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The Age Green Guide, 3rd May 2001
Blast, and damnation. What is wrong with the broadsheet TV media in this country? Last week (21/4) The Age carried an article that contained the usual watery, Logies-bashing bile that has come to typify journalistic reaction to our "night of nights". The author, Michael Shmith, described Australian TV as "visual ballast" that rarely made "cerebral demands" and is "nothing more than a build-up to the next commercial break".
Well, excuuuuuuuse us. Mr Shmith misses the point of television entirely. If TV were suppose to be only and education, provocative, cerebrally demanding medium, we wouldn't give it to everyone. It would be a special, roped-off section of the arts, viewed only by uni students, short-film makers, feminist thinkers and the suburb of Fitzroy.
TV is for everyone. Admittedly, there is a cerebral downside to this. People, taken individually, like to be provoked, challenged, and appealed to on a variety of fronts. Taken as a mass, we like Neighbours. We choose TV as a way to relax, to unwind, to forget our troubles. It's hard to unwind after a hard day by watching Pakistani terrorists chucking Molotov cocktails at school buses. This is why Dateline rates lower than Australia's Funniest Home Videos (to avoid a ratings upset, the Pakistani terrorists are on Dateline).
Commercial TV is a mass medium. If Channel Nine became a cross between the Discovery Channel and The Opera Network, as the media elite would prefer, it would go out of business faster than a Provencal Cuisine McDonald's. Nine has to get the punters in or suffer a nasty phone call from You Know Who telling them to You Know What. If Network Ten played Little Women instead of Big Brother the effect would be the same - only the accents would change. If Unreal TV was replaced by Arts Today, all hell would (hopefully) break loose.
After all, it's the viewers who decide who will get kicked off the island and who will survive to make an easy million. To quote one TV programmer: "I don't know how the viewers can sleep at night."
As for the ad breaks, what part of the term "commercial TV" doesn't Michael understand? Everything, including the ads, is a lead-up to the next ad. Like, d'uh.
The most troubling aspect of Shmith's damning article is that he was once the editor of the Green Guide. To head the country's premier journal of television writing while holding that medium in such contempt must have been no fun at all.
Theatre writers love theatre. Music writers love music. Why do so many TV writers hate TV? Perhaps they are embarrassed. But it's nothing to be ashamed of. TV is the most popular, dynamic and recognised art form in the world. And it's constantly reinventing itself. Opera, much loved by Shmith and co., hasn't produced a popular work in 100 years. And the storylines of the great operas read like soapies; Rigoletto's daughter falls for the duke who hates Rigoletto who loves a woman who loves another who spurns her for her secret love who loves the Duke. Change the names to Raelene and Dave and you've got a storyline Neighbours would reject for being too ridiculous.
Sure, we copy shows that have worked overseas (The Weakest Link, Big Brother) but we do them bloody well. And the fact that those shows worked over there means that our international colleagues are making crowd-pleasing visual ballast as fast as we are. In return, our own ballast (The Mole, Neighbours, Water Rats and many more) is watched and enjoyed all over the world.
Yes, TV is crap, but it has varying levels of crappiness. Highbrow TV writers must ask themselves, "Is this good crap? Is it badly shot crap? Is it crafty, enticing, addictive, memorable, funny, heartwarming, tense, dramatic, or compelling crap? Or is it just crap?"
We have two government-sponsored stations that can deliver the "cerebral" shows without worrying about mass audience tastes. But even the ABC is conducting a ratings-driven purge. And nobody watches SBS. We cannot deny the nature of the beast simply because we feel that it is beneath us. We must embrace it and tame it with every skill we have.
I host a clip show. Sure, not exactly high art, but I sleep at night because Unreal TV has the best comedy writers and the sharpest young producers in the business working around the clock to make it the best it can be. And it rates like a bull elephant. I co-created DAAS Kapital, arguably the most bizarre, provocative, highbrow, critically acclaimed, street credible sitcom in Australian TV history. It rated a 5. You work it out.
Tim Ferguson hosts Unreal Stuff-Ups on Channel Ten, Fridays at 8 pm.
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