Tv Comedy Articles (General)

[Munchkin]

Originally Posted by Stripes

cheeky Wil!
*pokes Paul with a music stick*

I've racked my brain, didn't take long, and can only recall Paul ever actually singing it on GNW once. I think Mikey has probably sung it more often in the past decade.

[Spoofy]

Originally Posted by Munchkin

Don't suppose you wanna scan the Foxtel guide article before I start typing that one

I don't have Foxtel so hence I don't get Foxtel guide

[Sam]

They were great scans, ta. Mmmm lovely Paul piccy. Wil could give the song a go, but somehow I don't think the audience reaction would be quite the same.

[mish]

The Australian, 22nd March, 2003

FUNNY FACES - Why it's prime time for comedians - Stop laughing, this is serious

The boom in Australian television comedy is a timely reminder that laughter is more common than sex, eating and singing and that comedy reminds mankind of its eminent fallibility, writes Graeme Blundell

WE laugh, according to one study, at least 18 times a day. Few things in our lives are done as often or as pleasurably -- yet we remain perplexed by this particular sensation. Scientists tell us laughing is the emission of a series of short vowel-like notes, each around 75 milliseconds long and repeated at regular intervals 210 milliseconds apart, but the damn peculiarity of having a good laugh is that its causes have never been summed up in any simple formula.
The laughable is what we laugh at. And we laugh because we have encountered something we find amusing. But we are no closer to understanding humour today than was medieval scholar Laurence Joubert, who discovered in 1579 that ``jubilation in the mind causes agitation in the heart, which pulls on the diaphragm, which shakes the chest, which compresses the lungs, which breaks up the voice''.
Laughter then is a form of thoracic epilepsy -- its only cure, suggested the inimitable Tony Hancock, a poke in the eye with a wet stick. Those who study these things closely believe humour is ambivalent, that in and of itself it involves no commitment to anything except the act of levity but that its meaning changes dramatically according to the circumstances of its utterance.
Pure laughter, stripped of all temporary significance, is perhaps the most serious business of all. ``We are the first animals that laughed,'' Novelist Vladimir Nabokov wrote, ``and the first that knew we were to die.'' Hamlet peers into the grave to find the skull of Yorick the jester. ``Where be your gibes now?'' he asks. ``Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now to mock your own grinning?'' Laughter -- baseless, pointless laughter -- is always about death. And all jokes are about the same thing, the terrible discontinuity between what we think and imagine ourselves to be, and the rotting flesh we actually are.
At the receiving end of clowning, the self-obliteration of laughter provides a kind of mini-death that offers a sense that the real thing has been temporarily avoided. But it can be risky. ``Laugh,'' my mother says, ``I nearly died.''
This language of annihilation is second lingo to comedians: ``Died tonight,'' they say of an unreceptive crowd, ``Killed them,'' when the applause is still ringing. Which is understandable when you think of these solitary, often unhappy people, who stare at the distant majority and maintain an unbudging antagonism. Their destiny is to stand in a spotlight and
say in effect: ``Look at me. I am absurd. I am you. Laugh, you bloody bastards.'' It's sobering then that a study in Health Psychology magazine showed that entertainers tend to die younger than the members of their audience.
But if laughter ultimately affects the health of the creator, it does wonders for the rest of us. Studies show laughing reduces worry and frustration, boosts the immune system and lowers the level of stress hormones skittering through the body's blood-stream. Laughter is more common than sex, eating and singing. So it's probably no cause for wonder that comedy seems to be everywhere at the moment. Laughter has entered the proscenium arch of our lives at a time when politics more than ever seems like a cruel trick played by the rich on the poor, the eye into a better world is all but closed, a war is on us that most of us don't want, and we have all been sentenced to an unsettling jolt of hard times. What do we do? We laugh.
Comedy serves to remind humankind of its eminent fallibility, the folly that resides in us all, and humour provides the means by which the ordinary person can become reconciled to humiliations and take revenge on those that inflict them. The tensions of the nuclear sword of Damocles have even created their own vaudeville sense of history, and the world's leaders have become a troupe of baggy-pants clowns on the nightly news in low sketches of hostility, violence and duplicity.
Which possibly explains why comedy is a prized commodity in prime-time local television network schedules, and why comedians have their own stage shows, radio programs and festivals. This week, the must-attend Melbourne International Comedy Festival opens its three-week run, wedded to inevitable success via its trusty mix of ``something borrowed, something blue, something old and something new'' and a performance list that includes Dave Hughes; the tart-tongued trio of Judith Lucy, Lynda Gibson and Denise Scott; Wil Anderson; Rachel Berger; Rod Quantock; and the Tripod boys.
``I suspect when times are as grim as this, people need a good laugh,'' says veteran TV comedy producer Ted Robinson (The Big Gig and Good News Week). ``But it doesn't mean they're getting one.'' Despite misgivings about throwing lambs to comedy's slaughter, Robinson recognises a new vaudeville let loose across Australia.
``Many new comics are earning their spurs in live situations,'' says Robinson. ``Once there were a lot of venues and people learned their craft and then went on TV. Now you go on TV to learn your craft in all the sketch shows.''
Though as my friend the comedy writer and performer Jim Pike says: ``There's a new generation of TV programmers who simply haven't experienced the career disaster that a comedy show can be.''
So TV is suddenly full of ensembles of young performers overacting in pursuit of a humorous release (which is what psychologists call laughs).
In Nine's Comedy Inc and Ten's Skithouse, viewers are being bombarded with joke glasses on bad fake noses, toppling hair pieces, jabberwocky accents, countless transformations and that perennial fallback in hard times, black-out comedy. Channel Seven's Big Bite, which promises even more of the same, starts later in the year. Rove and The Panel are back, with their irreverent, barbed takes on current affairs and as first port of call for anyone plugging a book or movie -- as long as they can do it entertainingly.
Rove McManus, a born TV host, wears the Graham Kennedy mantle as someone who does whatever it is that he does better than anyone else around. He is so loveable, available and successful that his life must be like a held breath.
It's little wonder that Darryl Sommers has banished himself from the public and won't speak
to the press: McManus has taken all the oxygen.
``Rove was once all likeability and no act,'' says Robinson. ``Now he's a TV star.''
The Chat Room is under way on Seven, with a bunch of abrasive, loud radio heads from Austereo's Melbourne and Sydney stations trying to upstage each other -- Peter Berner is the stand-out stand-up sitting down here, while Amanda Keller is the sexiest funny woman on the box.
Then there's the ABC sitcom Whelcher v Whelcher with the remarkable Shaun Micaleff, a huge talent who will also front up later this year on a three-nights-a-week Tonight-style show for Nine. Micaleff is handsome (most comics aren't) and an inventive screwball, exploiting his weaknesses in a knock-about mixture of tatterdemalion farce, stylised realism and verbal surrealism. With his beautiful speaking voice, he's a local version of those legendary comics of the American Jewish borscht circuit such as Jack Benny and Sid Caesar, who would do anything for a laugh, usually at their own or their listener's expense. Comedy writer Gary Reilly (Hey Dad) says Micaleff is a ``come-to-me'' comedian: ``You never expect long shoes and hooters; he makes the audience come to him; you have to learn to
like him.''
Easy to like is the new-style sports show, the ABC's The Fat with its frenzied gags, street humour and often dry wit. Tony Squires could be the new Bert Newton when he calms down, but he understands that humour is not really about jokes so much as the journey to their finish. A fine journalist in his other life, the good-looking Squires appreciates that the basis of comedy is the general attitude that characterises a narrative and that humour is always bound to specific contexts. He often shrewdly gets laughs just by referring to his own inexperience, his ambition contrasting, with no shame, to his ineffectualness. He's the new comedy's Eddie McGuire.
The original Eddie and sidekick Sam Newman arrived with the footy season, as did their rugby league confreres ``Fatty'' Vautin and Peter Sterling, with their own brands of old-style sports lampoon and vaudeville. As David Lyle, who produced Kennedy's brilliant Coast to Coast for Channel Nine a decade ago, used to say: ``Why do I need a comedy program? I can just get a footballer to fart or put on a dress and everyone laughs.''
The eldritch Andrew Denton is happily at home in the ABC's Enough Rope, too clever by half, a court jester whose precinct runs from satire to saturnalia; Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson are scurrilously lurking, and Kath and Kim, which recently sold into overseas markets, seems likely to return to the local screen -- a clever show that allowed us vicariously to explore our basic desires for self-esteem, pleasure, mastery and revenge. And also for intimacy and happiness.
By contrast, the equally brilliant Grass Roots, also on the ABC, allowed us to laugh out loud at local government corruption, hardly amusing in real life. The first series cut through all Jonathan Shier's drab British comedy re-runs like a liner through tugs. The new series is back at the precise time the political has become personal in Howardland ... and for Mayor Col Dunkley (Geoff Morrell), the personal is impinging on the political as he struggles to maintain
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his power base while dealing with a scary case of altruism. Morrell has become the best comic actor of his generation; like the young Richard Briers, he is able to speak faster
than he appears able to think. He's a consummate technician, and you can hardly tell that he is acting.
Wil Anderson's The Glass House, with Dave Hughes and Corine Grant, is still hip, cool and fresh on ABC on Friday nights. To my mind, this show is so poised and sharp-witted it gives the impression that other TV sketch shows are merely about a lot of young comedians being exploited in the chase for local content points (reflecting the fact that the much cheaper-to-produce comedy receives the same number of points as expensive scripted drama).
``Wil's a comedian who can own the room in a live show in a theatre,'' says the show's not-totally-unbiased producer, Robinson. ``But he's also one of the last practitioners of intelligent humour on TV.''
Watch Anderson and his caustic cohorts at work and you sense that maybe it's true that comedy is a brand of social correction, allowing escape from the grim reality of bombs, exploding tourists, disappearing superannuation funds and executive golden handshakes. Or that under the power of humour, bosses, personal enemies, ex-lovers and hated authority figures can take on human size and be dealt with.
A lot of theories about laughter are at work in this latest opening of the joke factory. Author George Orwell saw gags as a holiday from the noble and worthy, a temporary elevation of the coarser Sancho Panza side of our personalities; legendary actor-director Mack Sennett declared as a working principle that ``the joke of life is the fall of dignity''; and Freud saw jokes as the means to let the id off the leash for a bit -- to him they were mental rebellions, momentary wishes that things might be otherwise.
Buffoonery, what Kennedy called ``rare displays of awful wit'', is older than the sportive games of the Romans -- although jokes, as such, and the jokers who make them are not recorded on the frescoes of ancient Egypt. An Egyptian hieroglyph does describe a mask, however: the disguise affected by one who wishes to be taken for another, who pretends to be another character -- an actor.
The Bible finds no place for humorists, either -- the Old Testament has a dismissive 29 references to laughter (scorn and derision account for 13, and only two are born in joy) -- but the Talmud has a kind word for those bearers of titters, chuckles, and sometimes belly laughs. ``And Elijah said to Berokah, `These two will also share in the world to come'. Berokah then asked them: `What is your occupation?' They replied: `We are merrymakers. When we see a person who is downhearted, we cheer him up.'''
At present, it would seem that the merrymakers -- the evangelists of laughter -- are working overtime: in pubs, on street corners, piers, bowling clubs and the so-called hospitality rooms overlooking football stadiums, introduced by celebrities such as McGuire, the extraordinary Sam Keckovitch from The Fat (a TV show for him, please) and Glenn Robbins (the best thing on The Panel).
Like the downhearted, merrymakers come in all shapes and sizes, most of them insecure and baffled by their choice of livelihood but all of them hard-witted kidders. And a lot of them are on TV.
A change was inevitably blowing in the ratings after last year showed contemporary drama on local TV as misconceived, derivative, badly written, poorly acted, patronising and lazy. As a friend of mine blathered: ``Where are the gritty, tough-minded, challenging shows? Why is it all so bloody friendly?''
Yet while our dramas appear little more than anthologies of superlative banality to some, they did seem to be what people wanted to watch. Trouble is, as Phillip Adams is always saying, we haven't had 46 years of TV in Australia but one year of TV 46 times. Because drama is under the censorship of corporate patronage, any sense of adventure is retarded by the precaution of mass marketing and its commercial procedures.
From the very beginning of TV in this country, in fact, fingers have been pointed at programs seemingly distinguished by meretriciousness, gloss and competence. When they disappeared in the long night of the ratings, they were replaced by others in which the names and faces were changed but little else. For it is a rule of TV that when anything beyond mediocrity turns up, it will fail for lack of viewers.
So the viewers are now tuning into comedy. Again. After what has been the ``re'' decade, where everything that has been before has come again, retrieved, recycled and repackaged. Believe me, I know how hard it is -- my own, slightly pathetic attempts at TV comedy sometimes appear on Foxtel when they re-run Alvin Purple, the series I made decades ago about a passive youth who, for unknown reasons, was incredibly attractive to a host of beautiful women. After 20 years of fully clothed high-minded acting, it's hard to get used to the idea of your naked bottom making a weekly comeback on TV.
Mind you, bottoms are always making comebacks on Australian TV, sometimes more expressive than the actors who own them. We've seen the jubilant bottoms of Sex and the City and the melancholy bums of The Secret Life of Us, while the stupendously cloven bottoms of Baywatch keep being re-run along that beach, and those little aerobic butts keep jumping up and down in the mornings, every gluteus maximus aroused.
But I had hoped my own had become an archaeological relic since the show's last resurrection, fossilised and carbonised in the sexually-hungry '70s. Because when people have seen your bum on TV, it's like
there is no rest of you. A bottom can cast a long shadow, and you have to sandbag yourself against the full-on pointing, shouting and smirking.
And now it'll happen again, just when producers have discovered I'm not a certain handsome country singer with a hat and a receding hairline. But I've become an expert
at the technique of rationalisation: ``That's
not me!'' I'll tell 'em, ``I just look like him -- only older.''
My only other descent into TV comedy was in the series called Brass Monkeys, shown on the Seven Network and loosely based on the (seemingly) comical if surreal antics of an Antarctic station community. It was my first taste of phytoplankton and protozoa, the reproductive biology of albatrosses, ice-reflected glare (snow blindness), wind-chill factor, the unseen hazards of windproofed tents and huts (carbon monoxide poisoning) and krill, the world's most abundant crustacean. I may have been dressed in 23 layers of thermal underwear and resembled a small tethered yellow blimp but this was not exactly the South Pole.
I played a character called Noddy in the series, alongside the brilliant Paul Chubb who was Big Eye the base's carpenter. Noddy was the plumber with a terminal case of upward inflection requiring more extensive surgery than a large shifting spanner could provide. The comedy derived from the conflict between the scientists and the ``tradies'' who keep the place running and the producers belief that where humour's concerned, someone turns eight every 10 minutes.
While I can dimly remember the show with the aid of deep-sleep therapy, I did emerge with a deep infatuation with matters Antarctican, no matter how trivial. For example, the Antarctic Circle, at 66 degrees 33.5' south latitude is the point at which the sun may be seen not to set in the summer and not to rise in the winter. Or that considerable chunks of the Antarctic continent are in fact north of the Antarctic Circle. I am amazed I can remember these details years later, yet I would forget the scripted lines five minutes after the show was taped -- and sometimes five minutes before it was finished.
By the time I received an honorary Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions tie for my explorations into ratings blizzards and dog-sled expeditions in search of good reviews, I never wanted to say a funny line on TV ever again.
But I'm happy to be watching other younger actors and comedians saying them, even if it's all a bit exhausting.
As Robinson says: ``The best thing about the new comedy boom is that it will be a shot in the arm for drama. After all if this fails, drama will be back big-time.'' Comedy? It's a cruel business.

[Munchkin]

Everybody's talkin'
Trash talk
Everybody's talkin'
June 16 2003
After years in the doldrums, the television chat show has made a comeback. But with only so much talent to go around, there's tension aplenty behind the scenes. Michael Idato reports.

By the end of 1999, the emerging star of the talk show genre, The Panel, had seen off its competition - the venerable Midday and the bloated but long-running Hey! Hey! It's Saturday. "We were the only live variety show of any description," recalls The Panel's producer and co-presenter Rob Sitch. "I don't think I liked that."

He should have been more careful what he wished for. The failure of Seven's The Chat Room notwithstanding, this year has seen a talk show renaissance. Rove Live, launched in 2000, has been joined by Andrew Denton's Enough Rope, Shaun Micallef's Micallef Tonight and the Australian clone of The Kumars at No. 42, Greeks on the Roof, with Mary Coustas reprising her Effie Stephanides role.

(Curiously the talk show tag is unpopular with producers. Enough Rope's Anita Jacoby prefers "interview show", Todd Abbott calls Micallef "an entertainment show which happens to feature interviews" while The Panel's Tom Gleisner asks, "Do you think we're a talk show?")

With all these shows rating at around the million mark, none is a runaway hit (in terms of potential audience, Denton's performance on the ABC is the most impressive). However, the ratings are good enough for all three newcomers to claim success. And the reason for that, says Rove's executive producer Craig Campbell, is that each has a major point of difference.

"Rove is ad-lib, Andrew is a researched long chat, Effie and Shaun are scripted; they are all different," he says. "And don't forget The Panel, which is five on one."

At the heart of the talk show lies the art of the interview, which has proved Denton's greatest strength and Micallef's greatest weakness ("He's never been an interviewer prior to this show so his approach is going to be a bit different to the others," argues Abbott).

"I think Andrew is a wonderful listener," Jacoby says. "He listens to what people say during the interview and he does a hell of a lot of research beforehand. There are four or five drafts before he sits down and, remarkably, he memorises everything."

Kris Noble, executive producer of Greeks on the Roof, believes his show's format - Effie and family running a talk show from their rooftop - is the ace in his hand: "It allows us to have an interview but to do jokes in a legitimate, good-natured way."

Rove Live, the oldest of the shows but appealing to the youngest audience, is built around its host, Gold Logie winner Rove McManus, and a cycle of guests promoting albums and movies. "What you see is what you get," Campbell explains. "There is nothing contrived or fake about him - on camera and off camera he is the same person. His rapport with the guests is genuine."

The show, however, is vulnerable to the kind of criticism Enough Rope's Jacoby levels at some of her opposition - that they are simply "six-minute plug-a-thons".

"I think Andrew can get away with asking harder or deeper questions because he has more time," Campbell says in defence. "We are on a six-minute cycle and in that time we have to get a lot of ground covered. Sure, the film companies are there to get something, but we're there for a good interview."

In contrast, The Panel was intended as a reinvention of the tonight show format. "Our show is more about observations," says Sitch." It's not as pumped-up as a traditional tonight show. Our guest line-up is more along the lines of people we are interested in speaking to, whereas a traditional tonight show is more showbiz oriented."

All that chat, all those smiling faces. Yet it should come as no surprise that the jolly genre of talk TV is anything but. In the race to carve-up the ratings pie there is enormous pressure on producers to wrestle decent talent into the guest seat.

"I think it's probably fairly well known that there is some aggressive lobbying for guests going on out there," Abbott admits. "There are obviously only a certain number of guests to go around ... We all need to find creative solutions to making sure that the programs do not revolve around the guests."

Abbott argues that Micallef Tonight is not a guest-dependent format and, given his host's proved comedic mettle, he's probably right. "We feel like we're doing a show that is unique and entertaining and it does not live or die on the strength of our guests," he says. "It's a show about Shaun's view of the world; we're not trying to do a roll call of whoever is in town that week."

Most of the producers we spoke to deny they have an exclusivity policy, although many confidently claim their rivals do. Sitch admits that these days, with so many similar shows around, he's conscious of where his guests are appearing, but says "it's more of an audience thing for us. If someone is going to be interviewed three nights running, for the audience's sake we'll go, 'Perhaps you can have the night off.'

"I understand why you hear stories of booking wars and I am sure there is a bit of that going on at the moment," he says, "but I don't think we're raising too much dust on that front."

So who is? The answer, claim several sources, is none other than that cheeky talk-show-next-door Rove Live.

"I'm flattered to think we might have muscle," Campbell laughs, denying the claim. "We never demand exclusivity." And yet his competitors, and several publicists in the film and music industry whose briefs include scheduling TV interviews for their talent, claim the opposite is true.

Either way, there was much mirth among Rove's competitors following his exclusive interview with pop singer Avril Lavigne. It was at best uninteresting, at worst excruciating.

"I'd be asking for a refund," laughs one producer.

"It was great for Rove to get Avril Lavigne," adds Noble, "but he didn't really get anything because she doesn't give anything."

Other sources suggest Rove's manager and co-executive producer, Kevin Whyte, and his publicist, Maria Farmer, have brought their considerable might into the equation. Whyte, who owns Token Management, has an impressive client list that includes Anthony Morgan, Judith Lucy, Wil Anderson and Merrick and Rosso; Farmer represents a range of A-list clients including Miranda Otto, Toni Collette, David Campbell and Rachel Griffiths.

"Imagine how difficult it is to book talent when two of the biggest agents in the city won't do business with you because you're competing with one of their other clients?" says one source.

It is an accusation both Whyte and Farmer refute. Whyte points out that Lucy appeared on Micallef last week and McManus himself was on Enough Rope. David Campbell has been on Micallef, adds Farmer, Peter O'Brien was on The Fat and Rachel Griffiths does The Panel whenever she is in Sydney. Point taken.

Over at Nine and Seven, meanwhile, ancient rivalries flared recently when Nine presenter Sam Newman appeared on Seven's Greeks on the Roof. According to sources the deal was that Effie would do Micallef in return, but Seven reneged.

Nine has closed ranks over the story, prompting Seven to do the same. "I don't remember that part of the deal," says Greeks producer Kris Noble. "It was much more to do with the Logies than Micallef.

If she did the Logies, Sam would come on the show; Micallef was a secondary issue. That is something that has been added to stir the pot."

That said, most producers acknowledge a hard line is drawn when it comes to talent booking. "Anyone who feels they have the power likes to wield it," Noble says. "Ten and Rove obviously feel at the moment that they have a Logie winner and think they can push the market. They can have their exclusives. Our jokes are quite different.

"It's flattering that they think they have to try and push their weight. If Avril Lavigne is in the country and Rove says you have to come on my show first, well, there will be a time in the near future when people will say, 'I don't care'."

More damaging than any behind-the-scenes spats over exclusivity is the reliance of these shows on "cross-promotional" guests - personalities from within the network stable. There was Home and Away star Tammin Sursok on Greeks on the Roof, Stingers' Gary Sweet and McLeod's Daughters' Bridie Carter on Micallef Tonight and various Big Brother cast-offs on Rove Live.

"The practical reality is that a lot of potential guests in Australia, where our highest-profile entertainment industry is television, will be television people," Abbott says. "The Australian networks are not keen to let their stars appear on shows on other networks ... We have to be honest, that is going to be an occasional limitation."

Sitch is more candid. "We said from day one we'd have anyone on. We started off with that vibe, but if you go back the other way we've almost forgotten some of the Channel Ten shows. If I was running a network I'd probably have a different attitude," he laughs.

Trash talk: The trouble with chat shows
By Michael Idato
June 16 2003










Not enough talent to go aroundBarry Humphries on Micallef and Denton, Gary Sweet on Micallef and Greeks on the Roof, Rove on Denton, Denton on Rove ... The talent pool must be shallow if talk show hosts are interviewing other talk show hosts. "He'd just won a Gold Logie and he hadn't done a major TV interview, ever," argues Enough Rope's Anita Jacoby. "I think that makes him a more-than-legitimate interview."

Cross-promotional guestsAlthough it was not on Nine's orders, Micallef Tonight's decision in week two to book Gary Sweet and Bridie Carter (both contracted to Nine) was damaging.

Guests on the promotion circuitIt's an issue, says Enough Rope's Jacoby: "I don't mean this in a disparaging sense, but they are six-minute plug-a-thons, and that is not the criterion we look for in terms of guests."

Soft questionsFair cop, given a show like Rove Live must be ever-mindful of its ongoing relationship with film distributors and record companies, two significant sources of talking talent. "I think 'light touch' is a bit harsh," says Rove Live's Craig Campbell.

The formats are too similarNot entirely true, as the "scripted" formats of Micallef and Greeks on the Roof differ from the traditional chatter of Enough Rope, Rove Live and The Panel. However, warns The Panel's Tom Gleisner, there's a danger that "everywhere you look there seem to people sitting behind oversized desks talking".

They're all on at the same timeOK, just two of them (Denton and Micallef), but it's a shame because each show has merit: Denton is a gifted interviewer, Micallef a gifted comedian. It's a by-product of the Monday night glut, which capitalises on that night's huge potential audience.

Too many researched anecdotesThe question that begins: "I read in an interview you said ...". Rove and Micallef, guilty as charged. At least Denton has the smarts to rephrase the question.

Fawning over guests Rove would be the most worst offender here. Micallef is either indifferent or rude, while the team on The Panel reserve their best fawning for each other. In his defense, Campbell argues Rove's rapport is genuine. "He's a big fan himself."

[Mythor]

Loved this quote in the "Trash Talk" article:

OK, just two of them (Denton and Micallef), but it's a shame because each show has merit: Denton is a gifted interviewer, Micallef a gifted comedian.

Denton is a far more gifted comedian than Micallef and if you can't interview for shit, it's not a good idea to do interviews?
Surely they could've learnt that lesson from "McCrossin"?

[Stripes]

Originally Posted by Mythor

Denton is a far more gifted comedian than Micallef

absolutely agreed. Denton's great, he's such a legend

[Munchkin]

Daily Telegraph 10/07/03

Seven's souvlaki
A reshuffle of programming is under way at the Seven Network as it positions itself for the year's second half and tries to repair the damage done to its weekly figures by last Thursday night's disastrous 19.5 per cent share nationally.
Will and Grace has disappeared into limbo, while the remaining four half-hours of Big Bite will be repackaged into one-hour specials for screening at some later stage.
Greeks on the Roof, based on the British show The Kumars at Number 42, will move from its 8.30pm slot to 9.30pm tonight and next week will follow the movie Grease, scheduled for a 7.30pm start. The final episode in the series won't be made.
Guests tonight will be Alex Dimitriades, Michala Banas, Paul McDermott and Trevor Hendy while John Wood, Toby Allen, Jane Flemming and Frank Farina will be on the final show.
According to Seven, the network is talking to Effie (Mary Coustas) about a second series of Greeks on the Roof for next year and other project ideas, with a decision to be made on whether Greeks will return in 2004 to be made in October/November.
There were rumours this week that there wouldn't be a second series of Greeks but the head of programming and production, Tim Worner, says no decision has been made yet simply because ``we don't have to make it yet''.
He says dropping the final show of the 13 episodes commissioned is a direct result of the 19.5 per cent share last Thursday night and the decision to launch the network's second half of the year sooner than it would have been done had the Thursday night ratings held up.
``We can't cop that [the 19.5 per cent share],'' he says.
As for Mary Coustas and her Effie character, Worner says the network thinks she is a ``tremendous talent'' and wants to continue its association with her, although the vehicle -- Greeks or another show -- has not been decided yet.
A clue though. ``It's no coincidence that the Olympics are in Athens next year,'' Worner says.

* * * * *
Talkback shocker
The ABC has bought Shock Jock, the first comedy/drama fully funded by pay television.
The two series of Shock Jock were aired on TV1, whose production arm made the show in association with Mondayitis TV and Mockingbird Productions. It was devised by Tim Ferguson, who co-produced it with Marc Gracie.
Set in talkback radio during the 1980s, its cast includes Matthew Dyktynski, Michael Veitch, Tiriel Mora and Cassandra Magrath with Ferguson also appearing as the radio station's roving eye in the sky.
UK's Paramount Comedy Channel has also bought the series. Says Ferguson: ``We're thrilled. It's always nice to return to Aunty and to know the show will reach the eyeballs of more people.''
Shock Jock screens on the ABC from August 15, 11.30pm.

[credence]

Interesting indeed.

I'm excited about Shock Jock. Even with pay tv and best intentions, I never did watch it. I always forgot it was on. It will be good to see finally. Sounds like Tim might have friends in high places at the ABC.

[Laney]

ooh, i've been waiting for some time to see Shock Jock. *wonders if it has actually been worth the wait*

[Beckslee]

I've seen a couple of episodes and it's not worth the wait

[Munchkin]

Just giggle at Tim's moustache then go back to what you were doing.

[Claire]

YES YES YES shock jock (i can finally replace my eaten tape ::))

Shock jock is really good if you understand the eightes and the whole radio system other wise it kind of passes over your head a bit... Kind of like daas humour you don't always know why you are laughing

[Munchkin]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/...732081588.html

The commercial break
August 7, 200

Tony Squires is just the latest casualty in a long line of ABC success stories who failed to earn their transfer fee, writes Sunanda Creagh.

Another one bites the dust. The announcement that 110% Tony Squires had been axed by Channel Seven after just 25 episodes saw plenty of punters smugly muttering how they saw it coming.

Predictable, they gloat. ABC personality makes a name for himself, accepts offer too good to refuse from commercial network then crashes and burns. The line of casualties is growing, with Roy and HG and Andrew Denton on Seven; Mick Molloy and Shaun Micallef on Nine.

It's not always the way. Roy and HG's Olympic coverage was, literally, a dream for Seven and Merrick and Rosso have done great things for Nine.

And why shouldn't it work? The ABC had a winning recipe with Squire's old gig, The Fat, and there seemed no reason why the same format shouldn't blossom in the commercial realm. But it didn't.

Seven's director of corporate development, Simon Francis, places the blame squarely on timeslot difficulties, but admits that transferring shows across is not as easy as it looks.

"It's not an issue of do people migrate from public to commercial networks, it's more a case of sometimes programs work and sometimes they don't."

Seven is busy finding new projects for Squires, earnestly assuring themselves that he'll bring his ABC fans across the border. For Francis, the equation is simple: "Audiences follow people they like. They do migrate across channels. The ABC audiences that were fans of The Fat migrated across but the difficulties in the timeslot precluded a more significant sampling of that audience," he says.

But with audiences more lazy and more loyal than ever, the risk is still a big one. If the gap between ABC and commercial tastes is so wide, why do commercial networks dare celebrities to attempt the jump?

A media analyst, David Castran, says the risk is always undercalculated. "They look to the ABC and think the grass looks greener, but it's not that simple," he says.

Castran is managing director and founder of Audience Development Australia, a company that tracks audience attitudes, measuring recognisability and likeability of famous faces. The ABC has a good report card, but Castran says flunking the commercial challenge is inevitable when networks fail to freshen a show for a commercial audience.

"In our experience with the audience, it's not so much the actual personality and the program itself. The most important thing is the transferability of the show. The personality is secondary. Good News Week was a good format on ABC but to move a whole show, kit and kaboodle, to Channel Ten is a much more difficult proposition," he says. "I can't remember one time that has worked."

Simon Francis says comedy is especially tricky. "Comedy works on varying levels; sometimes it doesn't work. Channel Nine pinched Mick Molloy and it failed. Again, with commercial networks seeking the broadest audience, the comedy has to connect with the broadest demographic and you can't please everybody all the time," he said. "Some may argue there is an ABC audience and there is a commercial television audience. In our business we're out to capture as much of an audience as possible."

Nine's executive producer of development, Hilary Innes, says it takes time to understand why a distinctive style of comedy is funny. During her tenure as head of light entertainment at Nine, she was partly responsible for Shaun Micallef's difficult move from the ABC last year. After winning two Logies he looked like a sure-shot for the network, but the troubled Micallef Tonight lasted just 13 shows.

Innes gushes about the breadth and depth of Micallef's talent, comparing him to Steve Martin or John Cleese and blaming Nine's impatience for the show's short life. "I don't think in 13 weeks you've given it enough time. I think a tonight show takes a whole year, it's an acquired taste.

"Eventually a decision was made and it came down to ratings. They just weren't willing to sit with the ratings we were getting for any longer," she said, also lamenting the commercial network tendency to shy away from developing their own comedic talent.

"At the ABC they give them longer to find themselves, but the commercial world is more brutal and if stuff doesn't fire immediately it doesn't last."

But no-brainer comedy is a recipe for blandness, says producer Mark Fennessy. Fennessy is the CEO of Crackerjack Productions, the company behind ABC leading lights CNNNN and BackBerner, as well as the Nine success story, Comedy Inc. As someone with a foot in both camps, Fennessy's clear on the reasons why some comedy wilts outside the ABC cocoon.

"There's a tendency to try to always tread the middle line and go toward the conservative end of the wedge. There's an inclination to dumb things down; it's kind of a safety net," he says.

Unfortunately, the safety-first approach makes for boring comedy, without the satire, dark humour and political venom of some of the ABC's edgier stuff.

"Satirical comedy is largely viewed by the commercial broadcasters as pure cynicism. Commercial TV always goes for the safe ground in terms of wanting pure silliness, it's just a fact of life. They are less likely to support satirical comedy because the reality is it won't pull the viewers," says Fennessy.

He's got a point - audiences respect comedians who respect themselves, and the thought of Andrew Denton in a tutu or Shaun Micallef narrating Funniest Home Videos is nauseating.

"There are some performers who won't compromise for commercial television. The Micallefs, the Dentons, the Molloys won't dumb down their act for commercial audiences and in many respects they shouldn't have to," Fennessy says. "When a commercial broadcaster brings across someone like that they need to understand the parameters. They think that suddenly they will want to do grass skirts and rubber chickens."

For Fennessy, the ABC is the only real breeding ground for any good comedy in Australia.

"The ABC is a godsend in this country. We do not have broadcasters that are prepared to allow the creative process in the same manner, that's why so many new artists and new writers find their way through ABC."

Comedy means someone's got to be the butt of the joke, and in a commercial environment some targets are off limits. The obvious no-joke zone is advertisers, but Fennessy says that may be changing.

"If we have a go at an advertiser, we have the sales department of a commercial broadcaster ringing us up directly saying, 'Why did you do that'. It's only now that Nine is staring to look at complaints as a positive thing," he said, adding that Nine's had a refreshing hands-off approach to the creative process for Comedy Inc. "Comedy has to push the envelope. If you don't get complaints you aren't doing your job."

Asked about the prospect of punchy political humour on the commercial networks, the kind that made Good News Week the ABC success it was, Fennessy just sighs. "It's very limited for political satire or news-based comedy to really have some teeth on commercial television. The ABC and SBS are much more likely to allow that kind of political comedy to breathe. In some respects it's a shame but it's an absolute reality," he says.

The head of the School of Media and Communications at the University of NSW, Professor Philip Bell, says that audiences are lazy beasts, and sometimes flicking over the channel is just too much to ask.

"A lot of people watch television channels, they don't watch television programs. Particularly Monday night has a very loyal and strong audience on the ABC, it follows from Australian Story to Four Corners to Media Watch to Denton. I think half of the people who watch the ABC rarely watch anything else."

Bell suggests that commercial TV viewers, fattened on a diet of American comedy, might miss some of the nuances of the ABC comic cuisine.

"It's pretty clear that these people are all verbal comedians. It seems to be it's a verbal sophistication you might expect from ABC viewers who often have more education in terms of verbal humour, especially English humour tradition. American students I've got simply do not understand why Roy and HG are funny," he says.

The pang of disappointment we feel when our favourite ex-ABC star thanks their new network's sponsors is also a turn off. Kerry O'Brien's famous flunk-out in 1988, when he skipped from the ABC to the commercial sector, as an anchor for Ten's failed Page One, could be seen as a prime example.

"We may feel people are being disloyal to the organisation that nurtured them. That's certainly a feeling that people have about journalists who move but that sense of disloyalty must influence some people's decision to stay on the ABC," Bell says.