I have to admit to not fully comprehending the tastes of New Zealand audiences when it comes to television presenters. Some things I get, like shock jock Paul Henry’s ongoing popularity due to the fact no one knows quite whom he will insult next, and faces like those of Kevin Milne and Jason Gunn live on as these people are New Zealand television institutions. My heart sighs in the face of Jeremy Wells’ absence, Carly Flynn’s dawn dismissal and at the sudden blindness that struck Thingy and his subsequent withdrawal from public life.
But then there are other people whose popularity remains a complete mystery to me. I can only imagine that people are voting Simon Dallow as best news presenter in the face of such annoying competition as that Alistair Wilkinson guy on TV3, as I have never really appreciated Shallow’s fresh faced yet utterly unauthoritative style. Television news presenters in general these days (but especially the females) appear to have been bought from the same company as the one that manufactured Kryten as they all seem permanently set on smug mode. And then there is the Duncan Garner school of… mid sentence presentational pausing which… is damned irritating, and on which I have commented before. But these people are already on TV and, whether I care for them or not, they have a job, and far be it from me to force them from our screens at this early post financial crisis time.
Which is why I felt I had to mention the intriguing case of Alison “the Chairman” Mau, whose Cultural Revolution appears to be that she has persuaded the teledei that she has to be somewhere on New Zealand television, or else the country will fall to chaos. If there is not a vehicle for her, then one is found, so that she remains, in one form or another, on our screens. She jumped the good ship TVNZ to go to Prime (for a fair amount of money, I presume), but when that experiment went bust, both she and Paul Holmes were repatriated to the TVNZ fatherland – though why this act of mercy was bestowed upon these traitors was a bit beyond me even at the time.
And now, the TVNZ Overlords have decided that, after doing her bit to generate some hysteria on Breakfast (“Those damned women’s mags! I am going to tell the women’s mags about my indignation – right after I present an item that is very close to impinging on their privacy…”), she would be the perfect lemon-juice-in-the-eye sting for the otherwise fairly sedate yet undeniably popular Fair Go. Is this really a match made in TVNZ heaven, or from that other place where ratings are king? Is she being groomed as young Kev’s replacement, so that yet another flagship Kiwi institution is ready for an Australian takeover? Are the Fair Go ratings slipping and so a fresh face makeover is required, even if the fresh face has actually been around for quite a while? Or is the Chairman biding her time before unleashing her own televisual Great Leap Forward?
To be honest, I actually much prefer Ms Mau to a great many other presenters, her ex especially. But the apparently incestuous nature of TVNZ, with the obviously still strong cult of personality that exists around those people who have been deemed worthy, gets to me a bit. I wouldn’t call this tall poppy syndrome, as I am not dismissing her talents whatsoever. But I question that some of these people actually are as “irreplaceable” as we are lead to believe, and whether recognition really does equate to quality – and perhaps, more importantly, ratings.
Verdict: I am not sure if I feel a light surrounding me, and I know that my news would never mesh with being one together, but I do have a sneaking suspicion that the TVNZ Death Star (and TV3’s equivalent - “Yavin” perhaps?) really do exist in a galaxy far, far away. 2 NZ Logies out of 5.
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