Creators and Producers

What do television creators and executive producers do all day long? A look at some of the current crop of television being produced, will make you think… not much!

Last night Channel 7 launched a ‘Spicks and Specks’ type show ‘You May Right’ – this was atrocious. Spicks and Specks is an ABC formula show with a clever host in Adam Hills. The cheap Channel 7 imitation should not last any longer than ‘Let Loose Live’ – a horrific live sketch show headed by Peter Moon, lasting one week in 2005.

Have Channel 7 not learnt their lesson? When they pulled Tony Squires and his successful sports show ‘The Fat’ from the ABC to 7 it failed as ‘110% Tony Squires’ and so has he now being referred to as ‘Tone’ on the lowly rating Vega 95.3 breakfast team with Ange and Bec.

It seems 7 cannot find anything to displace 60 Minutes which still features weekly in the Top 10 of Australia’s most watched television shows. This dispels the myth that infotainment is on the war path if we would prefer to be watching ‘You May Be Right’.

Infotainment does command a large section of the ratings and popular television shows such as ‘Border Security’ Australia’s Number 1 show. Executive Producer’s would never have picked that when it was created two years ago.

‘Yasmin’s Getting Married’ lasted a week, one of the most disastrous debuts in television history. Clever didn’t look like such a TV show being axed after a few weeks.

In these cases, the television programmes much like ‘You May Be Right’ will not work. They are over advertised and turn viewers off. 7 hope that Mastermind their new Wednesday night 8.30PM program will get success, but this looks as poor as the other shows currently being produced.

There is hope for one, Two Twisted. Tonight Channel 9 at 9.35PM, hopefully this can restore some credibility to our television executives producing shows that connect with the audience and redefine our ailing drama genre.

Bryan Brown’s ‘Two Twisted’ is the best of a bad bunch and looks like it will be a success. Channel 9 need this to work after the failures of the ‘The Footy Show: Live From Munich’, the exclusive ‘Kylie Interview’ and the terrible ‘Dancing on Ice’.

Just makes you wonder if our creative television directors, developers and producers really are that creative and know what the market want