COMMENT
At least some things have changed for the better at TVNZ lately. Those vaguely propagandist "One News Centre" promos are less in evidence, thank goodness.
Although a revolutionary wind continues to blow through the nervous corridors of the state broadcaster. When the Herald interviewed Bill Ralston in August, he was dressed for a purge - "I'm looking vaguely Eastern European today" - in his leather jacket. As the headlines since he took charge have revealed - "Ralston's deputy out in TVNZ cleanout"; "Hosking says he is glad he was dropped" - that jacket means business.
Kate and Mike have been forced to banter subversively across the Breakfast studio, defying all attempts from the new regime to stop them from talking complete bollocks to each other. And goodness knows how long Richard and Judy will survive.
Ralston seems intent on dismantling the celebrity culture TVNZ worked so hard to create back in the late 1980s, when the executive director at the time, Julian Mounter, decided to head off the threat of competition by turning mere presenters into personalities.
Amid rumours of unrest among the channel's stable of stars, TVNZ has banned its personalities from flogging their private lives to women's mags for buckets of money.
It makes sense, I guess. There was the Hosking twins' debacle and, as Ralston said of Paul Holmes in the Listener: "I've heard enough in the media about his nether regions. I now know more than I ever, ever, ever wanted to know about his bits."
But I find myself secretly disappointed. No more side-splitting readings at morning tea from those cover stories about April's wedding or Susan's latest attempt to flog a house.
I've met people who collect these things. The more audaciously misleading the headline, the better. There have been classics of the genre, such as the Star's-toddler-terror cover story about the time Susan Wood's children accidentally locked her in her wardrobe. At least I think it was an accident.
The ban is a little ironic, considering that TVNZ's flagship current affairs show, Sunday, was happy to do a women's mag-style piece, complete with lurid special effects, with former TV3 news personality Darren McDonald about how he read the news while high on drugs. The drooling promo ("All the questions you've been dying to ask!", I think it went) couldn't have been more tabloid.
So I was amazed to hear Paul Holmes and Brian Edwards, while agreeing that the Sunday story probably did McDonald little good, grumbling on the radio about how the print media treated the story. They agreed that the judge's reasoning, which seemed to give undue weight to McDonald's public profile and the hilarious notion that he was some sort of a role model, was flawed, as several people in the print media have pointed out.
Yet somehow Edwards detected envy at work in the coverage. It was all down to jealousy on the part of the print media, he said to Holmes, of people like "yourself and in a more minor way myself, being paid star salaries and being worshipped."
Worshipped? Down here on Planet Earth, where the mere mortals and the print media reside, it's hard to feel a lot of envy for those working at TVNZ in these uncertain times, however devoutly they are worshipped. Along with the post-charter flailing about, the organisation is suffering from leaky memo syndrome.
The offending memo from Stephen Rowe, now Ralston's deputy, warned that One News is losing ratings to TV3. "We're seen as a bit predictable, boring and out of date." It was suggested that TVNZ reporters copy TV3's "sparkle, spontaneity and enjoyment".
How embarrassing. And that was before Ralston's reported response to the memo, which emphasised the need for change: "If you don't," he said, "you just sort of drift along and rot." That should do wonders for morale.
TV3 was naturally delighted, after years of tribulation and seemingly hopeless struggle against the might of TVNZ, to have the opposition worried and talking ... well ... rot. You couldn't help but be pleased. It's always nice to see the little guy make good.
And it couldn't be more timely. TV3 has travelled a long, bumpy road, littered with not a few cock-ups, since 1989. This is the channel that once thought it was a good idea to strip The Golden Girls five nights a week.
Yet who could honestly say we would be better off without it? The little channel that could provides a useful perspective on another sometimes embarrassing media story - the trying and occasionally self-inflicted teething troubles being experienced by the Maori Television Service.
The other night on Holmes, Tau Henare showed a clip from a chat show made for Maori television. Matua Whaangai is hosted by Henare and filmed in his mother-in-law's garage. It looked chaotic, hilarious and full of the sort of seat-of-the-pants energy that fuelled such early TV3 classics as that infamous Belinda Todd-Joanna Paul shocker, Nightline.
There was a lot of tut-tutting the next day in talkback land about wasted public money. And it's true the clip was rough as guts. But it had some of the spontaneity and enjoyment Ralston is labouring to inject into TVNZ. We should lay off prejudging Maori television. As those cheese ads and the chequered history of TV3 demonstrate, these things take time.
<I>Diana Wichtel:</I> TV's celebrity culture on skids
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