KEY POINTS:
Larrikin sport chat show Sportscafe is back on air after a three-year break and host/producer Ric Salizzo is hardly giving it the hard sell.
The show has always attracted fans with its mix of sporting insight, ad lib comments, special guests and general mayhem - not to mention Marc Ellis' infamous Nude Day stunts. But Salizzo was worried that the team had got a little tired and stale after doing the show for 10 years.
"Everyone else was really keen to do it, but I didn't really want to," he admits. "Marc convinced me it would be fun and TVNZ wanted us to go again so I thought 'bugger it'. Anyway, we've had three years off for reconditioning so we should be fine."
In addition to reminding Salizzo about the good times, Ellis wasn't above some dirty tactics. "He told me that I couldn't be remembered for Sugar Shack [Salizzo's ill-conceived attempt to move away from sports TV, a hybrid news/issues/chat show that crashed and burned on TV3 in 2006] and that I had to get back on screen. Basically, he lives to make my life hell."
Ellis' methods of persuasion aside, Salizzo says all it really took was a meeting with the team - Lana Coc-Kroft, Eric Rush, Graeme Hill, and Ellis - to convince him to go ahead. The old chemistry was there. "I know some TV producers who wait to see the ratings before they decide if they've made a good show or not but I'm not like that. You know in the pit of your stomach if it's good or not."
Also returning will be intrepid reporter Eva the Bulgarian, although it will be on a part-time basis as she's had a busy three years getting married, having a baby and going to university to study for a double degree. Leigh Hart also returns, but given that he has his own Moon TV Network show (recently ended on TV2) he too may want to break out of the character of That Guy and perhaps come on as himself or even some of his Moon TV creations. Speedo Cops, anyone?
If Salizzo knows about any character or format changes he is not giving anything away. In terms of the sporting topics up for discussion he has "no idea" what the first show will feature as the team usually gets together the Monday before the Wednesday show to work it all out. "It will be whatever people are talking about that week which is one of the reasons that I think people have always liked the show," he explains. "We're basically New Zealanders talking about sport."
Since Sportscafe began in 1996, a host of other local sports-based entertainment shows have sprung up, including Pulp Sport, A Game of Two Halves and The Crowd Goes Wild. Salizzo says he's not bothered by the competition and thinks it's a case of "the more the merrier". He believes that mainstream sports coverage has become so predictable and cliched that these shows are needed to shake things up.
* Sportscafe plays on TV2 this Wednesday at 9.30pm.
