice-over reporting. TV never broke a news story; by the time a news bulletin was sent interstate by teleprinter and film clips copied and dispatched, radio and the afternoon tabloids had wrapped up the day’s news and moved on to the next day’s breaking stories.
Despite these early limitations, Australians still tuned in to watch their favourite news anchor every night. By the late 1960s, TV newsreaders were fully fledged, instantly recognisable celebrities.
A revolution in the immediacy of TV news came with the introduction of satellite technology in 1966, when Australia began receiving daily satellite news reports from overseas. Soon, Australians were watching momentous events unfold from their lounge rooms – man on the moon, Vietnam, Gough’s sacking and more. Videotape technology and the first electronic news-gathering portable video cameras in the 1970s also meant that journalists and cameramen were more mobile than ever; as their movement expanded, the news images on our TV screens became increasingly graphic.
At the same time, TV journalists were becoming more assertive. Reporters could use multiple sources and present well-researched, interpretative voice reports. Deadlines were pushed back to the last minute, resulting in the closure of many of the afternoon tabloids, unable to compete with the rising popularity of TV news.
TV newsreaders became the network’s calm and clear-headed front men. Brian Henderson wound up Nine’s nightly prime-time bulletin with a reflective ‘That’s the way it is …’ for over 40 years, creating the most successful news program in Australian TV history. Newsreaders could introduce graphic war stories with appropriate concern, before lightheartedly switching to a soft, quirky story on Betsy the gorilla blowing out her birthday-cake candles at Tooronga Zoo. They were not only trustworthy people but they could also pronounce names like Slobodan Zivojinovic, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, before concluding every night’s news bulletin with a sincere ‘Good night’.
The anchor’s chair became more of an even playing field when female and male newsreading teams began delivering the days’ headlines in the 1970s and 1980s, even though the pattern was generally a stunning girl alongside an average-looking bloke. Tanya Halesworth was Australia’s first female newsreader, presenting the news alongside John Bailey in the 1970s, while during the 1980s Jana Wendt and David Johnson on Ten in Melbourne and Katrina Lee and Tim Webster on Ten in Sydney spurred on a movement that now sees female news anchors outnumber males in many states. As more female anchors have taken up the mantle, the newsreading tone has also become more conversational, allowing for the odd comment or ad lib.
TV news has taken quantum leaps over the past 15 years. The Gulf War of the early 1990s was all but played out on TV, and Iraq might well have been stage managed for it. When the Twin Towers went down, we sat transfixed by news – much of it coming from BBC and new players like CNN, Sky and Fox – for the best part of 24 hours a day. Those international links now keep us more informed than ever – often to our own discomfort.
With more breaking news, live reports and crosses to journalists at the scene and increasingly graphic and violent images, many networks argue that a firm news anchor showing no self-doubt is required now more than ever. But when the lights die down and the bulletin winds up each weeknight, the network’s phones still run hot on the same subject – the newsreader’s tie.
Foot and mouth disease
Newsreading doesn’t always follow the script:
> ‘China is now in the front wank of the world’s industrialised nations.’ – The ABC’s Richard Morecroft, confusing his r’s with his w’s.
> ‘She was bitten on the funnel by a finger web spider.’ – James Dibble on the ABC.
> ‘The Federal Government has been ordered to cover Mr Legal’s costs.’ – Anton Enus on SBS.
> ‘And that’s Ten’s late news. And that, Mr Connolly, is what’s so important.’ – When comedian Billy Connolly’s interview ran over time on Rove Live, Rove hurriedly tried to wrap up and cross to Sandra Sully with the late news, only to be met with an indignant ‘What’s she got to say that’s so important?’ from Billy Connolly. Sandra wrapped up the news bulletin with this comeback.
> ‘Good evening, I’m Richard Morning … er, Morecroft.’ – Richard Morecroft at it again on the ABC.
> ‘The headless body was lying face down in the gutter.’ – Ten’s Harry Potter reporting from a murder scene.
2003
Sing for your supper, coo
k up a storm or give your flat that much needed makeover – this year, TV is all about being hands on. Unfortunately, that goes for the networks, too, whose hands seem to be firmly gripping the axe. Ouch!
Australian Guy-dol takes country by storm
November: Dicko, the ’Fro, Cosimagate and that gold dress. The first year of Australian Idol has had more twists and turns than a Formula One race track. But viewers have been happy to lap it up, with a massive audience tuning into the show’s finale and more than $100,000 splurged on voting for the winner.
The series is the local version of the UK smash hit, Pop Idol, devised by British music impresario Simon Cowell. The judges for the Aussie Idol are ex-pop crooner/soapie star Mark Holden, soul diva Marcia Hines and BMG music executive Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickinson, who modelled himself extremely closely on Cowell’s tough-talking, take-no-prisoners judging style.
In October, the popular Paulini Curuenavuli performed on Idol in a skintight gold dress so gaudy it seemed she was channelling Liberace. Dicko, however, was less than enthusiastic about the outfit, suggesting the Fijian-born singer choose ‘more appropriate clothes or shed some pounds’.
A wave of outrage flowed from fans and doctors, including the Australian Medical Association’s spokesperson on weight management and eating behaviour, who labelled Dicko’s comments as ‘damaging’ for suggesting that one must be thin to become successful.
Further headlines were created when Cosima De Vito, who had made it to the final three, developed some nasty throat nodules and was advised by her specialist to leave the competition immediately. Her shock withdrawal stunned fans and outraged some voters who had lodged their support after 7 pm, the time when producers were made aware of De Vito’s decision to pull out. Channel 10 later agreed to offer refunds directly to the public.
