The best part of being in a new country is watching locally-produced TV. In Japan I watched celebrities applaud women who looked young for their age. In Mongolia I’ve seen soap operas with a lot of horses in them.

In Amsterdam, I’m all about 020 Live. Imagine an entire channel where there is only one show on. A single cameraperson walks or drives around Amsterdam, constantly filming, and it is all live. They wander the streets looking for news.

Yesterday a houseboat was sinking so we got to watch the fire department pumping water out of it back into the canal. Today some youths were sweeping the ice over another canal in preparation for a speed skating race. I suspect they were not there of their own free will, as they kept hiding their faces from the camera. That’s what delinquency gets you in the Netherlands – an 8am appointment with a frozen canal.

Sometimes the camera falls over in the car. It takes a long time for the driver to notice this as he or she is busy avoiding stoned Canadians and fearless cyclists. Sometimes the car gets stuck behind a cyclist – not the lycra-clad speed freaks of Melbourne, Amsterdam cyclists sit upright and pedal gently because the world can wait. They have the right of way in every imaginable situation, including our hotel hallways and cinema aisles. They are the Hindu cows of Amsterdam.

You can call the show to tip them off about an exciting pothole situation on the Marnixstraad. Todd has been threatening to alert them to the frozen pasta salad he left on our windowsill overnight.

The Dutch invented Big Brother, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that they have again pushed the boundaries of reality TV while no one was looking. Considering the Big Brother model, it’s only a matter of time before this format takes off all over the world. Every country will have its own 020 Live.

Big Brother replicated the sensation of having friends over at your house. 020 Live replicates an ordinary life which takes place outside your apartment. Essential for the old, the frail and the woefully unprepared in minus 17 degree weather. The Dutch think of everything.

Oh, and there’s a show called Plop. If I had any doubts about the move to Amsterdam, they were silenced by Plop. I’m not going to tell you what it’s about, consider it my gift to you. Ik hou van Amsterdam. Ik hou van Plop.

To precis, the audience ticket and loading procedure took twice as long as the taping itself and the overall event was hand-clappingly cultish.

During this latest visit, I managed to obtain tickets to the Colbert Report. This single act is no mean feat. Trying to get ticket through the website itself presents a page that apologises and promises to email when tickets are available. I don’t know if the emails are ever sent out or if the addresses are even collected. I’ve never received one and I’m reminded of that Simpsons scene in which the message tubes are used in beaver dams.

The excellent Rilestar pointed me to a Twitter feed that announces when a few extra tickets become available. Sometimes these are very short notice: as in, for that day’s taping. There are no quiz questions to answer and no other hoops to jump through. Being at the right place at the right time is, apparently, difficult enough.

There are still a number of steps from being on the audience list to getting into the studio. Names are checked off lists, queues are formed, names are checked off more lists, tickets with numbers are handed out. People wait in the cold for over an hour. Less bureaucracy and checkpoints are required for entry into government buildings.

Once inside the building and through the metal detector, there was more waiting. The entire audience is only about 130 people strong and we were packed into an antechamber featuring portraits of Colbert, propagandist posters and a video-screen showing highlights of previous episodes.

A staff-member/intern jumped up onto a table to tell us all to remember to laugh, turn off mobile phones and not take any photos. Then another staff member yelled, from near the doors, instructions on how to hand back the numbered tickets when she counted up to that number.

Listening to someone else count up to 130-something is not as fun as it sounds.

Once we were finally admitted into the studio, we found, under each seat a copy of Richard Branson’s latest book about why he’s the best person he knows and how he is single-handedly saving the world by being friends with Peter Gabriel. Branson was to be the guest that night.

After the warm-up comedian, Pete Dominick did a tight fifteen minutes to get the audience laughing and happy. Colbert came out to answer questions out of character. And then they started the show rolling.

It wasn’t just the smaller audience that created the intimacy of the event. There was a very real feeling of us being a part of the Colbert Nation. We were in on the joke. We were witness to a very talented man doing his job exceptionally well and we were also witness to the bloopers and the humanity behind the show.

The Late Show audience is indoctrinated upon entry and treated like ignorant TV viewers, to an extent. To make a taping of the Late Show successful, the audience has to believe that David Letterman is the funniest and best host on TV and that the CBS Orchestra is the greatest collection of musicians who never tour (and never change their hair-styles). The lengthy audience-loading procedure works to dumb-down the audience and fill them with awe at what they are about to see.

The Colbert Report encourages its audience to be smart. It has to be smart to follow the news and get all the jokes. So the show approaches the audience members differently. It builds up a confidence in them that the jokes will not go over their heads. Rather than an awed response to the host, the crew pushes a supportive role onto the audience. The repeated theory is that the show is intelligent, its audience is intelligent, and television needs the show to be successful so that television provides more intelligent content. By the end of this, the audience in the Colbert Report is not filled with followers so much as co-conspirators.

Everything that happens inside the studio is designed to make the audience members feel like they are part of something special. This is their chance to help make a difference.

The set is constructed to keep the audience on-side with Colbert. During the interview portion, which takes place stage left, Colbert sits largely facing the audience, able to gauge whether or not they are with him in a particular line of antagonism. The guest, or subject, is left entirely vulnerable, their back almost entirely to the audience, with no idea of whether or not they are winning. And yes, an interview on the Colbert Report is almost always a competition and it is very definitely rigged. Watching someone like Richard Branson, unaccustomed to losing, enter this arena was almost Roman in its inherent Schadenfreude.

In a way, for the Colbert Report to have a live audience is strange. The programmes it parodies (The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity on Fox News) do not have live audiences. They say outrageous things without any audible response from within the TV set. People watching at home are forced to either think for themselves or just accept what the angry voice in the box just said.

The Colbert Report’s live audience is the knowing wink that the programme requires to make the people at home realise they are watching a comedy show and not just another right-wing polemicist. It’s a compromise that the programme makes to the medium and it’s a lot of responsibility to entrust to 130 strangers.

The show takes place in the jungle. The jungle has never looked so much like the smoking balcony of a minor Asian airport. The setting allows the two hosts, chirpy leprechauns staggering around under the weight of their own foreheads, to pretend to be real people.

If only there was a standard British box hedge in the background, the audience would have a frame of reference, realise that these men are damaged and get them the help they so desperately need. Their names are Ant and Dec, being too small to operate under the weight of real names.

They must be complete arseholes, because their hairdresser hates them. Instead of trying to mask their bulbous foreheads with a polite curtain of hair, it is styled up to the sky to add 2cm to their stature. The effect is experimental frigate chic. The wardrobe department has so far avoided pinstriped suits, platform shoes and tiny dogs, but who knows how long they can hold out.

With those powers combined, the Irish pre-teen boy band/Morecambe and Wise mash-up may be able to one day walk among us in defiance of god’s will. Here’s a zucchini from my pants – oh, he’s not eatin’ it! What are ya like? I don’t know Ant and/or Dec, what are you like? I don’t think either of us really wants to know the answer to that question.

Their biggest fan sent them a crude drawing which they criticised because it was coloured outside the lines. Alan, 46, from Cheshire, hanged himself three days later. He is survived by his wife, which his mother knitted for him from drain hair. Amazingly, this event fails to make the show any sadder.

The campers or celebrities or whatever they are, go through challenges designed to make them throw up. Tonight they sent a camp ex-soap actor down a dark slimy tunnel filled with cockroaches, frogs, worms and filth, looking for cheap plastic stars nestled in piles of shit. A stirring recreation of the casting process for the show itself. Meta.

These challenges are all foils for the most difficult task, which is the brutal chit-chat each contestant is dragged through by Ant and Dec. They strain to find the larrikins as delightful as middle Britain apparently does. They laugh too late, too hard and stop whenever they sense an impending close-up, aping the joy that eludes them.

I was going to write a bio for each contestant to inform the Australian audience of what the show assumes we know about them. But I realised that this would be pointless: You know as much about them as anyone else does.

The girls under 30 take a lot of long, giggly showers together. I’m so glad they’re raising awareness of the burden that women under 30 must suffer. Years of my life were wasted taking joint showers, up to 40 minutes at a time, at least three times a day. My doctor informs me that most of my skin is gone and that the giggling has done irreparable damage to my diaphragm. It really is crippling, all that involuntary tit bouncing and ass soaping. Their mouths are smiling but their eyes whisper, “Where is the cure for this disease?”

Tonight, an ageing DJ tried to watch them shower by offering to ride the shower bike (a Gilligan’s Island-style bike that makes the shower water flow). He said it was OK, like an uncle thing. Meanwhile, in London, his niece and nephew take turns stapling their underpants to their bodies in preparation for his return to civilisation.

The ranks of celebrity have swelled to an army. One day there will be more people on TV than actually watching it. On this day, every Nielsen box will simultaneously explode, showering us all with prizes and we will have a nice party where we will talk endlessly about ourselves and our feelings and the attractive people will shower to great applause.

Then late at night, well after they’d cleaned up Lateline Business set, the bigger idea thudded into my mind. The real reason I love the Brownlow is that it’s boring. Then I thought back to other monumentally boring things on TV, and realised that the more producers start messing around with their perfectly working show to make it less boring, the more the show fails.

Whether it’s the Oscars or the Logies, every awards show tries really hard not to be boring. But the very reason they hold an awards ceremony, that is, to justify lucky though irrelevant people’s lives, killing that boredom is almost impossible. Not even Baz Luhrmann, with a cast of 300 monkeys shooting firecrackers out of their arses to the tune of Hello Dolly, could do it. But we’re into the stuff they award show’s rewarding, whether it’s sports, movies or the Air Conditioning Industry’s Night of Nights, the Captain Caveman in us wants to know who will win.

At the Brownlow Medal we’re transfixed to the monotone of the AFL boss reading the votes. Because that’s all he does – after announcing that the show is “an officially sanctioned meeting of the AFL”- he just reads the votes. This is just like the incredibly long bit during the Eurovision Song Contest when all the countries read their votes. But Eurovision has 25 representatives reading for a minute or two. The Brownlow just has one balding bloke, reading the names of vote winners in each of the season’s 194 games.

But to an obsessed football fan stricken with Finals Fever, this is all we want. We think back to Round 17 and wonder how Chris Judd could get votes in a losing side. This is very important to us.

Notice all the things we really hate about The Brownlow? The hideously sexist “This-is-really-the-girls’-Grand-Final” Blue Carpet bullshit. Voice over guys reciting ridiculous chest beating amateurish bush poetry over endless super-slo-mo action montages. These are things the producers reckon will break the supposed boredom of a balding man reading votes. But they don’t get it. These (marketing-tards call them..) “features” are just tedious. And yes, there is a difference.

Let’s look at Big Brother. I think it was the first series that had a daily up late show where the cameras would just sit in on a bedroom for hours into the early morning. If you watched hard and long enough, you could be lucky or unlucky to catch a hellish cat fight or a housemate having a toss under the covers. But most of the time, the household was asleep. Things happened. Very slowly.

This was genius to the power of Eno. Turning on the TV to see that nothing’s happening on TV. Man…dude….professor…that’s art. But once Mike Goldman came in with his cynical 1800 number word games and tooth-brain talkback interaction to make it less boring, the show got tedious and died. The less said about Hot Dogs, the better.

What I’m probably trying to ask people making these things on TV is, please let your story breathe. There’s no need to chuck brainless shit in just because you think you’re losing your audience. With the new ways we’re watching TV now, as talked a lot about in the podcast lately, you’re already losing your audience to a growing number of shiny lounge room distractions. Be confident. You’ll hold our attention if the story’s strong. It’s okay, real footy fans are losing their minds, waiting for round 22’s votes.  Maybe think of making captivating TV as slow cooking. Is there anything better than when the meat falls off the bone?

Cue monkey firecracker montage.

Yes, I watched Four Weddings. Actually, to be correct, I watched it twice. Once was the UK version on a channel I barely knew existed: Lifestyle You. The other was the Australian version on Channel 7.

The premise is to take four of the whingiest, most self-centred and borderline pathological brides-to-be available and send them to each other’s weddings to judge and score them.

At the end of the show, the bride with the highest score wins a trip to the cheapest international destination without a current civil war (or an annulment to equal or lesser value).

If you’re thinking: Hang on, is this really a show in which four women get to judge each other’s celebration of love and commitment, taking something personal, making it public and then metaphorically beating it until it metaphorically bleeds all over the hired, starched, linen chair covers? You’re right.

I’ve always had a problem with the concept of “Reality Television”. It’s always been either documentary or game show to me. Reality has nothing to do with it. Four Weddings, for all its glimpses into other people’s wedding receptions, is just a very boring and low-stakes game show. The only attempt at entertainment value comes from how horrible any of the women can be about other women’s dreams.

Men are either forgotten in the entire process or made to look like useless appendages who have added nothing to the concept of the celebration. So maybe it’s not just misogyny. Maybe it’s an exercise in full-blown misanthropy.

Nobody leaves Four Weddings with their dignity. As soon as people opened their personal dreams to the concept of performance and competition, they sold the specialness of their day and will need to wear that as a memory of their lives together for as long as that lasts.

Forget Wipeout. Four Weddings is the show that brings us closer to Stephen King’s Running Man than ever before. It’s not car crash TV. It’s the mass-slaughter of societal decency.

Is that too dramatic?

Years later, and the Smug People of the Land Of Smug and their idiot cousins have broken into my lounge room through their twitter accounts.

TV shows are encouraging it. Watch this. If your job title has the any of the words “digital”, “social media” and “interactive” in it, you might want to apply some of this wonderful stuff after looking at those links so you can concentrate on the rest of this article.

But who really cares what @frogface78 has to say about The Block‘s Josh & Jenna’s performance on Millionaire Hotseat? And as far as we at Boxcutters know, you don’t get a Season’s Pass to the Canberra Press Gallery just because Q&A printed your Oscar Wilde-like witticism on the screen about Penny Wong’s supreme debating skillz. No matter how smartly you tweet, you’ll never be as famous as Jeff Jansz.

Nope, nobody cares. Not even the three or four people who retweeted you.

It’s just a ploy by the marketers behind the shows to make you feel like you’re a loving part of their terrible product. And hopefully while you’re feeling loved by their terrible product, you’re more likely to swallow another hour of their terrible product the same bat-time, same bat-channel, tomorrow. Why would I know this? Because I work in advertising. It’s what we plot in our offices almost everyday. Not that we know what we’re doing or exactly why we’re doing it, but the going wisdom is that we need more @frogface78s talking about our terrible products. It makes us money.

Which brings me to this funny little thing that happened this time last year at the footy… (Yes, every thought I ever have brings me to something that happened at the footy. Deal with it.) This time last year, I was talking to the CEO of an AFL club at his corporate lunch. He was proudly telling me about a brand new thing where supporters like @frogface78 can get their tweets shown on the big scoreboard during the game. The conversation went something like this.

CEO: “Twitter during the game can bring fans closer to the game and their fellow supporters. It’s interactive!”

Me: “Isn’t yelling HOLDING THE BALL YOU WHITE MAGGOT SCUM with 70,000 other like-minded fans interactive enough?”

This Twitter at the footy thing lasted one more week, only to be replaced by more betting ads.

I just fell asleep while I was typing that slightly endearing anecdote. And I had a dream. And the dream was set in the 1980s. After school. I was tweeting. Here’s the seven tweets that were selected by the station producers to be put up there on the screen.

1. They’re so gonna do it!! #purrrrfectmatch
2. Here’s an idea Professor. Build a boat. #gilligansisland
3. Marcia, Marcia, Hell yeah! #pickofthebradybunch
4. Johnno & Danno have the coolest jobs eva! #wavelength
5. I’ve never seen so many logs. #beachcombers
6. Is that Bud Tingwell in Catweazle? #deadsetlegend
7. This show never lives up to the theme tune. #nannyandtheprofessor

So have I convinced you to put the computer down and give your television the respect and undivided attention it deserves? Probably not. Have I given you enough argument holes to tweet or point out in the comments box below? Definitely have. Will I, even though I’ve written over 600 words against the idea of tweeting at the TV, stop tweeting at the TV? Of course not.

I’m as sucked in as you are.

* I know. Married With Children was on Tuesday nights.

How good was that French bike race? Cadel Evans, an introvert, so insular that he loves his team members because they leave him alone, only to speak to him if it’s ‘work related’, put his head down and won the three week European torture orgy. It was a win for the quiet nerd who’s happy to go the knuckle if you walk too close. Don’t believe me? Look up “angry Cadel” on youtube.

And when it comes to three week European torture orgies, the Tour de France is by far the prettiest. On my big fat and thin LED television (yeah, I’m proud to be an effluent suburban boy with his suburban toys and if you got a problem with that, I’m happy to arrange an after-school appointment outside the Glen Waverley station, knives optional), the French countryside is so gorgeous it makes me want to weep.

But it doesn’t. It only makes me angry.

Why? Because, right now, the Tour De France is the only sporting event broadcast in high definition on free to air television. Channel Ten dropped their One HD broadcasts of the footy when they lost the bidding war, Channel Seven uses their HD capacity for Hogan’s Heroes reruns and the ABC’s VFL and lawn bowl coverage is shot on Super 8.

I was at the MCG a couple weeks ago with mates, watching another game on one of the TVs in a bar at half time. Seven’s standard definition telecast was embarrassing: So pixellated you’d think we were watching the game on a Super Nintendo. One of my mates started hitting the TV thinking it was the reception, leaving me to explain to the security guard that the beer all over the screen was Kerry Stokes’s fault. This time, we were lucky. The security guard was similarly angry at the horribly pixellated coverage of a recent Rajasthan Royals cricket game. In the end we had to pull him back from, Michael Douglas Falling Down style, smashing all the TVs in the place.

We know why the channels serve us this pixellated rubbish. It’s because they prefer to use their share of a limited amount of spectrum/signal on more programming, looking to get a snare of the audience that doesn’t like footy with Hogan’s Heroes reruns, or in the ABC’s case, News 24. The Green Guide’s Paul Kalina explains why so much better than I can.

What’s interesting in Kalina’s article is the differing in opinions between ABC’s Kim Dalton who thinks the difference in broadcast quality is marginal and Foxtel’s Patrick Delany who told Kalina that 80% of new customers sign up to their HD service, so much so that they’ve stopped ordering SD set top boxes from their supplier. And they’re listening to their big television owning sports fan audience with many HD channels and a promise to play all games of AFL next year in HD.

And what annoys me most is the emptiness behind the bragging that has always come with sports broadcasting. Race Cam, Hawk Eye, Super Tedious Slo Mo, that ridiculous camera that buzzes above the players during an AFL finals game and 3D – none of us really care.

If you really care about your audience, open up your pocket, hire some HD cameras (last year’s Grand Final replay was shot in SD because all the cameras were double booked for the Commonwealth Games), and broadcast the game in HD. It’s not too much to ask.

I’ll leave you with a bit from an amusing article from 2007 proclaiming the exciting new era of HD TV.

“Besides spectacular vistas and shockingly real playing fields, hi-def clarity puts any and all wrinkles, pimples and pores on display in well-lit bathroom-mirror detail.”

Hogaaaaan!

Wow. So dramatic? Already? On the one hand, that really is Supernatural in a nutshell. It is an ultimate battle against demons, wraiths, succubi, ghosts and, yes, the occasional vampire. It is what I like to call “conflict with a capital K (for Killing)”. It is pure drama.

With all those other-worldly baddies, though, it’s also a perfect opportunity for some nail-biting, pillow-clutching horror. Very rarely have we had a chance to see good horror on television. There have been attempts but, really, since the early demise of American Gothic in 1996, nothing has come close.

So we’ve got the drama and we’ve got the scares. There’s a rule of three in storytelling and the third thing here is comedy. The comedy is mild, wry and sometimes relies on knowledge of the characters and their history. That’s not a bad thing. Instead of the comedy being a draw card to the series, it’s more like a prize for long-term viewers.

There is so much to love in Supernatural, it’s hard to imagine why it’s not one of the more popular shows on TV. While it’s a great show to watch, it’s possibly a hard show to sell. It doesn’t have the novelty factor of something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Channel 7 kept spinning that around the schedule until it found a home amongst the insomniac university students who kept it alive in a late-night slot.

1970s and 80s heavy-metal ballads, muscle cars, leather jackets and scowling faces on the backdrop of the American mid-west does not really make for appealing teaser production from an Australian point of view. It’s not about police and it’s not about lawyers or set in a hospital. In fact, on a surface level it’s not about anything that a new audience can identify with.

What it is about, though, is good old-fashioned horror, action and thrills. It’s a comic book on the screen. Heroes save people in peril and sometimes get into peril themselves. In that sense it’s predictable. But so what? Every now and then we need a little escapism. We need adventure and we need good guys kicking bad guys’ arses. Supernatural gives us that but with a style and sense of Americana unlike anything we’ve seen.

Supernatural started the year after Lost and the year before Heroes. It really should appeal to audiences of both and especially those who loved the former but found the latter lacking in any substance. Unlike Heroes, it tells a big story by focusing on a small portion of it. It builds suspense rather than forcing mystery and disseminates information as required rather than creating artificial and soulless reveals.

Mostly, though, it’s fun and intelligent entertainment. Supernatural is exactly the kind of escapism we should be inviting into our homes.

Supernatural Season 4, is available on DVD. You can find all your entertainment needs: DVDs, Blu Ray and gaming consoles, including Playstation games, at Sanity Entertainment. —Sponsoring Boxcutters

The 2008 version of Survivors started off as a lesser-populated EastEnders before descending into sub-Lost territory, and was finally put out of its misery at the end of the second season (which ended – optimistically – with a cliff hanger). The best word to describe the show was “workmanlike”, combining all the usual elements of 21st Century genre telly in all the usual ways.

That’s not how you’d describe the original. Debuting in 1975, it remains the bleakest programme ever to be a prime-time hit. A man-made virus sweeps the earth, killing the majority of the population. Faced with disease, wild animals, starvation and loneliness, the few who are left struggle to survive. It’s hard to imagine showing that one against Masterchef today. Survivors, however, was a hit in the UK and across Europe, and watching it on DVD now it’s hard to imagine anyone having the guts to make such unrelenting fare now.

Part of the success is due to Terry Nation cleverly playing against type – two of the three leads are female, and Abby Grant’s search for her son forms a rock-solid premise that other story lines can weave around. Carolyn Seymour as Abby is superb, playing the part with a stoic determination you wouldn’t see on telly today. Lucy Fleming plays plucky Jenny Richards (the only totally likeable character) and Ian McCollough plays granite-faced tough guy Greg Preston. The first series raises difficult questions about the life ahead and society they will need to build, and the episode “Law And Order” still packs a punch, an unrelenting tragedy combining rape, murder and the failure of justice.

Sadly the show goes off the rails after the first season, getting bogged down (literally) with the minutiae of subsistence farming, muddled storylines and continued (and seemingly random) changes of cast. Most shamefully, Jenny Richards gets relegated to background “wife-and-mother” character and Abby Grant vanishes altogether (Seymour claims she was fired for being argumentative and drinking too much, so she moved to the US and played villains for the next 20 years. She’s particularly good as Dean Stockwell’s evil counterpart in two episodes of Quantum Leap).

All three seasons of Survivors are now available as a 39-episode box set and are worth a look, if only to see a time when television was made without focus groups or the bourgeois concept of audience appeal. The lack of incidental music, the grimy look, the strong female characters and the powerhouse credit sequence all form a convincing world that make for a fascinating visit. You do have to allow for the cheap video look and cod-Shakespearean delivery that was de rigueur for the times, but even these add a certain quality to this barren world.

A final word on the recent remake – in a bizarre piece of legal jiggery-pokery the 2008 series claimed to be “based on the novel by Terry Nation”. That “novel” was actually a novelisation of the 1975 series published a year after it went to air. Yet Adrian Hodges still had the gall to claim a “created by” credit. Shame, Adrian, shame.

Find TV series, DVDs and Blu Ray discs, including the complete Survivors Series at Sanity Entertainment.

It’s possible that they discovered how quickly they can put this kind of material together and have some solid gold ratings filler by just throwing together some old news footage and shoving Vince Colosimo in a sound booth for a few hours to read a few lines of voiceover.

Called Australian Families of Crime, the whole exercise feels like a cynical attempt to plug in to an audience’s basest interests. What once seemed like the sensational and exploitative homeland of Channel 10, with their Cops / Hard Copy programming is now wholly occupied by Channel 9.

The flag they plant to claim this land as their own is in the titles of the episodes. The first is called Milat: Backpacker Bloodshed. Shocking, isn’t it.

There is, in our culture, a fascination with the macabre. I love stories of serial killers and other true crime when they’re told well. The producers of Crime Investigations Australia, credited with creating this series, have told some great stories of Australian serial killers and other criminals. They have never, however, shied away from an exploitative production style.

It’s the speed with which this series was announced and slammed onto the air (announced on Thursday and airing on Sunday) that stinks of exploitation. Capitalising on criminal behaviour is a very tight rope to walk. What makes the Underbelly series an acceptable pulp story but Baby Faced Killer a soul-less profiteering on somebody’s horrible crimes and gruesome death? Maybe it’s just time but then the adage states that timing is everything.

Australian Families of Crime airs at 9:30pm Sunday on Channel 9.

The Viewer Access Satellite Television (VAST) service will be available to all areas except for Western Australia where a deal is in the works with Optus.

From the media release:

Executive Director of the Digital Switchover Taskforce, Andy Townend said the satellite service will be available for the Mildura/Sunraysia region as the first region to switch over to digital-only TV on 30 June 2010.

To access the VAST service, viewers will need to purchase a new satellite set top box with an access ‘smart card’, a satellite dish and cabling.

“Households wanting to get ready for the new satellite service should contact a qualified antenna installer to express their interest so they can start making arrangements immediately, including the installation of a satellite dish,” Mr Townend said.

Altec UEC will be the initial supplier and distributor of satellite set top boxes. The supplier will be informing antenna installers and satellite equipment suppliers in Mildura/Sunraysia about the availability of the new satellite service from today.

Households in the Mildura/Sunraysia region already using the existing Aurora satellite service will be able to convert to the new service using their existing dish as soon as the new set top boxes are available.

Do you live in the middle of nowhere and want access to television like everybody else? Tell us in the comments.

No aussies in event means 9 don’t think we care. God forbid we’d enjoy something other than the summer swimming. Fucking disgaceful! I wish i had fox!
-Alex b

On Twitter we saw @mollyfud hitting his head on a virtual brick wall with anger.

The other night I saw what was neither worthy of being called an advertisement nor a faux-Getaway piece about shopping in one particular street in Vancouver.

So, tell us. Have you been trying to watch the Winter Olympics on TV? Have you been happy what Channel 9 have provided in terms of coverage? Has anybody out there bought the Foxtel package for the duration?

Let us know in the comments or through the contact form.

We’ll try to get some answers from Channel 9 in the meantime.

So it takes something really special for an advertising campaign to start to piss me off consistently. Congratulations channel 10… You’ve done it.

I’ve not read anything about The Good Wife, I’ve not paid particular attention to the teasers given in the ads, I’ve not looked for the small print on the billboards around town. I know that Julianna Margulies – the nurse from ER that was going out with George Clooney – has straightened her hair and is playing the titular character and Chris Noth – Big from Sex and the City - plays some sort of political public figure character who has been shamed by some sort of shenanigans. Not once have I bothered sitting through the entire “Sneak Peek” without turning the channel off or hitting the 30 second skip button twice. And yet I’m confident enough to call this one of the major flops of 2010. A bigger disappointment than FlashForward or even Commander in Chief.

There are sure to be parallels with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojovic, caught out trying to sell a Democrat held seat last year, and Hilary Clinton standing by Bill through the Lewinsky saga, probably peppered with inappropriate campaign-trail type press conferences on the front lawn of the family house or on the steps of a courthouse, proving the passionate attention given our hero by the entire nation. The magnitude of girl-power is likely to be off the scale as Margulies triumphs almost impossibly in the career that had only been simmering while she kept the home fires burning in support of her previously legitimate, successful husband. I don’t, however, see the skeptical audience turning off their sense of disbelief for more than a couple of weeks.

This show seems likely to be a fusion of a couple of recent genres we’ve seen: the latest hopeful to try to capture the loyal Sex and the City bloc, who like their women sassy and crave someone they can really relate to in a weekly drama; and the genius working in a professional capacity story – think House, Shark, Leverage, The Mentalist, Eleventh Hour - undertaking and conquering tasks that nobody else anywhere could possibly accomplish. I’m not sure it’s a fusion that can work. US TV has been desperate to get another SatC up for 3 or 4 years now – Women’s Murder Club, Cashmere Mafia, The Starter Wife - but they just don’t take and there seems to be a lack of ensemble in The Good Wife. The genius professional always tends to be a little odd, which is lateral, spontaneous and occasionally fun from a guy working with a team of minions or a federal handler but very quickly shouts ‘Bunny Boiler’ in a woman.

I could be completely wrong on all of this but the saturation promotion that 10 has been giving this show over an extended period has my Boxie senses tingling. We’ll have to wait and see.

I continue to beleive that one of the last things we need in this country is more cop dramas but when a good one comes along, it’s really hard to ignore.

The second series of East West 101 was so good, we would do well to ignore the first with its ridiculous contrivances and overbearing political correctness. Now we get to see exactly what Australia can produce when drama is allowed to run its natural course.

Don Hany plays Zane Malik, a Muslim cop in Sydney’s west who’s trying to make a go of being a religious man in a secular world.

While the first series focused too much on revenge and the world’s inherent lack of fairness, the second delved into much more complicated territory: Maintaining one’s values in a society that offers constant temptation.

It’s complicated themes, treated with subtlety and patience, that make really good television. Imagine how much more interesting Dexter would be if there was no voice-over narration and his dead father didn’t keep explaining things. If there is limited exposition, then the audience is forced to work out the characters’ motivations. East West 101 stands out from other local drama because the creators seem to understand the importance.

The many storylines demand constant attention. The organised crime and terrorism world of Sydney’s west has many players. In addition, though, we see some of the trials of the characters’ home lives.

Susie Porter, whose presence in the series is mandatory under the SBS charter, is Patricia Wright. She’s Malik’s immediate superior in the police force. with has her own family issues to deal with and the piling dead bodies don’t make it any easier.

Both characters are, obviously, finding society’s inherent discrimination more difficult than it would be in a more ideal world. Still, they are committed to their jobs, their families and protecting themselves.

Yes, that all sounds very serious, but there aren’t any jokes here. It’s serious business, but it’s compelling, and that should be enough.

Buy DVDs, including the entire 2nd season of East West 101, at Sanity Entertainment.

A Special Note: East West 101‘s first series alternated between unnecessarily melodramatic and promising. Those of you who remember my rant about Cptn Cardboard possibly also remember that I changed my stance on the programme after a few more episodes. I still think the first season could have been better.

Of course, people said the same thing when Dancing with the Stars started. Also, when I was growing up, one of the long running variety shows was the Black and White Minstrel Show, as was the Muppet Show. Take from that what you will.

The truth is, Variety never really left us because it doesn’t really exist as a genre. Is Hey Hey variety? Then what is similar between that show and Dancing with the Stars? How do they compare to the Brady Bunch Hour or The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour or Donny & Marie?

There’s almost no difference to what Hey Hey became late in its existence and a tonight show. Dancing with the Stars is closer linked to Celebrity Masterchef than it is to Hey Hey or the Osmonds.

So we take the term Variety out of the equation and what do we have? People feel like they’re missing something from their television experience and it somehow involves singing and dancing and family entertainment with a bit of light comedy thrown in.

What people are saying when they talk about wanting variety to come back to television is that they want is some sort of stagnation. They don’t want to think, they don’t want to learn, they don’t want to go on a journey. It’s mindless television and it must be stopped. Its nothing but a distraction and that’s not the way any entertainment should be. If, when watching television, you come away from it with nothing, was that time well spent?

I was outraged after the second reunion show when reading the Facebook messages on the Hey Hey page about the Black Faces debacle. People were offended that Harry Connick Jr was offended. How does that even make sense? This so called family entertainment is pitting us against each other.

Television is like one of those comic book devices that could save the world but in the wrong hands would mean disaster. Variety is just another word for television being in the wrong hands. It must be stopped.

Last Monday, the first episode of the new sitcom from Andrew Denton’s Zapruder’s Other Films aired on the Comedy Channel.

Called :30 Seconds (complete with the colon), it’s about an advertising agency.

Yes, at the moment it seems like Zapruder’s is only coming out with shows about advertising. If you have a problem with that, take it up with Denton.

Comedy, as you well know, is a very sensitive lover. It requires caring, attention and tenderness.

To continue that already tortured analogy, the flowers and chocolate, the romance, if you will, are the acting and directing of a sitcom.

They make us feel like there might be something this relationship for us. We’re prepared to give it a chance and maybe allow a couple of dates.

The sex in the analogy that not even I can believe I’m taking this far, is the writing. It’s the writing that, BAM!, really drives home the idea that this comedy deserves a part of our lives.

As far as acting goes, :30 Seconds has the chops. Gyton Grantley, Kat Stewart, Peter O’Brien and Stephen Curry all bring their exquisite thespian skills to the set.

The glaring deficiency in the show is in the bedroom. The writing just isn’t there. So often we see a sitcom where the jokes come forced, like the writers are squeezing in the jokes regardless of context.

The secret is to let the jokes come from the characters. Especially when an accomplished cast is at the writers’ disposal, it the characters are good, the actors will find the comedy and the director will help bring it out.

The actors in :30 Seconds just don’t have enough to deal with. The characters are one dimensional at best.

The potential is there for a great comedy but the writing needs to improve.

Also, the lighting is some of the worst I’ve seen outside YouTube.

Stone is the king of creative conspiracy theorists. This series is apparently going to include newly discovered facts from the Kennedy administration and the Vietnam War amongst other things.

So I think it’s important to note how television has shaped the landscape of conspiracy theories.

Of course we can spend hours talking about the X-Files and its Lone Gunmen characters who subsequently had their own spin-off series that didn’t last very long. We could subsequently disappear up our own arses trying to work out why it didn’t last very long and who gave the order to pull it from air.

We can talk about the first moon landing being the first televised event to be derided as a hoax by conspiracy theorists who believe that the whole thing was shot on a soundstage in Burbank.

We can talk about programmes like 24, Prison Break, Heroes and even my beloved Lost, that base their entire story-lines around international conspiracy theories.

But we won’t, and I think you know why.

Conspiracy theories are a simple way to create intrigue in a series. They give the audience a chance to be part of the story-telling. Every reveal escalates the conspiracy up some chain of command that feeds on our fears of lack of freedom. They raise a question of the control we have over our own lives but, more importantly, how much trust do we put in the medium that is giving us information.

While these shows impel us to question everything that we see on television, they also serve as a warning. When we see the protagonist who has been following a conspiracy-chain for several episodes or several seasons, they always end up as loners, obsessed with finding the truth, often wearing the same clothes day after day.

So do these shows want us to actually know the truth or are they trying to stop us from finding the truth? And who’s in charge of trying to keep us confused like this?

Would you believe me if I told you it was an international federation of school teachers? I’m not crazy. This is the truth, people. They control the information. We are all their puppets.

Or maybe not.

This first appeared as an audible segment on John Richards’s excellent Outland Institute radio programme.

Remember when networks didn’t know how to fill their entire schedule so they’d put old, cheap or seemingly random programmes on at dead times? My Two Dads at 4pm, Newhart whenever it rained at the cricket, and Thrillseekers at midday on Saturday were all old Channel 9 staples.

I don’t think they ever thought people were watching their station at these times. Either that or Kerry Packer really loved an afternoon of stuntmen jumping cars over canyons.

One of the ingenious things about Go! is that you can watch their entire programming for a day depending on whether you wake up in the morning or the afternoon. They’ve really catered this one to the lazy. Despite the exclamation mark in the title, Go! does not seem to be an imperative. In fact, it’s the name I’d give to a new designer drug that made you feel like you were having a good time while really the whole world was passing you by.

Here’s a taste of what they’ve launched with: The Nanny, Just Shoot Me, Entertainment Tonight, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, and Australia’s Funniest Home Videos. All of those shows are available TWICE A DAY. In case you miss an episode of the Nanny you can catch it again eight and a half hours later!

I think what happened is they couldn’t fit the entire title, “Go Into A Vegetative State!”, on the screen.

Really, this was the laziest thing I’ve seen come out of the Free To Air networks for some time. Somebody got paid for coming up with that programming schedule, that title, that media release that came to my inbox. Everybody involved should be ashamed.

Anyway it’s this thing where you get real people in real life situations and follow them around or see them in fish-out-of-water scenarios like the mother from one family going to live with a different family for a couple of weeks.

It reminds me a lot of this thing they used to have on television called “documentaries“. Do you remember those? They were fantastic. We’d learn all about the world as people showed us the lives of ants or, if they were on SBS, the lives of Hitler’s ants.

Well, hold on to your seat because documentaries are back, baby, they just look a little different.

Because people have such low attention spans and trust issues, these programmes need to have famous British people:

• like that guy from A Fish Called Wanda
• or whatisname who played Oscar Wilde
• or, even more famous than either of those, the guy that was in Who Dares Wins and Maid Marian and her Merry Men.

And of course, they can pretty much only be on the ABC for them to have any credibility whatsoever.

This week we’ve got the premier of two of these documentary things*.

The first is on Sunday night on ABC1. Stephen Fry, who you might remember from Blackadder, driving through the US and telling us about local customs in a way that is different to Louis Theroux or Ruby Wax.

Then on Tuesday there’s Tony Robinson, who you might remember from Blackadder, presenting the history of Crime and Punishment.

Apparently, this is not as you would expect – a 5 minute piece saying:

Dostoyevsky had an idea for a book, sat down with pen and paper for a few months and then got a publishing deal.

No, instead it’s about laws and criminals and punitive measures.

I don’t know who else from Blackadder is making documentaries but they seem to be the most trusted people in the world.

* Be aware that this was written to go to air on 7 August so time references might have no bearing to the actual time you’re reading this, if you are reading this, and if you’re not, I’m not talking to you so turn around and face the wall.

Channel 9′s new weekly drama is called Rescue Special Ops (with cops). It’s what I like to think of as a helicopter ear-piece (HEP) action series.

I haven’t seen it yet because*, ever since Underbelly, Channel 9′s publicity seems to be more about secrecy than anything else.

But I thought we’d look at other HEP series from other networks.

Of course, there’s the one that started it all. Police Rescue. This ABC drama featured a lot of falling off cliffs with rescuers shouting “Hang on. Mate, just hang on.” Also combined with this was some shouting of instructions: “attach the rope to the belt” etc. Police Rescue also pioneered the use of the winch in weekly television.

More recently, All Saints, already on the do not resuscitate list, tried to reimagine itself as an HEP, renaming itself to All Saint Medical Response Unit. The introduction of helicopters into a hospital drama was novel if not sustainable.

It’s important to note here that helicopters are the most expensive thing in the filmed entertainment world. It is cheaper to burn giant containers full of truffles laced with cocaine than to hire a helicopter for a film or tv shoot.

So that brings us to Rush on Channel 10. Not happy to spend the national debt on two helicopters, one to film and the other to be filmed, the Rush crew decided to use computer generated images for their action sequences. To compensate for that, though, they have more earpieces and made-up technology than any other HEP series before or after.

How will Rescue Special Ops add to this genre? I’m guessing it won’t. Really. It’s more action for action’s sake until they realise that action’s too expensive and they just fall back into boring intra-department romance and politics like everything else does.

* Remember that this review went to air before Rescue Special Ops aired.

One of the things I love about doing television reviews on the Outland Institute is what I like to call the rule of one. One episode is enough to judge an entire series.

This week I’ve seen the first episode of two new shows from the US. Drop Dead Diva and Ruby and the Rockits.

I can easily and quickly cover off on Drop Dead Diva. If David E. Kelly known for Ally McBeal, The Practice, Boston Legal and marrying Michelle Pfeiffer, took an overdose of oestrogen, the product pumped from his stomach would be Drop Dead Diva.

An aspiring Price is Right model (and no, I’m not making this up) dies in a car crash at the same time that a fat and clumsy but talented lawyer spills hot coffee on her blouse and subsequently gets shot (and I’m still not making this up). The model manipulates her way out of limbo but ends up in the lawyer’s body. Everybody learns a lesson and fried food tastes good.

Margaret Cho co-stars in this one but its almost like they cast her because Sandra Oh is too famous now. She is in no way used to her comic potential. The role just seems so generic. She plays the best-friend/assistant of the fat lawyer.

Then there’s Ruby and the Rockits, a traditional 3 camera sitcom or laffer. David Cassidy stars, as does Patrick Cassidy. It’s produced by Shaun Cassidy. If that’s not enough “where are they now” for you, then it’s also directed by Ted Wass, aka the Dad from Blossom.

David Cassidy plays David Gallagher, a has-been rocker doing a residency at an Indian casino. A girl comes into the venue and introduces herself as his daughter from his time on the road. He takes this at face value and takes the girl, whose mother has recently died, to his brother Patrick’s house. Yes, they are using their real first names. How original.

Patrick’s family also accepts this story of a long-lost orphaned daughter and agrees to let her live in their house. That’s the premise and no, I’m not making any of this up. No paternity test, no questioning; Ruby’s story is entirely accepted at face value.

Ruby and the Rockits dispenses with any of that unnecessary and tiresome suspension-of-disbelief rubbish that other TV shows require for plausibility. In fact, it throws any sense of plausibility out the window. It’s not important. Neither, apparently, is writing jokes.

RatR slso stars Alexa Vega, who was the sister in the Spy Kids series. I mean, really, what did I do in a past life that all of these people would return to haunt me in such a terrifying manner?

This week’s television controversy surrounds MasterChef. We’ve been sold a bill of goods. We’ve invited into our homes a Poh-faced liar.

From the very beginning Poh has been shown favouritism by the judges. How many other people had the opportunity to go home after failing the audition and return to cook another dish?*

Poh not only failed once, but twice. Poh was eliminated from the competition and then, with no reason given, allowed to return along with some other, seemingly randomly selected contestants. No one else in the MasterChef competition has been given as easy a ride as Poh and that is outrageously unfair.

It’s true that Julie also received some leeway with the rules of individual challenges. Out of the last three challenges in this week’s finalist series, Julie failed to finish her dish all three times: twice serving raw food and once just failing to plate up all the elements of her dish in the allotted time.

Many times in the last 18 hours people have told me via twitter and sometimes even to my face that Julie only ended in the final two because they want to publish her cookbook.

The night before, after Justine lost, Matt Moran went to her house and offered her a job. We all felt wonderful because it worked out well for Justine.

Couldn’t the same thing have happened to Julie? If Julie had lost the competition last night but her pitch for a cookbook so overwhelmed Donna Hay that she offered her a publishing deal on the spot, we would feel joy and heart-warming tingles because Julie was well on her way to success.

There was no sensational coda for Chris last night.

And so it comes down to the internal logic of the show. Like any good story the characters need to live by the rules of the story’s universe. Despite the real-person/contest nature of the show, it’s still telling a story. In last night’s episode the rules were laid out in the beginning: make a dish that would look good on the cover of a cookbook.

When it came down to judging, though, the aesthetics of the dish were largely irrelevant. Suddenly it came down to the flavour. The judges said that Chris’s dish didn’t taste good.

Somewhere along the lines they changed the rules without telling the contestants or, more importantly, the audience.

A good TV show has turned into a farce.

* In a moment of subtextual racism the judges sent Poh home to gather the ingredients to create a Malaysian dish. The implication that she was unable to create modern Australian cuisine because of her ethnicity should have been seen as a slap in the face with regard to her skill as a cook. Instead the judges somehow made it seem like they were encouraging her. Would they expect a Cajun to only make craw-fish gumbo? Would a Jew only be rewarded by making gefilte fish and matzo ball soup?

It’s unfair to everybody that she was given a second chance AND told what to make. It’s unfair to her that they did not judge her ability on the merits of her first dish. It’s unfair to an entire race of people that we should expect them to only be good at cooking one type of cuisine.

What I do know is that John from Cincinnati starts screening on Showcase this Monday at 8.30pm, around the time many of us here experience the earliest rumblings of our weekly granola cravings. This show has divided audiences, and my reaction to it is similarly mixed. I reckon there are some absolute gems here (some characters, lines, performances) but the overall “plot” will leave many unsatisfied.

Make up your own mind and deliver your verdict here.

This article from the Daily Telegraph details the rumours of goings on at Nine in Sydney with Majella Weimers, fill-in weather presenter, who apparently stormed out when told that her contract would not be renewed.

Of course, this led to the Telegraph quoting “one news staffer” saying something about John Westacott – that he “doesn’t like blondes”. Even though there was nothing in the preceding paragraphs to suggest Westacott had anything specifically to do with the incident.

The more I read about this, the more I think someone at the Tele has a bone to pick with Westacott and tries to get him to look bad in every article about Nine.

Really, give the man a chance to make himself look bad on his own. I’m sure he’s more than capable.

If you’re a Channel 9 staffer then don’t go running to Confidential every time your boss yells misogynistic epithets from the transmission tower. Do the honourable thing. Note down exactly what he said and hold on to your notes. Then, when you retire from the profession, publish it in a tell-all book.

Until then, keep your mouth shut. You’re making your network look bad, you’re making your colleagues look bad, and you’re not helping your own careers at all. On the weekend, go to the video store and rent Broadcast News. Then go home and watch it. Twice. Try to remember what being part of a news room is all about.*

And while I’m telling people what to do: Daily Telegraph, you can shut the hell up. No one really cares about the wars you’re trying to start. Do some proper work.

*Apparently it’s about faking your own tears to make a story better and then breaking Holly Hunter’s heart. Oh, and sweat.

Tonight on Australia’s number one public affairs program, Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd opens his home and
sits down with host Anna Coren for an intimate interview.

During the very candid interview, the man who wants to be Prime Minister talks to Coren about his family,
the opinion polls…and what happened when he was stuck on a plane with John Howard last week.

Anna Coren – at home with Kevin Rudd – Today Tonight exclusive tonight, at 6.30pm on Seven.

Make of that what you will (and I’m sure you will).

With the exception possibly of Damages that group has the freshness of week old garbage at best.

To borrow a bit of football parlance I think it?s about time Nine started ?tanking?. 2007 is over, start thinking about 2008. In the meantime, try some different ideas, blood some new players.

Here are some things they could try:

*Give shows more than one of two eps to find their audience. ER has disappeared from our screens already. It was always going to struggle up against Californication.

*Weeds is funnier and more irreverent than Californication and could easily be just as much a hit here. Nine could give it a proper run, showing an entire series or two, unedited, in a consistent timeslot with a bit of promotion.

*Why not use the HBO output deal to give Flight Of The Conchords a run? (Same rules apply as for Weeds) Or the new relationship drama Tell Me You Love Me.

I know none of these ideas will help Nine win the rating the rating but neither will this steaming pile of guff they are serving us.

EDIT Channel 9 are apparently going to screen series two of Weeds from Oct 1st at 10:30pm… Whether this means consistent, unedited and promoted screens remains to be seen.

Considering that TV shows are generally bought with a limited number of repeats, has Seven blown its repeat load already?

Are repeats mostly a thing of the past with exceptions for Seinfeld, Simpsons and Raymond (or any other half hour filler on Channel Ten)?

We’re still trying to get a network programming person onto the show to discuss these questions and more.

You can listen to it via the internetwebs: Radio National Breakfast (7/8/2007).

Also, Alias Season 5 finally makes it to our screens Sunday night. Better late than never I suppose. Worth keeping up with if you are a fan, especially towards the end of the series where things come together (although there is no certainty it will last that long on our screens).

However, e-news show us that Seven have their own theories about Lachlan Murdoch arising.

We welcome all speculation and rumour milling. Feel free to tell us what you’ve heard in our comments.

This from the Nine media release:

Mr McGuire said he had greatly enjoyed the executive role but said: “I am of the view
that my best contribution to Nine is in the creative elements of the business and that has
prompted this change.”
“I am looking forward to the change in role and to continue working with the executive
team at Nine. I have made a commitment for the next 5 years and we have a clear
mandate to produce the best local content in Australia.”

Of course, there will be those of us (me) who will say “I told you so” but that’s not the point. Nine was in some trouble when McGuire took over and his job was to make it recover rather than make it worse.

It was a bad move all along. As far as Eddie’s “contribution to the creative elements” goes, well, I’d love to hear what you think that contribution entailed.

According to a statement from the network, McGuire will step down from the role on June 30 to spend more time on air, after taking a mid-year break for the first time in his career.

McGuire says the decision to quit was his and he wasn’t forced to resign.

Talking to Neil Mitchell on 3AW, when asked about his decision, he said: “Because I think it can add a lot more — because I can, to be perfectly honest.

“The opportunities that have been presented in front of me lead me to do some things I’ve always wanted to do and really get the balance right in my life.

“I’m really delighted that all things in my career have come to this point today.

“I am very much up on my toes and excited about my future.”

He said he took on the CEO’s role as a “circuit breaker”.

“I was sick of being on camera. I took the job because I’d had enough of what I was doing.

“In hindsight I should have had a bit of a holiday before taking on the CEO’s job.”

Asked whether he had any plans to return to the Footy Show, he replied: “Not at all”.

Ian Law, the CEO of Nine’s parent company, PBL, said the ratings at the network had taken a hit from McGuire’s on-air absence.

“It has become clear over the past 12 months that Mr McGuire’s absence from on air as a key host has impacted on the ratings of the network,” he said in the statement.

“The performance of 1 v 100 in addition to his executive duties shows how significant Eddie’s contribution can be to our on air line up.”

Eddie will continue as a member of the executive team of Nine, working closely with the director of programming on concepts and ideas for new shows. For the moment, he’ll remain based in Sydney.

Details sourced from The Age, Daily Telegraph, SBS, Bloomberg, NineMSN

From McLeod’s Daughters:

After the jump I’ve included a letter from Riley Boxcutter so that no voice goes unheard in this debate.

If you have an opinion, this is where to voice it. If you’ve sent us an email and I haven’t included it, I’m sorry but make me aware of it and I’ll add yours in too.

Enjoy the argument.

Now read the letter(s):

This one came from Riley Boxcutter:

Hi there, Boxcutters

Long-time listener, first time e-mailer…to this e-mail address.

Just finished listening to Episode 78 – not a patch on Episode 77.

Still, Ross asked that we write in to advise of whether we think the Family Guy is funny, and as this is a topic close to my heart, I appreciate the opportunity to respond.

My feelings can be summed up in a simple sentence: Ross and Josh are 100% correct. In an even simpler sentence: FAMILY GUY NOT FUNNY.

So many people tell me that I would love it, and every time I give it another go (and I must have tried twenty or so times), I just sit there, bored, watching very predicatble and puerile humour, wondering what I must be doing wrong such that so many people think that I’m in Family Guy’s target audience. It’s quite disconcerting.

As for Marieke’s article in The Green Guide (which also flummoxed me a little), I do agree that the characters of the Family Guy get away with saying things that characters on the Simpsons don’t, but then again, so do characters on The Ronnie Johns half-hour. “Oo-er”-style risqu?-ness (clear affinity with the English language coming out in that phrase) does not a funny series make.

Ahhhh! It feels so good to be able to get that out.

Thanks, and keep on boxing.

Actually, that should be “cutting”.

Riley Boxcutter

Also, please note the plan is to turn all the South Park/Family Guy stuff into one big thread, which Josh is going to do…… Any time now……..[Which you can find here:- Josh]

WHY I LIKE SOUTH PARK

[Check it out after the jump:- Josh]

Here is why I like South Park. South Park does two things particularly well ? parody and satire. The parody is very funny, whether they are parodying specifics television or movies (like last week’s excellent 24 ep, or the recent go over for Super Nanny and Nanny 911) or parodying more general clich?s. The attacking of innumerable film and TV clich?s has created many of my all time favourite episodes such as the ep when Stan is challenged to a ski race which he must win to save the youth center, get the girl and free some Indian spirits despite having only started learning to ski a few days prior or the episode where they have put together a dance crew after getting challenged to a dance off. Or the early episode parodying clip show episodes, retelling several South Park stories with slight differences, all ending in getting ice cream. Or the one where everyone bar Butters ignored Cartman, who then assumed he was dead and kept trying to do one last good deed to ascend into heaven.

Almost every episode is a clever parody of some film or television clich?s. It is witty and it’s funny.

They also attack clich?s from day to day life with great results, like the time the boys discovered their parents had deliberately given them chicken pox, so the deliberately give their parents herpes. Or the flip of team sports ? where the whole team wants to lose rather than win so they can stop playing baseball and get on with their summer.

South Park is very clever at bending your expectations. This alone (the unexpected) can be hugely funny, like what happens to Ike’s peewee ice hockey team in the big game, or Cartman grinding his enemy’s parents up and feeding them to him in chilli.

SP also does great satire. Great satire should make you think about issues. It should make you question. South Park satire isn’t usually terribly subtle, but is often very funny and true. Like the take on obsession with cosmetic surgery to make people ‘look on the outside like they feel on the inside’ resulting in Kyle getting a Negro-plasty and his dad getting a dolphin-plasty. Or the run of bi-curious suicides reacting against being changed by over zealous Christians. Or the satire of teacher student relationships with 4-year-old Ike having an affair with his kindergarten teacher. It’s all funny and does make you question the society we live in.

When they cover current events it’s even better, like the beaver dam/New Orleans episode or the genius take on the 2000 presidential elections reworked as Ike’s kindergarten elections. This is stinging satire and their lightning turn around from concept to episode means they are usually incredibly relevant and up to date.

The way the characters have been developed is very clever too. Obviously they are not realistic 10 year olds, but I love the mix of world-weariness and naivety Stan and Kyle have. It is continually funny. Something else I enjoy is something South Park has inherited from the Simpsons and that is that all are on an even playing field in SP. Rich, poor, black, white, democrat, republican ? everybody in the South Park universe is stupid. And everybody is as stupid as each other. Certainly the adults are.

And you know what else I love about South Park? Butters. Butters rocks. Whether he or his alter ego Professor Chaos, an episode with Butters in it is usually a good one. He is just so buoyant and innocent and likable (“Lou, lou, lou ? I’ve got some apples”). Love Butters.

Hmmm, for some reason I feel like watching some South Park!!

As for why I don’t like Family Guy, well that’s a whole nother story…

Why?

Well, Rove starts at 8:30pm on Ten. I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody in programming had the cynical idea that the first half of Rove will rate its arse off because all people want to see is how a man so recently bereaved will handle his return to television. The hope, no doubt, is that after the intrigue is taken care of, people will have no interest in the show and look for something else to watch.

Am I missing something here? Is there some vital event at the not-drowning that must be aired between 8:30 and 9? Am I being too harsh on Nine and they really have a fully justified reason for starting CSI so late?

Firstly why has it taken SBS so long to screen it? Season 11 has already started in the States. South Park famously has a week turn around from idea to finished product, meaning it can be a relevant, up to the minute satire. This is somewhat negated if SBS don’t screen the episodes for 12 months.

Secondly for some reason SBS is starting with Tsst – a great ep but episode number 8 in the series. For those less numerically inclined that means they have left out episodes one to seven.

My guess is that SBS is trying to make itself as despised as the commercial networks – first ads, now contempt for the viewers by ignoring the running order. How long until they claim these faults are just them responding to viewer suggestion and giving us what we asked for?

Whether they used Liz O’Neil’s name or not, it’s a pretty cheap stunt whatever.

The short review would be “same shit, different shape” but I thought I’d take this time to look at and compare the websites of all three commercial networks.

I’m basing my comments here on the sites www.seven.com, www.nine.com.au and www.ten.com.au

Firstly, let’s talk about what you want from a network’s website. Show information? Tonight’s viewing lineup? Competition information? Annoyingly loud flash-embedded video previews of upcoming shows which start automatically and scare the shit out of you?

I don’t think it’s too much to ask to get to the front page of a TV network’s website and be able to confirm what time my favourite show is going to be on tonight. On Seven it’s some clicks and scrolls away. On the Nine website you have to think that maybe it will be in the entertainment section and then you find that you’re suddenly on the TV Week website and then you still have to click and scroll before you find what you want. Meanwhile the Ten website has the guide just one click away. This sounds good but it’s not. When you get there the guide is actually difficult to use.

This example just adds more fuel to the argument that the networks really don’t understand their audience. Both Nine and Seven have partnerships with internet companies for their websites. At least if you put seven.com into your browser you get to some Channel 7 content but Nine are just being right-royally screwed by their ninemsn partnership. If a viewer is going to a network’s website it could be for any number of reasons but surely one of them is to find out some information about the network. That might be a program guide or some information about one its shows.

Ten have got this half right with their new site but when they’re spending as much money as they are on “web presence” they should get it all right.

Network executives have got to realise that the world has changed and they can no longer force habits on their audience. There is too much choice out there to not give them what they want from the start. A little bit of market research goes a long way on the internet and TV networks have an opportunity to build some brand-loyalty but instead they just see fit to piss it up a wall.

Give me a reason to stop watching TV shows through other avenues and I’ll do it, but sitting me in front of a station promo while rubbing a cheese-grater across my face isn’t going to work. I’m just going to get pissed off.

“Last week, subscribers to pay TV spent 60 per cent of their viewing time on the multiple channels it offers, with free-to-air channels Seven, Nine, Ten, SBS and the ABC receiving just 40 per cent of their attention.”

I thought that this was fairly interesting, there has been much discussion of the ‘ratings war’, but not much on the numbers that Pay TV are getting.

I wonder what the breakdown is within Pay TV for the Channels. I will add, that I would think I watch closer to 80% Pay TV.

Obtained from a AFL Rights article at The Age.

Any thoughts?

Putting water in a swimming pool is hardly a news story, even in draught stricken Victoria. No one cares about the stupid swimming. I know Channel 9 will be broadcasting every tedious stroke in an attempt to claw back some ratings after 7′s pounding start to the year, BUT IT IS NOT NEWS!!!

Stop diluting your news with this hacky, cross promoting crap.

Quigley Down Under – No
Species – Yes (but really no)
Charlie’s Angels:Full Throttle – Oh God No!!
Ransom – No
Twelve Mile Road – More Tom Selleck?!? No
Instinct – No
Donnie Darko – No, no, NO!!!!!!!!!

And then finally – Saturday 1:30pm

The Poseido Adventure – Yes

Phew.

A report in the Australian outlines how the 3 Major stations are handling HDTV and how they see it in the future.

CH 10 have been heavily advertising that the Saturday night AFL match will be in HD, and that the major sports events will also be in HD (Rugby World Cup, Formula 1), most of the shows 10 show from the US are shown in HD here.

CH 9, well they have no sport, but again, most shows from the US are now shown in HD here.

Now to my Boxcutters style rant.

Ch 7, Barely show anything in HD, and don’t plan on doing so, not with the AFL (on the home of AFL ), most likely not with the 2008 Olympics, but more importantly, the HD that they are showing is in the lowest spec that they can possibly get away with, what jerks!!!

And, then, as I read on, I’m told that the stations are now allowed to multi-cast, show more than one show on the different channels, which then makes me think, why didn’t ‘Hair on Fire 9′ when it was not showing us the cricket, and make us watch ‘Some Advertising Affair’ not just say, switch over to Channel 91 to watch the Cricket? All I can see is TWO advertising streams, and ALL the viewers are happy (excluding those without a HD or SD Set Top Box!). It certainly makes sense to me, but what little hair I have isn’t on fire!

So, in true Boxcutter’s Style, F&^k YOU Channel 7 for not promoting HD and for showing the lowest quality HD you can get away with, and F*&K YOU Channel 9 for not just stiffing us on the cricket, but actually having the ability to show both programs at once and not doing so!

The Australian Article that got me started.

Ridiculous. The repetition is one thing, but such an unlikely and easily remembered premise being repeated is just stupid.

Also, after my ranting and raving (and possible spolier-ing) last week this week’s Lost was AWESOME. Everything I love about Lost in a fantastic little 42 odd minute package. Yum. Good work Lost people, I’m back on board. Don’t let me down again.

Entertainment Tonight is going gangbusters on the whole Anna Nicole death, devoting entire shows to the aftermath in a fashion not seen by them since it was nothing but OJ, credits to credits. Of course they have been covering the whole Bahamas/Dannielynn/drug binge pretty hard since Smith’s son died in September last year and because of that they’ve been in the right place at the right time and in tight with that loopey possible father and great quote giver Howard K Stern. Riverting stuff.

Meanwhile closer to home the Jodi/Mercedes/Schapelle wars have been great current affairs fodder. If it keeps up this weeks entire Boxcutters may end up being one giant Raywatch.

Come back Media Watch! I would love to see their take on it all.

I like the bit where Kate said she wanted off the island and Sawyer said sure, we’ll just use my motorcycle to jump that shark and we’ll be free………

Of course for the final they decided to change their behaviour and start an hour before the game. Ordinarily not a problem but that half an hour could have been spent with some precious sleep. The last thing I wanted to do was start falling asleep half way through the second half.

It’s not a huge complaint. A couple of cans of Pepsi Max got me through but only just.

Pull your socks up SBS (in 4 years).*

^{*Actually, SBS did a fine job and should be commended. I’m just so used to whinging about the state of television that it didn’t feel right to not be able to find anything wrong at all with their coverage.}

– Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey

I wouldn’t be surprised if someday some fishermen caught a big shark and cut it open, and there inside was a whole person. Then they cut the person open, and in him is a little baby shark. And in the baby shark there isn’t a person, because it would be too small. But there’s a little doll or something, like a Johnny Combat little toy guy — something like that.

– Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey