Top of the Flops

By JOHN TERRIS

Friday, 26 March 2010

And now ladies and gentlemen – I give you the Top of the Flops for the week, awarded to the Worst Television Programme on our screens in the last seven days – the GOLDEN RASPBERRY AWARD – THHHHHHHHHH – goes to ONE NETWORK NEWS.

It begins with a weather forecaster crooning "Its six o'clock", as if we can't tell the time.  Then there is pompous martial music, which suggests that civilisation as we know it is about to end– and then what do we get instead?  A demonstration of the endless ways you can go about filling an hour of news when there's no real news.  Wellington weather's always a good bet for a laugh, so the lead item (a sort of variation on a cat up a tree) is that the wind blew a tree over in Wellington.  When they get really desperate, they ring the Fire Service who report there were no fires and so they do that old standby about a fire that didn't take place in a school in Mangere, because the Fire Service got there in time.

We had a doozy this week – SHOCK – HORROR - PROBE – a bunch of people want to buy some farm properties and some of them are from China!  Well of course, as the Prime Minister pointed out, it hasn't happened yet and it probably won't because the Overseas Investment Commission has to approve the sale and they don't regard such deals very kindly.

Anything to fill an hour you see.  They keep crossing to Guyon Espiner at Parliament (it's true, his is a real name, not that of a character from The Hobbit), in the hope that something has been happening there; and since there is always someone making fools of themselves in that environment, he can usually oblige.

The real height of inanity or the bottom of the trough though, was when the Government announced some long overdue benefit reforms, which include on the job training for the 12,000 long term unemployed and every interviewer from here to Kingdom Come wanted to know "BUT WHERE ARE THE JOBS???"  And just then, up pipes Gerry Brownlie with – "There are 25,000 jobs in mining!" and the next thing you know is that aussie 'Cobber' Norman ( as in Russel with one "l" to you), from the Greens wants to know "What are you doing, digging up the Conservation Estate?"

That's the thing about One Network News – anything to fill the hour and it raises all the questions but it never has any answers.  Why don't they cut the whole thing back to half an hour and keep that time for real news.  Rick Ellis, a very sensible man, has already suggested this idea, and it's a good one too.

Sure Simon Dallow is a nice enough fellow (it even rhymes), but Bernadine OK. needs to have spent more time practicing her diction, and less time practicing her goal shooting.  I honestly cannot understand half of what she says.  And the reporters are just too young to bring the heft and authority needed.  Jack Tame looks as though he hasn't yet had his first shave; and the girl cub reporters who all look as though they are library monitors at some intermediate school, pipe away like kids practicing their lines for the end of term play.  Apparently, according to our Simon, these tyros no longer 'cover' a story or 'report' it, they are 'across' it, like medieval leeches drawing blood I guess.  What next?  Will they be 'under', 'over' and 'between' and 'in' it as well?

A new angle on shock-horror-probe perhaps?

So here's your Golden Raspberry folks –

THHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH