By GREG DIXON
TV election coverage should come with a health warning.
Something along the lines of: "We advise viewers the following programme will cheapen public discourse. Have a bucket on hand."
Call me stupid, but I'm really not sure why anyone — politicians, TV networks or viewers — bothers with this charade. In terms of robust discussion, party political broadcasts and the debates are up near the top of any scale of uselessness.
The parties' opening statements, for example, appeared to comprise entries for advertising's Special Olympics. There was the hawk-like Helen Clark's flash home video, which amounted to a good argument for humility being the most important virtue.
Then there was the corpse-like Bill English, standing on a podium in a gloomy hall in the late-19th century. He reminded me of the rector of my old high school telling me what was good for me, minus the hymns.
Winston Peters crossed live from the el presidenta's office of some Banana Republic to promise us that failure to be a productive, honest and Kiwi-born citizen will earn you a bullet in the back of the head. And the Greens fronted with a sketch comedy and a music video.
The most alarming piece of information from all this? We paid for these ads. Personally, I want my money back.
The various debates have mostly added little, too, mainly because of the flawed formats TV One and TV3 have used.
Dragging every leader in creation into a studio, putting them behind lecterns left over from the last failed game show and firing questions at them might seem the most democratic way to give everyone a fair hearing, but the result is about as watchable and informative as one of those infomercials that run on TV4 18 hours a day.
TV3 should have called theirs Who Wants To Be A Prime Minister.
Going into the last week, TV One's Holmes Election Special, with its studio audience and The Worm, has been the nadir.
The braying crowd appeared to be extras from Gladiator, while the Worm found that United Future's Peter Dunne was the winner on the day — surely the equivalent of Romania winning the Rugby World Cup.
The sad fact is that as a rule, political advertising and debates on television are yet more evidence that the box has real difficulty dealing with complex ideas in a manageable way.
But that's always going to be a problem when you've got to cut to the real advertising every eight minutes or so.
Apart from Kim Hill's interviews on TV One, I've been able to discern little that will help me make a decision on Saturday. And from her, I learned that she's better at asking questions than the rest. Didn't we know that already?
* It's official: TV One believes its audience has special psychic powers.
I know this because after my last column on the sudden and inexplicable pulling of the plug on dear, old Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, I was reliably informed by one of TVNZ's minions that it was taken off because of the school holidays.
Question: Did TV One inform its viewers about this with a voiceover at the end of the final episode before these holidays? That's a big N O.
QED: TV One believes its viewers are mind readers.
As to why it couldn't screen the Magnificent Seven during the school holidays? Well, apparently Pet's "Adults Only" rating means the rug rats weren't allowed to see it.
According to TVNZ's arbiter of taste, seeing Oz in his Y-fronts or watching the boys downing lagers was too much for young minds, while a Ricki Lake show called "Are They Divas or Dudes? Ricki's Gender Bender Pageant" — which screened during the holidays on TV2 — was just fine.
Sad trash TV-1, Top Drama-0. Figure that one out.
<i>Powerpoint:</i> We get what we pay for
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