Television

Feb 7 update: The Nine network has reportedly moved Excess Baggage to its Go! multichannel.

Channel 9's Excess Baggage is reportedly facing the axe, or demotion to digital channel Go!, within a week. Now I know hindsight is a wonderful thing, but EB has presented itself as a textbook example of how to get the creation, marketing and programming of a show terribly, terribly wrong.

The concept probably looked good on paper. The idea was to do to weight-loss programs what Nine had successfully done to the Apprentice format -- spice it up with the addition of once-were and wannabe celebrities. (Genuine celebrities, of course, don't need to go on reality shows.)

The broader plan was for Excess Baggage to be the first of a series of programs, including Big Brother, The Block and a new season of Celebrity Apprentice, that would be "stripped" at 7pm, thus claiming that timeslot and gluing viewers to the station throughout the primetime schedule.

But the problems for Baggage began before it was even screened.

Mistake No. 1: Nine over-egged the show, running an extended "sneak peek" so often that even people well-disposed towards the program would have felt that they'd already seen it. For the rest of us, it just confirmed negative sentiments.

Mistake No. 2: Programming it against the similar, but already well established, The Biggest Loser, thus only ever being able to divide a finite potential audience. Crucially, TBL is a program that viewers don't hate, so why should they jump ship? (Also, as the Seven juggernaut Home And Away is also female-skewed, it placed three shows targetting a similar audience in the same timeslot. Nine should have gone the other way.)

Mistake No. 3: Removing the wildly popular US sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, from the 7pm slot, which it had made its own over the summer. Big Bang repeats were regularly trouncing first-run episodes of other shows on other channels. Nine was on a good thing, and should have stuck to it.

Mistake No. 4: Debuting Excess Baggage in a week when they knew it would be interrupted by the cricket. Of course, Ten cleverly forced Nine's hand there, by launching its 2012 schedule early. I guess that's more a misfortune than a mistake.

Mistake No. 5: Flogging it to death. One night last week, the show ran for 90 minutes. Viewers balk at committing that amount of time to a movie, let alone an untested new show.

Dear Weather Bureau,

First of all, I would like to genuinely and sincerely thank you for all your hard work in times of disaster, when your skill, your radars and your other technology have warned us of weather emergencies. Without doubt, you have saved countless lives over the years, and you have prevented a great deal of property damage by warning people of violent weather events. Along with many others, I truly value that aspect of your work.

However, isn't it about time you acknowledged that all your training, and your technology, simply does not equip you to predict anything other than an imminent threat?

I know I am not alone in saying that I am sick of seeing "seven-day forecasts" on the TV news, online and in newspapers, that are wildly inaccurate.

Please, can somebody from the Bureau of Meteorology make a clear statement that, by and large, the weather is unpredictable.

I have been involved in a discussion on Twitter on how much longer free-to-air television will be a force in Australia. I ventured that FTA stations would be in trouble within 10 years if they fail to change their primary emphasis from being distributors of shows produced elsewhere to creating their own content.

Two other people disagreed -- not to my proposition, but to the timing. One said it might not be as soon as 10 years, another said it would be more like 5-8 years when we see the first FTA station fold.

Now, of course, all the FTA networks will deny they are in trouble, but they most certainly are. The fact of the matter is that they don't have a collective monopoly any more; viewers can already access the content they want in many ways other than sitting down in front of a TV set at a designated time.

To use a current example, sure you can get plenty of The Big Bang Theory on Channel Nine and its sister station Go! If you're a fan, though, you can pay for a Foxtel subscription and get even more of it on the Comedy Channel.

Of course, both the FTA and pay-TV options rely on you watching whichever episode they decide to screen when they decide to broadcast it. You can time-shift it to watch later, or maybe stream it on the network's catch-up site, but you can't see it right now. However, if you're a BBT tragic, and you're prepared to take the legal risk, you can download the episodes you want to see when you want to see them. Say you missed a particular episode from series 1, or you want to show your best friend an ep you think they'd enjoy, well it's out there for the picking.

While Hollywood rightly wants to stem the tide of illegal downloading, the genie is already out of the lamp. They can't prosecute everybody who shares torrents, so the only real solution available to content creators is to enable people to download what they want, when they want it - and to make them pay for it.

And, when that happens, as it surely will, the FTA networks (and, to a lesser extent, pay TV) will have lost their biggest earner. Producers will either sell their content directly or through a model similar to iTunes or Amazon's Kindle book store. No role for the TV networks there.

For a short time -- be it five or 10 or 15 years -- FTA will continue play a role in introducing new shows to audiences, but that function will eventually be taken over completely by social media (in whatever form or forms it will take in the future) and other means of peer-to-peer recommendation.

Bottom line: the direct distribution of TV shows will bypass the existing networks, so to survive they will have to ramp-up the production of original content -- be it news, drama, comedy series, reality shows or whatever.

The only way for them to survive will be to sell this original content, or make it available via an advertiser-supported model, on demand.

This post is brought to you by the television networks who insist on calling repeats "encores".

An encore is a short repeated item or an additional item at the end of a performance. When you just screen something again, it's a repeat.

Oh, and while we're at it:

1) There are no degrees of uniqueness, the word "unique" is unique. Something that is "almost unique" is rare or unusual. If it's unique it's one of a kind. It cannot be "very unique".

2) "Refute" is not a synonym for "deny". If you refute a claim, you prove it to be untrue, you don't just contradict it.

3) If somebody has drowned or has been electrocuted, they are dead. There are no exceptions to this rule.

4) Alternative and alternate don't mean the same thing.

Why are these things important? Because it dilutes our language if we misuse words with specific meanings, and our ability to communicate effectively and efficiently with each other suffers in the process.

We all slip up occasionally but when it comes to the examples above, too many people in the media are repeat offenders. Or, in their language, they like to provide encores of their ignorance.

Taking something that isn't yours is illegal. We all know that; we learn it from a very young age. But not one of us isn't guilty of theft in some form or another, be it by accidentally taking home a pen that belongs to your employer or downloading a movie or television program from the internet.

It's the latter case that's been causing a stir recently, in the context of American "anti-piracy" legislation.

But why do people download content from the internet when they know it's illegal? I have no doubt that for many people it's simply because they can, and they figure that there's no point in paying for something you can get for free.

But what if you went to a shop and there was no checkout counter, or no staff to take your money? Would you do? Return the goods to the shelf, or take them anyway, reasoning that you had tried to pay for them but couldn't?

When I lived in Thailand, there were certain western TV programs I wanted to watch but simply could not obtain by any legal, paid means. Sure I could buy any movie I wanted from the stalls operating openly along Sukhumvit and Silom roads -- including titles that hadn't even screened at cinemas yet -- but they were all pirated anyway. So while I would have paid, none of my money would have gone to the creators of the product.

My other option would have been to download shows from the internet -- cutting out the middle man. That's something I would have gladly paid to do, just as I have gladly paid for songs over iTunes. But there was, and still is, no legal means of me doing so, in Thailand or in many other countries -- largley because of the deals the content makers have made with broadcasters and exhibitors.

I could have easily rationalised any act of 'piracy', especially since most of the shows I wanted to see are screened in Australia on the ABC, which is funded by the Australian taxpayer -- and that's a group that's included me for a very long time.

My point is that this is not a black-and-white issue. The only real first step to eradicating or minimising piracy is to make paid content available globally, directly and on-demand to those who want it.

Former Brisbane television newsreader Jillian Whiting will team up with onetime 4BH and 4BC breakfast host Kim Mothershaw to present the breakfast show on 4BC over summer.

They will replace Peter Dick and Mary Collier, who are taking a Christmas break, from December 19 until December 30.

From January 2 to 6, Mothershaw will be joined in the breakfast chair by Dean Banks, a radio veteran who was once part of 3AW's breakfast line-up.

Meanwhile, 4BC has also confirmed that garden guru Colin Campbell will be hanging up the microphone after almost 30 years on air.

His last show will be on Sunday, January 1. His co-host Clair Levander, a qualified horticulturalist, will continue on in the popular show.

In a statement, 4BC general manager David McDonald said: “This is an extremely sad time for Col’s listeners and staff at 4BC. He has had nothing but a positive influence on both the station and the gardening industry over many, many years.

"I would like to personally thank him for his major contribution and wish both him and his wife Beverly all the very best for his pending retirement.”

A state memorial service for rugby league legend Arthur "Artie" Beetson will be held at Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane on Sunday, December 18, at midday.

Premier Anna Bligh also announced that a bronze statue of Beetson would be cast and exhibited at the northern plaza of the stadium. The statue will be funded equally by the Queensland Government, the Former Origin Greats (FOGs) and Channel 9.

Beetson, who died while cycling on the Gold Coast last week, was the first indigenous Australian to captain his country in any sport.

He also captained the first Queensland State of Origin team.

Update: Holden has withdrawn its sponsorship of the Kyle and Jackie O show.

Yesterday, when I wrote this, I was in a conciliatory mood towards Kyle Sandilands.

I said he was a good, possibly great radio broadcaster, but he - especially when teamed with his 2Day co-host Jackie O - couldn't carry a TV show, and that the television networks should be looking for fresh talent rather than spending more money on him.

Then I became aware of this rant. Sandilands had used his breakfast radio show to make a personal attack on a journalist who had merely reported criticisms of his Night with the Stars TV program (which turned out to be a ratings flop).

He called news.com.au's Alison Stephenson a "fat slag" and a "piece of shit", and he criticised the size of her breasts and her hairstyle.

Well, Kyle, I hope you feel like a big man, because you're not just the King, as you like to call yourself, you're the Emperor - the Emperor With No Clothes. And it's time for somebody to tell you so.

Back when Sandilands was hosting the Hot 30 program, I interviewed him over an incident where he put to air a confrontation between a schoolgirl and her mother, who had been having sex with her daughter's boyfriend.

A psychologist I interviewed for that story called what Sandilands was doing "child abuse".

During our interview, Sandliands complained that nobody acknowledged all the good work he was doing raising funds for and awareness of Kids' Helpline.

As experts pointed out, this was a case that should have been referred to Kids' Helpline, not broadcast across Australia. Even Jackie O tried to stop it going to air, but Sandilands proudly boasted to me that he overruled her because he had "more experience".

Well, Kyle not only survived that one, he got promoted and has been
emboldened. Is strapping a teenage girl to a lie detector, where it emerged that she had been raped, or calling a woman a "fat slag"*, helping kids in any way? No, it's setting an extremely bad example.

I tweeted something about Sandilands last night, and one of my followers said I was just giving him "more oxygen". I disagree, and prefer to run with the tweeter who said that there was no point in having programs against bullying in schools if the No. 1 bully - who, by virtue of his primetime status on TV and radio, has a large following among young people (many of whom have body-image issues) - is allowed to get away with unacceptable behaviour again and again.

(It's worth remembering that his rant against Stephenson was not only aired on 2Day, it also made it to the program's podcast, meaning other "adults" at Southern Cross Austereo were involved in spreading this poison.)

I was wrong to think even for a minute that Sandilands had changed his ways.

We not only have to talk about Kyle, we have to make sure that his employers - Southern Cross Austereo and the Seven Network - do something to rein him in.

And the authorities must make it clear that if his employers don't do something about Sandilands, the Australian Communications and Media Authority will.

* Do you detect a pattern here? The victims of his rants are often women. David Penberthy has more on that here.

PS: A petition at change.org is calling for Sandilands to be sacked.

Update: Mumbrella has charted the show's dramatic fall from 1.4 million viewers (inherited from The X Factor) to 255,000 at the end. It has also reported on Sandilands' extraordinary on-air rant, in which he threatened to "hunt down" a journalist who wrote about the show.

I chose not to watch Kyle and Jackie O's Night With The Stars last night. In that decision, I was not alone.

Now, obviously I can't comment on the show itself (although others have) - but that's my point. Like so many other Australians, I deliberately did not watch it because I knew I wouldn't like it.

According to the OzTam figures, NWTS had only 560,000 viewers, coming 20th for the night and coming a poor second in its timeslot to The Mentalist (790,000 viewers). I haven't seen the demographic breakdowns, which I am sure the Seven Network will be eager to push if they suit whatever pitch they made to advertisers, but when the premiere of a show with "name" stars does that badly overall, there's not a lot of good news to be had.

I admit I have issues with Kyle Sandilands, including his cavalier approach to what he does and his astounding lack of self-awareness, but I also concede that he is a good, perhaps even great, radio broadcaster and he is undoubtedly a very successful one. However, apart from the brief screentime he enjoys as the acerbic judge on various talent shows, he is not a television star.

Sandilands has, at least, earned the right to have a go (and probably has a contractual arrangement with Seven to give him a platform beyond the talent shows). Jackie Henderson should just be thankful she comes as part of the package, because no programmer who was even vaguely aware of her track record would give her a gig.

The fact is that Henderson on her own, and she and Sandilands as a double act, have had enough chances on TV. It's somebody else's turn.

Every precious amount of airtime, and every dollar spent, on NWTS could have been more wisely invested. There are so many talented Australians who never get a look-in with television work because the usual suspects are clogging up the airwaves.

It really is time for television executives to get out a bit more and see some of our stage talent, and to consider pitches that come from beyond the small, exclusive club of creators and producers whose shows dominate our screens.

Yes, Australia has got talent, but are television bosses are not really looking for it. At a time when free-to-air TV is struggling, that is simply not good enough.

(Photo of Kyle and Jackie O from www.2dayfm.com.au)

I couldn't let today's resignation of News Ltd CEO and chairman John Hartigan go by without comment.

Harto, as he was universally known to everyone who worked for and with him, gave me my break in metropolitan newspapers by hiring me as one of the foundation staff of the now-closed Daily Sun newspaper in Brisbane.

He and the brilliant team he assembled - many of whom rose to great heights in News and elsewhere - taught me much of what I know about the media (but don't blame them for my failings).

Harto is a great networker, and he exudes great charm. It's difficult not to like the man - even those who have had battles with him concede that point.

Although one of the inside jokes at News Ltd is that everybody is called "Mate", one of Harto's great talents is remembering names and faces, even as the years go by. Whenever he walked into the Queensland Newspapers office, he'd remember everybody he had worked with by name and he would always find time for a chat with the workers on the "shop floor".

The last time I saw him was at a Daily Sun reunion four years ago, where he was especially generous with his time and his words.

While not everybody was a committed fan, many a glass will be raised as a toast to Harto tonight and on November 30 when he steps down.

According to online reports (here and here), Harto will be replaced by Foxtel's Kim Williams as News CEO and by Rupert Murdoch as chairman. Richard Freudenstein will take over at Foxtel.

In a message to staff, Mr Murdoch said : “John’s decision will end a distinguished 41 year career with News in which he has given us exemplary service and incredible leadership.

“John was an outstanding reporter, an editor with few peers and has been an inspiring executive, initially as Group Editorial Director and, later, as Chief Executive for 11 years and Chairman and Chief Executive for the past six.

“Few people have contributed as much as John to the quality of journalism in Australia. He has earned enormous respect among both colleagues and competitors.”

There's no doubt that the grounding of the Qantas fleet was the big Australian news story of the day on Saturday.

What a pity then for Brisbane viewers who switched on the Channel Ten news at 5pm AEST - an hour after Qantas CEO Alan Joyce made his dramatic announcement at 5pm AEDT - to find it was led by a soft story about the Queen enjoying a barbecue in Perth and jetting off back to the UK.

Of course, Ten's weekend news no longer comes from the Brisbane studio but from Down South, and it's on a one-hour delay. In the breaking news cycle, 60 minutes can be forever.

Surely Ten should have the ability to do a fresh bulletin for the Queensland market when events dictate. (I remember Ellen Fanning, the former ABC Radio AM host, telling me many years ago that they'd sometimes do three versions of the program for different markets during daylight saving.)

It wasn't a great day all round for Ten, with political reporter Hugh Riminton sending out this tweet:

Such a shame that @alanjoyce is not Alan Joyce the Qantas CEO but a self-described "technophile" from Stanford, California. At least the American Joyce enjoyed all the attention, as his tweet today made clear:

He also tweeted: "I'm no more CEO of Qantas than @willsmith is a famous movie acto.r"

PS: It's worth pointing out, even if it's just for Hugh Riminton's sake, that @alanjoyceCEO isn't the Qantas boss either; it's a parody account (like @andrewbolt).

Update: A tweeter has pointed out that ABC TV's Insiders program is on delay in Queensland this morning (Sunday), when it should really be live on such a big news day.

Update 2: I wonder if Nine's Today Show and Seven's Sunrise will be shown live in Queensland during the Qantas dispute ...

Update 3: Riminton has his say.

I know the broadcast media is having a tough time at the moment, but some of it is due to a complete lack of foresight and a head-in-the-sand attitude.

It's well known to readers of this blog that I love radio, so it may not come as a surprise when I say that I think radio is more future-proof than broadcast television.

Why? Because radio is still largely about the creation of content; there are real, live people talking to you, devising and organising program elements (interviews, songs, comedy bits) to entertain and/or inform you.

Meanwhile, television is often just about broadcasting shows that have been made by somebody else - sometimes quite a long time ago. There are exceptions, such as news and current affairs programs, but they are very much in the minority in the schedule.

Radio can also react immediately to its audience's needs, to trends and to breaking news, in a way television still cannot. A radio show can change direction midstream as dictated by events, or simply on a whim. Television has to overcome many more technical and physical obstacles.

Given that it relies heavily on "bought-in" programs, television, especially free-to-air television, is going to have to adapt very quickly, or it will die.

Increasingly, TV stations simply act as "middlemen", trying to second-guess what kind of programs the audience wants to watch and when they want to watch them. There was a time when TV programmers made those decisions for us - variety shows on a Saturday night, movies on a Sunday, sport on weekend afternoons, news at 6pm nightly - and we had no choice but to go with the flow.

The VCR changed that, meaning we could record shows and watch them at our convenience. Now, with almost everything digitised and available on the internet (legally or illegally), each one of us can make personal programming decisions.

Television as we know it may play a role in introducing us to new material but if we're hooked on a particular show, we won't be waiting for them to decide when and how often to screen it, we will download it ourselves. Thousands of people are already doing this, and as their numbers grow, legal attempts to stop them will be increasingly ineffective.

It's a small world, and we're not going to wait weeks, months or years to see programs that have already been screened on free-to-air television in their home markets. (The second series of the popular UK drama series Downton Abbey is an example of something Australian viewers will have to wait too long to see on FTA TV.)

It's only a matter of time before content producers demand that their contracts with broadcasters are redrawn to also allow one or both parties to sell the shows directly to the public via download.

Producers and broadcasters who try to defy the tide of the torrent clearly haven't been paying attention to what happened in the music industry. When Apple gave people the option to download songs at a reasonable price, many of them did so - thus ensuring that the creators of the product got some compensation from people who were previously taking a free ride thanks to technology.

The challenge for the TV networks is to make production their core business, not just something they have to do (for example, to meet Australian content
requirements). Make great shows that people want to watch, and the future is assured, whatever the method of delivery happens to be.

Trying to make a buck simply buying product and screening it at leisure after stuffing it with advertisements (sometimes cutting the show to make way for them) is a certain road to ruin.

Update: Channel 7 has denied reports it is contemplating line-up changes to Sunrise and Today Tonight. But, if there's a change of heart ...

If persistent newspaper and online reports are to be believed, Channel 7 is preparing to make drastic cast changes in a bid to revitalise its once-dominant breakfast show, Sunrise.

The latest speculation is that Melissa Doyle will become host of Today Tonight and David Koch will move to another, unspecified, position in the night-time schedule.

Sunrise, apparently, will be hosted by Today Tonight's Matthew White and Kylie Gillies, who will be replaced on The Morning Show by Samantha Armytage.

Exactly why the network would want to move White from a winning position and risk losing Today Tonight's dominance over Nine's A Current Affair isn't explained - although some reports have Doyle moving to the Sunday Night program rather than TT.

And while it's been reported that Seven initially tried to lure Georgie Gardner over from Sunrise's competitor, The Today Show, I wonder whether the network looked further afield before deciding to just shuffle the deck.

How about, for instance, importing some Brisbane talent? There are many suitable candidates to follow in the footsteps of Robert Rough, Billy J Smith, Leila McKinnon, Andrew Gunsberg and Chris Reason (among many, many other Queenslanders, stretching back to the likes of Ray Barrett and Leonard Teale) to become national stars.

Some suggestions (others very welcome):

+ Channel 10 newsreader Bill McDonald. He's got a warm personality and he sure knows his sport, especially AFL. He also has an established on-air partnership with Georgina Lewis that could become national.

+ 612ABC breakfast announcer Spencer Howson. He's a proven ratings winner, and he's used to the early starts. (OK, he was born in the UK but he's lived in Brisbane most of his life.)

+ Nova's Meshel Laurie may be in Melbourne now, but she is a Queenslander, and she's great value in any medium. Maybe she could be teamed with Kip Wightman (not a Queenslander, but he's been embraced by Brisbane radio audiences).

+ 4BC newsreader and Zoo Weekly "babe of radio" Natalie Bochenski.

+ Robin Bailey has TV experience (she was on Hey! Hey! It's Saturday), and has a strong radio following in the 24+ female demographic. (Yes, she is originally from Tasmania, but she's a Queenslander now.)

+ Channel 7 Brisbane's own Sharyn Ghidella, who did some wonderful, and quite touching, interviews as part of Channel 7's royal visit coverage.

+ Just about anybody on my list of suggested new 612ABC mornings hosts.

It's A Knockout always was a parody of a television sports show, so it makes perfect sense to cast H.G. Nelson as one of the hosts of the remake.

The format itself has been around for yonks in various countries - controversially so in the UK when Prince Edward produced a royal version, much to the delight of anti-monarchists.

In Australia it's remembered as a national vehicle for Billy J. Smith and Fiona Macdonald, who until then were largely unknown outside of Brisbane. (Remember local television? Anybody?) While I'd love to think Billy J. has one more season in him, it's a great gig for H.G., who has referred to the format as "the people's Olympics".

Now if only somebody will give H.G. and Roy Slaven a gig calling the real Olympics next year ...

As I tweeted yesterday, Mike Dalton has been officially appointed head of news at Channel 9 Brisbane, replacing Lee Anderson, who resigned in the wake of the "choppergate" affair (even though he was not there when it happened).

I've been informed by a hopefully-reliable source that the picture run in other media today (below) is of a Mike Dalton, but not the one in question.

I believe the guy in the picture is a "wacky" reporter for Nine's Today show. The one now in Brisbane has been senior chief of staff for Nine news in Sydney for the past seven years.

According to his Twitter profile pic, the "real" Mike Dalton is a somewhat more mature man with a liking for fishing.