We didn’t miss Campbell Live until we were faced with losing it, writes Duncan Greive.
When MediaWorks quietly asked that Mazda take a three-month sponsorship contract for Campbell Live, rather than the usual year-long option, the show was history. Three months allowed them to crawl across the line of their 10th anniversary, parched and dizzy, then go gently out to broadcasting pasture.
Surely Campbell and his staff would understand? Ten years is already nine longer than the vast majority of New Zealand shows get. They wouldn't be greedy enough to ask for more? Not when every action from MediaWorks suggests the show's often earnest, always rigorous journalism is a bit dated, and not what the modern audience wants.
MediaWorks has a new direction too, one which is entertainingly crass and gleefully cynical, epitomised by its championing of Paul Henry and reality TV shows. I don't think I was alone in wondering whether Campbell wasn't better off just giving in to the seemingly inevitable, taking off to deliver his public spirited journalism on a public service broadcaster like Maori TV or Radio New Zealand and leaving MediaWorks to their own devices.
With any other broadcaster, at any other time, they might have been right to predict a quick, clean death. But in so doing they made the mistake of viewing their opponent as a well-meaning but ultimately powerless presenter, likely to behave in predictable and manageable ways.
Instead they have an unholy crisis on their hands, as Campbell, his staff and their supporters have erupted with a joyous resistance across any number of fronts, rendering the kill a fiendishly difficult task. One which is now near-inevitable to be delayed, if not entirely abandoned.
Despite the pleasure of watching a clandestine plot fall apart, it's a more complex situation than the show's supporters might have you believe, and I'm not without some sympathy for MediaWorks. The 7pm slot plays first five for weeknights, setting up the rest of primetime to score. Once Campbell Live was Aaron Cruden - smaller than average, but incredibly lively and electrifying to watch. Earlier this year it was more like Ihaia West and the Blues - well-intentioned but unable to deliver. Its audience had shrunk to unsustainably low levels. It reached the nadir of 116,000 during their birthday celebrations, and was being regularly beaten by low budget video compilation show Fail Army.
But John Drinnan's story announcing a review, and a bunch of mostly horrific potential replacements, incited a TV-related groundswell unlike that of any other I can recall - Natalia Kills included. This culminated in extraordinary scenes on Friday, when a large crowd of protesters marched from central Auckland to MediaWorks HQ in Mt Eden, delivering a petition with more than 90,000 signatures demanding the show be saved.
Protestors march to save Campbell Live on Friday. Photo/Brett Phibbs
Sources at TV3 suggest Julie Christie, the architect of much of TV3's new direction, hunkered down in her office until they'd gone.
Campbell, though, was only too happy to wallow in the outpouring. He greeted the group and thanked them for their defence of he and his programme's work. It was a physical manifestation of the astonishing volume of messages of support, anger and occasional conspiracy-theorising which has occurred on social media over the past couple of weeks.
Unlike, say, Internet Mana, which could fill the Town Hall but never convinced anyone to actually vote, the heat is translating to actual bums on actual couches. Campbell Live has surged to lead TV3's ratings most nights since the news broke, and last week found itself ahead of Seven Sharp in the key 25-54 demographic on more than one occasion - an unthinkable event until very recently.
It's not just sympathy and nostalgia, either. The show is visibly galvanised by both the prospect of its shuttering and the volume of eyes that are now on it. Lately they've aggressively pursued the Gloriavale story, aired a thoughtful piece on water rights and deployed Ali Ikram to gently goad a real estate agent selling a castle in Mt Eden.
The programme feels well-balanced and self-aware, playing Robbie Williams' Let Me Entertain You (despite Campbell saying it was an "awful song") in response to John Key's dismissal of it as "entertainment". It is that, and mostly good at it.
But it also aspires to more: "A programme of substance and importance, because we think you can handle it," as Campbell said last week. Contrast that immense sincerity with the man down the dial on Seven Sharp, whose humanity is leaking incontinently out of him with each passing week.
On Thursday, following the ponytail revelations, Hosking editorialised in sympathy with one group alone: the "hard-working" cafe owners "revolutionising the food scene", and decried a "puffed-up, self-involved pile of political bollocks" from what he termed "the angry undergrounders".
Those angry undergrounders have long been Campbell Live's obsession.
The show has delivered uncomfortable stories from marginalised communities until most of us stopped watching out of boredom or guilt. We liked Campbell Live being there more than we liked watching it.
But the prospect of the show disappearing has transformed its fortunes. So long as the audience keeps watching, there's every chance the economically rational animal that is MediaWorks will be forced to turn this stay of execution into a pardon.
