Radiation by Fiona Rae

There’s a reality show in the Holmes resignation surely. What’s the bet Julie Christie’s been on the blower to Tony Holden at TVNZ pitching Presenter Idol: The Search for the New Holmes? “If it’s a public vote, Tony, people can’t complain!”

Or how about He’ll Have to Do? because whatever you think of him, it’s fair to say there’s only one Paul Holmes, otherwise it would be easy to find a replacement (most likely male btw, hence the “He’ll”). Obvious choice: John Campbell. He polarises people too, so no change there. He might have to stop swearing when he gets excited though.

But I’d like to put in an early suggestion for the new Holmes: Hugh Sundae. We already know he’s good with old people – he used to talk to Noreen – and I’m sure he could brush up his skills with animals and children. He used to do pretty feisty interviews with Helen as well. Ralston: ring him now.

Through the magic of cyberspace I’d just like to point out that I wasn’t actually a tongue-tied nong at the Great Blend event at the Grey Lynn Bowling Club last week, and in fact made several witty and interesting answers to the questions posed. It might not seem that way, but here’s a quick rundown of what I actually said:

To the question from Ben: What does the panel think of the new ‘podcasting’ trend? My reply actually was: ‘I thought it was an innovative form of fishing at first, but a tech-head friend informs me that it’s perfect for him to download onto his iPod, but as far as blogging goes, it sounds like an awful lot of faffing around to me, which kind of defeats the purpose. But what would I know – I was wrong about pxt phones.”

To the question from Robyn: Do you ever feel the need to write an entry to satisfy your readers, but can't find anything interesting to write about, so you end up making something up? What I actually said was, “It’s all true, every word.” [laughter]

To the question from the floor about balancing having something to say while not getting your head too far up your arse, my actual reply was, “Having a specialist subject helps, that way you can avoid talking about yourself entirely.”

To the other question from the floor, from Judith Tizard, about writing about your family, what I actually said was, “I think you do have to be very careful and I don’t refer to my kids by name – usually number one son and number two son – and occasionally to “the boyfriend”. The funny thing is, the personal columns are the ones that people respond to – the challenge is to provide a kind of universality of experience without being too personal."

To the question which may or may not have been asked on the day (for argument’s sake let’s say it was) from Heather: How does one become a pundit anyway? What I actually said was: “Sleep with the right people.” [laughter]

And to the rather lengthy question from Conor that referred to French philosopher Jacque Derrida and seemed to be about the power of bloggers to reinterpret meaning and redefine what is being said. My answer was, “No, I don’t think so.”

Meanwhile, in the fake world of Hollywood, good news everybody. There are signs that reality TV hasn’t completely taken over. Entertainment Weekly has a rundown of five new “scripted dramas”, as they’re now being called (as opposed to “unscripted dramas” like Survivor and The Apprentice), which are don’t-miss television. The first is Desperate Housewives, an über-Soap that stars Teri Hatcher among others and has gone to number one.

The others are the smart satire Arrested Development; a new teen drama called Veronica Mars, which apparently gives Buffy fans a new teen cult idol, although we’ll have to see about that; a cop show called The Wire, (“the most demanding, intelligent hour on television right now” according to EW) which is about a bunch of cops in Baltimore on wire-tapping operations; and Lost, a new JJ Abrams production (the creator of Alias) which features a bunch of plane crash survivors on an island. It stars hobbit Dominic Monaghan as a has-been rock star with a drug habit and the fantastic Harold Perrineau who was in Oz and outshone Leonardo in Romeo + Juliet. He was also in the last Matrix movie, but let us never speak of that.

Here’s a good Time story about how the various CSIs are really old-fashioned procedural cop shows after all.

The Letterman list is hardly worth mentioning, except maybe Chazz Palminteri appears on Tuesday.

$38 million is a lot of money for sure. You’d get around nine series of the Insiders Guide to Happiness out of that and they might even be able to afford an apostrophe.

For that $38m – which is TVNZ’s dividend to its one shareholder, the government – you’d get at least 70 series of Eating Media Lunch. It makes you wonder what the they’re waiting for doesn’t it? Paul Norris wondered in this opinion piece in the Herald too: “Should not TVNZ be using this money to make more and better New Zealand programmes?” he asks. “TVNZ thinks so; the Minister of Broadcasting, Steve Maharey, says there will be negotiations.”

It sounds so simple, but I don’t think it is (and if you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I’ve banged on about this before). TVNZ would probably love the money, just as the idea was once floated that TVNZ should get all the NZ On Air money. Thankfully, that idea seems to have died in a ditch somewhere, shot down by the independent sector which sees it as very dangerous indeed.

The sector really doesn’t want TVNZ to be the gatekeeper of all television production – effectively, it would make Tony Holden, TVNZ’s general manager of commissioning and production, the most powerful man in the industry. Quite possibly, he is already. In a speech at last year’s Spada conference, the Gibson Group’s Dave Gibson made it very clear why he thought TVNZ shouldn’t get all the NZ On Air money, namely that the independent sector should have available to it a number of funding doors and if the NZ On Air funding went away, overnight TV3 would pull out of local production, immediately closing two doors. He believed that in-house production by TVNZ would also be a threat to the independent sector.

In an interview I did with Tony Holden last year for the Listener, he pooh-poohed the idea, saying that TVNZ doesn’t have the in-house facilities to produce drama and that independent producers would always be used by TVNZ. A year later, we’ve seen bugger-all drama, except for the Insiders Guide – made by the Gibson Group incidentally – but we have seen more documentaries and lifestyle programmes made by independent producers, Eating Media Lunch, for example.

Holden was forthright about TV3 however. This didn’t make it into the story, but in my transcript he asked: “NZ On Air’s investment into TV3 – does that money come back into the pool, with a dividend to the government, or does it go to CanWest in Canada?” The answer is, of course, that if TV3 didn’t receive NZ On Air funding, they’d hardly make any local programmes at all – that’s funding that wouldn’t go to producers/directors/writers/lowly 3ADs and runners. I’m sure you know someone in this category who is enjoying a sporadic career in the film or television industry. Caterina De Nave, head of drama at TV3, said in another interview I did:

“We would be making some local, but we would be making a different kind of local. We make very broad local now, broadly across the range of genres. We couldn’t afford to do drama. It costs millions and we couldn’t afford to do it.”

TV3 has recently been funded for Outrageous Fortune, a series about a Westie family.

So what should happen to the money? I think I’d rather see it go to the government and then see NZ On Air get a whole lot more funding to play with. It’s a system that works pretty well (nothing’s perfect you know). In the meantime, the industry awaits a review of broadcasting funding across the board.

Good news everyone: TV1 is going to play Angels in America, the series starring Meryl Streep and Al Pacino that won all the Emmys. Starts 7 November. In other good news, Mike King is finishing soon. I’d been maintaining a professional interest in it (switching over after Sex and the City actually), but I swear I can’t take any more. He was so offensive the other night when he had Erika Takacs, Louise Wallace and Fiona McDonald on, you could just see them gritting their teeth and thinking “this is 20 minutes of my life I’m never getting back.” Rule number one, Mike: don’t insult your guests. Rule number two: when your guests are women, don’t talk about tits.

A couple of interesting things: Henry Rollins is doing his own film show. Wonder if anyone’s given him that hug yet? If you scroll down in this story, it claims that Survivor producer Mark Burnett has done a death with Martha Stewart for an Apprentice-style show. It would be huge wouldn’t it? She’s obviously a mean bitch and like Tupac and Snoop Dogg she’s done time man.

Comedian Jon Stewart has a show on Comedy Central called the Daily Show, which is a kind of faux news/talk show. He recently appeared on CNN’s right-wing talk show Crossfire, called one of the presenters a dick and asked them to “stop hurting America”. It’s pretty good watching, downloadable from ifilm.com. Stewart then has a couple of things to say about the exchange.

I was searched for bombs and dangerous weapons the other day on K Road by cops with walkie-talkies and guns. There were young soldiers standing around with machine guns and a body on the pavement near a New York cop car.

I opened my bag for inspection and produced my ID – it seemed churlish not to – but TV3’s launch of its product for 2005 was just a leeetle try-hard. And, as you may have guessed, heavy on the CSI: NY theme.

Still, they did seem to get a lot of industry punters along, once again proving the theory “if you provide free piss, they will come”. The launch was at the Studio in K Road, and featured Nathan Rarere and Oscar Kightley as MCs, who introduced “The Beastie Boys”, three guys who rapped their way through a showreel of the new shows. Yup, try-hard, but I must admit to a sneaking admiration by the time they’d been rapping for a good 10 minutes and had made rhymes out of Boston Legal and Battlestar Galactica.

These launches are strange affairs; as a member of the ordinary viewing public (well, sort-of), it’s the time that you realise that for a good portion of the television industry, programmes are not actually creative endeavours, or art, or a permanent record of something worth having a permanent record of, but actually they’re product. They’re something to sell the ads around. Sure, you want good product, or at lease one that attracts an audience. The better the product, the more expensive the ads.

So here’s a rundown-ette of some of TV3’s new shows:

CSI: NY: Where else would the CSI franchise go next but to New York? Like the other two, it hinges on the mysterious attractions of its leading man: CSI has the enigmatic and slightly creepy Gil Grissom, there’s the annoying and pompous Horatio Caine in CSI: Miami and CSI: NY has “unabashed nerd” Mac Taylor (Gary Sinese), at least according to this review. (Don’t worry; no spoilers.) Thing is, with already two CSIs on the go at 22 or so episodes each, there’s bound to be some crossover – just how much forensic faffing about can you take in one week? The very gorgeous Melina Kanakaredes provides extra eye candy.

Boston Legal: Weirdo James Spader in yet another reinvention that’s a spill-over from his turn in the final series of The Practice. But surely, it has to be worth watching for William Shatner alone. He’s. never. been. funnier. According to this story from newsday.com.

Outrageous Fortune: Yay, at last another local drama, after the relative desert of this year (with the notable exception of Insiders Guide, of course). It features a Westie family of small-time crims called, er, the Wests, who try to go straight.

Medical Investigation: Possibly a CSI knock-off with a dash of virus paranoia: a team of attractive health professionals fight outbreaks of unexplained diseases, complete with reconstructions. Eww.

The Inside: Alias for tweens: a pretty American teenager (Rachel Nichols) works undercover at a high school to bust a drug ring. Also stars Peter Facinelli, who is currently in Six Feet Under. Ron Howard exec produces.

The Jury: Of possible interest because the cast includes Adam Busch (Warren from Buffy), but does the world really need another courtroom/lawyer/crime drama thing? New twist: it follows the jury deliberations. Barry Levinson exec produces.

What else? Kath & Kim; The Rebel Billionaire: Branson’s Quest for the Best: Branson does a Donald; Trading Spouses (the US version of the British Wife Swap); Method & Red: Method Man and Redman in fictionalised versions of their lives; Law & Order: Trial By Jury, another spin-off and awfully like The Jury; Rock Star: the search for a new singer for INXS; Listen Up: Jason Alexander’s new sitcom; The Medium: a housewife (Patricia Arquette no less) can see dead people; Complete Savages: Mel Gibson-produced sitcom, although no dead Jesuses as far as I know; new eps of Battlestar Galactica; and The 4400, an alien-abduction mini series that rated well in the US.

Thanks to the hordes that pointed out that the Rainbow footage linked to in the last blog was actually a spoof done by the cast for the BBC Christmas party. Fantastic. Funny how it seemed almost possible; the 70s weren’t that naïve were they? No, of course not. Were they?

Here’s the Letterman list:
Monday Oct 18: Billy Crystal
Tuesday Oct 19: Frog expert Chris Raxworthy
Wednesday Oct 20: John Mellencamp
Thursday, Oct 21: Jude Law and Ricky Gervais
Friday Oct 22: Sarah Michelle Geller and IRL racing champion Tony Kanaan
Monday Oct 25: Dustin Hoffman and Bjork
Tuesday Oct 26: Amy Sedaris and Tommy Lee

It’s funny how Mike King has stepped out of the doorway in the back of David Letterman’s head and entered the one marked “Rove McManus”, although I use the word “funny” loosely, because that’s one aspect of being a comedian that Mike King seems to have missed. The other would be likeability.

Rove on the other hand is possibly the nicest man in Australia, while King has all the warmth of something on ice at Seamart. I doubt whether he could top the guy that completely enclosed Rove in a bubble, either. Now that really was something.

It’s also funny how a story can take on a life of its own. I was interested to see in this Listener Upfront interview with Oliver Driver by Olivia Kember a mention of the quote: “I can’t believe some of the stories that have been let slide … your average news media is really, really, really lazy.” As far as I know, Mikey Havoc first said that in the e.g. story I wrote way back in March. It seemed to get backs up at the Herald, probably among the overworked news journalists, and Michele Hewitson subsequently wrote this review of Quality Time. Then Linda Herrick took apart Frontseat as well.

The trouble was, of course, that if Mikey had actually come up with “proper investigative journalism” in Quality Time, journos might not have been so grumpy; waving a Bush doll around in front of the American Embassy just doesn’t cut it. It also might be true that there are a million stories in the naked city going unreported, but most of them can’t be printed in a newspaper because they’re defamatory.

If television is going to decide the US presidency, then nearly everyone thinks that Kerry has won after the first debate. Even Fox News has had to report that the polls are in Kerry’s favour, although they just have to qualify that with the comment that post-debate flash polls are “not said to be terribly reliable”. Heh. Mind you, if television did really win presidencies – or mayoralties – then Christine (or Chris, as she seems to want to be known) Fletcher would be ahead in the polls after the Holmes debate this week. And was that the sound of everyone south of Manukau City turning off their TVs?

I’d been thinking that Six Feet Under has gone a bit Sopranos this season; the examination of the minutiae of family life and relationships, the slow burn, but as a metaphor for the state of America it’s not nearly so good, nor do you come away thinking, “Jeez, a lot just happened, I could do with watching that again.” There’s always that something-rotten-in-the-state-of-Denmark air about The Sopranos, whereas sometimes you just want to bitch-slap the SFU characters and tell them to stop whining. The attack on David is a kind of post-9/11 examination of post-traumatic stress disorder, I guess.

Leo writes about Six Feet Under:

One critique I read (NY Times?) pointed to the clothes burning as a sour point in the plot. I actually felt it rather affecting.

Alternet critiques the burying of Lisa as too over the top. I tended to agree, but also “got” what it was all about.

I thought the burying of Lisa was a good idea – isn’t SFU supposed to be about the messy, random, unknowable, ironic nature of death? I did think it would have been nigh-on impossible for Nate to have dug a hole that friggin’ big on a bit of land that friggin’ dry and then packed all that soil back in again – it couldn’t be done, as any landscape gardener will tell you. I don’t want to be a detail Nazi, but sometimes it’s the little things that distract you.

Maybe someone from Sky would like to answer Peter’s comment:

I’d like to note that Sky still consistently doesn’t allow subtitles to come through its channel. The Sky I access is in a rural area where I cannot pick up 1-3 without it, and consistently, subtitles are piecemeal.

I’m still boycotting television. It steals your imagination, and watching people mouthing is a big turn off for the nation's 200,000+ people with some hearing loss. Sky is stone deaf and doesn't care.

Here’s something bizarre from an anonymous source:

Do u remember that kids TV show from the 70s called Rainbow, with Zippy & that guy in the bear suit? Well do u remember this episode!?!!!!!!? The site has the script, but it is far funnier to play the video. It takes a little while to download tho.

Jeez, had the writers been smoking that banana peel? Unless it was Murray Mexted that wrote the script. Warning: When I went to the site, the clip seemed to download without me asking it to.

Apologies if you missed The Datsuns on Letterman on Friday the 24th; Prime’s update was wrong by a couple of nights, which means you probably missed them on Tuesday night, as did I. Bugger. The new list is:
Monday 4th: John Travolta and Pearl Jam
Tuesday 5th: Richard Gere and snake master Austin Stevens
Wednesday 6th: Franz Ferdinand
Thursday 7th: Annette Bening and Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly
Friday 8th: Jamie Foxx and the father and son from American Chopper, Paul and Paul Jr.
Monday 11th: Donald Trump and musical guest(!) Minnie Driver

Meanwhile, on Hum tonight are these clips:
1. Jeff Buckley – Forget Her
2. Loretta Lynn – Portland Oregon
3. Dresden Dolls – Coin Operated Boy
4. Rachel Yamagata – Worn Me Down
5. Lucid 3 – AM Radio (NZ)
6. Pluto – Dance Stamina (NZ)
7. Faithless – The Long Way Home
8. Ghost Tones – Material Girl (NZ)
9. Age Pryor – The Best For You (NZ)
10. Straitjacket Fits – Down in Splendour (NZ)

Here at Radiation, we aim to please. We even like to please. We’re very pleasing. That’s why we’re, well, pleased to know that someone in the Sky – offices that is – reads Radiation and then things get done.

Lindsay, who had been having trouble with his decoder switching over to a sort-of Sky spam during the night, sends this update:

It seems that you can count some Sky management among your readership.

Whilst my second complaint direct to Sky was ignored, your publishing of my comments resulted in a Sky executive calling me today to say they had read my comments in your blog, and believe I have a faulty decoder. They are replacing my decoder forthwith.

What can I say? Thank you linesmen, thank you ballboys. We aim to please. But, just a teensy comment: did it really take a blog – albeit a fabulous and insightful one – for something to happen? Ah well, let’s not be ungrateful.

Meanwhile, Anthony Timpson writes:

Can someone explain to them [Sky] that DVD recorders are coming down in price and will soon be in thousands of homes, most probably ones that can afford Sky.

Is it too much to ask them to think about a TiVo style service where the hard disk recorders can record multiple sky channels at once? Where the smart recorders can keep track of all the junk we need to keep on file before burning to DVD. ie Insomniac and Travel Sick.

I for one would gladly pay a small fee for a listing/programming service. I mean it's all there waiting for them, they already have the means to do it (listing service, phone line connection etc). Or can you do this already without paying for it?

I called Sky and got the following from someone called a Team Leader who said “no, we will never be doing that”.

Um, that must be a first. Sky turning down a way to make more money.

Yes, while the Yanks are happily TiVo-ing Janet Jackson’s bazomba for all they’re worth, you have to be very geeky to do the TiVo thing in New Zild. Paul Brislen’s story points out that Sky doesn’t allow TiVo users to download programme info and will not be moving into the PVR market for another 12 months. However, Sky’s CEO, John Fellet, talked about options for new decoders in August at a news conference, one of which could be a PVR. Surely they’ll be selling recordable hard drive DVDs in supermarkets by then though – it could be too late.

Good news everyone, The Datsuns are going where the D4 have been before and are down to appear on Letterman on September 24 (next Friday). The rest of the list goes:
Sep 17: Jada Pinkett Smith and Jessica Simpson
Monday 20: Tom Cruise, Dax Shephard
Tuesday 21: Bill Clinton, Natalie Merchant
Wednesday 22: Zach Braff, Cary Brothers
Thursday 23: Linda Cardellini, Peter Cinicotti
Friday 24: Sara Rue, Franklin Ajaye and Cambridge’s finest, The Datsuns.

Saw a showreel of bro’Town last week, which was funny and cool, I’m looking forward to seeing an entire episode this week. At the launch at the Grey Lynn Bowling Club, I talked with a couple of people from sponsor Master Foods, although don’t expect to see “Brought to you by …” on screen – the characters in bro’Town will actually eat certain products, or they’ll be in the pantry etc. Possibly not the first time there’s been product placement on a local drama/comedy show – Phoenix drinks seem to be quite popular on Shortland Street. Do we care? I don’t think so. It costs a lot to make TV drama, and animation is really expensive.

Speaking of which, local drama is really thin on the ground at the moment, although there are things in the works, including a TV3 series. Onfilm reports that NZ On Air is planning to spend $19 million on drama in 2004/05 (yay), but I guess we won’t see the results until 2006 (boo). Sigh, gone are the halcyon days when there was Mercy Peak, Street Legal and The Strip across the free-to-airs all in one week.

Onfilm also has interviews with the makers of Colin McCahon: I AM, which screens tomorrow night. It’s real good.

In late news, here's tomorrow's list for Hum, that jolly fine little music video show which plays late on Saturday nights:

Badly Drawn Boy "Year of the Rat"
Steve Burns "Mighty Little Man"
Loretta Lynn "Miss Being Mrs"
Steve Earle "Transcendental Blues"
The Bads "Off The Rails" (NZ)
Gasoline Cowboy "I Hear You Call My Name" (NZ)
Pine "See Saw" (NZ)
Strawpeople "No One Like You" (NZ)
Rhian Sheehan "Boundaries" (NZ)
Dresden Dolls "Girl Anachronism"
Patti Smith "People Have The Power"