Media column Nov

Ode to the Test-Pattern

Bridget Griffen-Foley

Australian television’s golden anniversary roadshow kicked off in September 2005 with the screening of 50 Years, 50 Shows on Channel Nine. Some twelve months were to elapse before the actual anniversary, on 16 September 2006. In 2005 Channel Nine was entering television’s anniversary year and, as the first station to go to air in Australia, determined to present its own history as synonymous with the history of television.

In 2006 Australian commercial television is racked by uncertainty, missing the behemoth that was Kerry Packer, observing pay-TV’s growing market share, demonstrating little patience with fledgling programs, lobbying the government over the media reform package, and putting on a spectacular, at times surreal, show of its own with the war of attrition between Channels Nine and Seven. Perhaps just one thing can be stated with any certainty: The Up Late Game Show, Quizmania and Midnight Zoo will not feature in the list of most celebrated shows when Australian television commemorates its centenary in 2056.

First came Big Brother Up Late, showing live, at times contentious, footage from the Big Brother house. Designed to create a virtual community of viewers and complement the webcam from the house, the show was often excruciatingly dull. Tim Brunero, runner-up in the 2005 series, has written of his efforts to stay awake for Big Brother Up Late and to entertain viewers. When arguments and sauna sessions gave way to footage of people sleeping or engaged in banal conversations, host Mike Goldman (whose smug languor suggested he was never anything but bored) would talk to evicted housemates and run word-game puzzles.
These competitions, which relied on viewers ringing in or texting their answers at a cost of fifty-five cents per call, spawned the rash of overnight game shows. Last year, The Up Late Game Show débuted on Channel Ten in the slot vacated by Big Brother Up Late. The host is ‘Hotdogs’ (Simon Deering), who during his time on Big Brother had grabbed one contestant’s breasts and touched another’s crotch; since his eviction, he had been charged with public nuisance for urinating in a public place. Channel Ten and Southern Star rewarded him with a job. The Up Late Game Show consists of viewers dialling a ‘1902’ number, at fifty-cents cents per call, to answer simple guessing games.

In July 2006 Channel Nine launched a late-night interactive game show, Quizmania. The show is based on the British Quizmania, broadcast on ITV1, and also involves dialling a premium number to answer questions. Blurring the lines between editorial and advertising, ‘call TV’ is cheap to produce and designed to raise revenue to help offset the erosion of advertising caused by new media. Tony Skinner, Nine’s executive producer of game shows, enthused that Quizmania ‘enforces Nine as a leader in interactive TV. We’re very excited with the show, and our line-up of fresh new talent brings an edge to call TV that will entertain and challenge viewers long into the night.’ The talent consists of three hosts: Brodie Young, an ‘intruder’ from the second series of Big Brother; Nikki Osborne, an aspiring actor and singer who shares a name with a British porn star; and Amy Parks. A few weeks later came Channel Seven’s Midnight Zoo, hosted by another perky trio. The two female hosts wear bikinis in the ‘Bikini Beach Cabana’.

All three programmes feature the relentless reiteration of telephone numbers, canned laughter, riotous sound effects and flimsy sets. The prizes are as low as $25, and the amounts that can be awarded are capped. The first time I watched Quizmania, callers were guessing words to follow ‘fire’; obvious answers like ‘man’ and ‘engine’ were deemed incorrect as the aim of the game was to entice as many calls as possible. The young hosts exude excitement and ad lib between the few calls that go to air. ‘Hello, who’s there?’ and ‘Where are you calling from?’ is the extent of the small talk; ‘Deniliquin’ completely discombobulated one host. Contestants have been known to ring one show to answer a question posed on another.

Television critics for The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and News Limited have lambasted the three commercial stations for broadcasting such inanity and for offering viewers no choice late at night. Letters to the editor have been equally indignant. On August 11, the programs were satirised by The Chaser’s War on Everything. Petitions continue to demand the programs be axed. Various bloggers suggest that the programs would be acceptable if they included wet T-shirt contests, thus making them all but indistinguishable from the adult services advertisements routinely shown in the breaks. Some ‘Quizmaniacs’, however, maintain that the Channel Nine program has one redeeming feature. Nikki Osborne has attracted her own fan site (‘It’s the worst show on television yet, when Nikki is on … I cannot look away!!!’). Osborne seems to grasp the irony of her situation, remarking as she rode a contraption around the Quizmania set: ‘that’s not my belly, that’s just a corset – in case there’s rumours I’m a knocked-up porn star!’ This was the night in August when Osborne, wearing a bowler hat, hipster jeans, a silver corset and stilettos, and Amy Parks, trying to hide her ugh boots behind a counter, desperately mugged for the camera while the telephone lines were down. After nine minutes, Channel Nine cut to a repeat of The Drew Carey Show.

This column sometimes sets out to record important, interesting or quirky moments in the evolution of the Australian media. This moment, which has arrived during television’s ostensibly golden year, might best be forgotten.

Bridget Griffen-Foley is a historian at Macquarie University