No right turn?

Gerard Henderson, co-founder of the Sydney Institute, is a prominent critic of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Australia's national broadcaster. In his Media Watch Dog blog, he wrote:

"The Daily Telegraph in London reported on Tuesday that Tim Davie, the incoming director-general of the BBC, has a reform program for Britain’s public broadcaster – which is funded by means of a compulsory licence fee.

Put simply, Mr Davie wants to tackle what he regards as left-wing bias in the BBC’s comedy output.  As Bill Gardiner reported, the incoming managing director believes that the comedy shows on BBC radio and television are unfairly biased against the Tories, Donald Trump, Brexit and the like.  Tim Davie is also concerned that too many BBC comedy shows promote a “metropolitan, London-centric and left-wing view of the world”.  Sounds familiar?

In his Daily Telegraph report, Bill Gardiner mentioned that some BBC presenters have criticised the left-wing takeover of BBC comedy. For example, Andrew Neil who referred to The Mash Report as “self-satisfied, self-adulatory, unchallenged left-wing propaganda”.

Many of the problems identified by Mr Davie can be found on the ABC. Its main comedy programs – The Weekly  with Charlie Pickering and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell – are hostile to the Coalition. And Mark Humphries, who appears each fortnight at the end of Thursday’s 7.30 program, has essentially one “joke” – sending up a Liberal or Nationals politician as a toff or a hick in a manner which bears no resemblance to anyone except Mark Humphries.

Bill Gardiner also reported that, under Tim Davie’s management, BBC journalists and presenters will be reined in on social media from airing their political views while there will be a crackdown on BBC celebrities making money on the side moonlighting for private companies. All this was anticipating Mr Davie’s speech to BBC staff yesterday.

In the Daily Telegraph on 3 September Robert Mendick reported what Mr Davie said in his address.  It was much the same as had been forecast.  Except that the new BBC director-general was even more blunt – telling staff:

We urgently need to champion and recommit to impartiality. It is deliverable and it is essential…. If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC.

In other words, there will be no future roles at the BBC for activist journalists who are driven by what the new director-general terms their “personal agendas”.  As MWD readers know only too well, the ABC is replete with left-wing activist journalists advancing their political agendas.

It is early days and no one knows whether Tim Davie will press for reform when he settles into the job as BBC director-general.  In Australia, Mark Scott promised to reform the ABC when he was appointed managing director and (so-called) editor-in-chief in 2006.  But Mr Scott was quickly subsumed into the ABC’s Conservative-Free-Zone culture and backed off.  His successors Michelle Guthrie and David Anderson did not even bother to address the need to introduce political diversity into the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.  Also ABC presenters, since Mark Scott’s time, have felt free to weigh into various debates on social media.  They present as activists in the morning and journalists in the evening.

Tim Davie may not succeed with his stated intention to reform the BBC, including the creation of political diversity.  However, if he does, this might provide a model for the next ABC managing director when he/she inherits a Sydney/Melbourne centric public broadcaster which is replete with left-wing activists."

As for the ABC, it is vital national institution in Australia, fulfilling a function that commercial media outlets cannot. Having said that, I get tired of its comedy programs, relentlessly making fun of conservatives, as if having conservative political views is something to be ashamed of. The last time I watched Mad as Hell, I think I may have laughed only once or twice. And I thought I was just becoming a cranky, middle aged white man. 

https://thesydneyinstitute.com.au/blog/issue-512/#editorial

Garamond

Shaun Micallef as Billy Connolly.

Once again Shaun Micallef is putting quill pen to parchment with the impending release of his first novel, Preincarnate. Reading the description on the publisher's website, it involves murder, reincarnation (which incidentally I don't believe in; cf Hebrews 9:27 and correlating verses) and time travel, which physicists tell us is theoretically possible. I have tickets to the launch at the Wheeler Centre in Melbourne in November, so check back then for a follow up post about the event, and if I get to meet him again. Several reads later, his first book, Smithereens, published in 2004, is still entertaining and very amusing. Hopefully he'll be able to come up with the goods again.

A good story and well told

Susannah Walker reports on Shaun Micallef finally achieving long overdue mainstream popularity.

The Shaun identity - TV & Radio - Entertainment - theage.com.au

Idiot box

As a Shaun Micallef fan, I'm quietly chuffed that after 3 years in the television wilderness, aside from the occasional guest appearance on Thank God You're Here, he has at last returned to our screens with NEWstopia, a satirical take on news and current affairs, airing on SBS on Wednesday nights at 10 o'clock. Whilst not always hilariously funny, Micallef's brand of humour is often subtle and understated, respecting the intelligence of the audience. Comedy can often be a hit and miss affair, but thanks to tight writing and direction, most of the satirical arrows hit their targets. It's hard not to sound snobbish saying this, and I don't mean to, but I think SBS viewers are more likely to appreciate his humour more than viewers of commercial television, hence the failure of his short-lived 2003 foray into commercial television, Micallef Tonight. If the first episode was anything to go by, it looks like it has the potential to be a must see program, particularly during the federal election campaign. His comedy quiver still has plenty of arrows left in it.

How I spent part of Easter

Whilst more devout Christians than myself attended Maundy Thursday church services, I went along to Trades Hall Bar in Carlton for the launch of Conceived on a Tram, which is a book of cartoons, illustrations and graphic stories done by various artists in Melbourne, with essays by Age columnist Danny Katz and Australia's unheralded comic genius, Shaun Micallef.

Mr Micallef was also present to officially launch the book. With his trademark self-deprecating humour, he commented about his own lack of artistic ability, which he demonstrated on stage by drawing a picture of a man pointing. When he was 12 years old, he enrolled in a correspondence art school, where students had the opportunity to submit their work for appraisal. His effort was a picture of former British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, traced from a photograph, but also submitted on tracing paper. Needless to say, it wasn't evaluated favourably. To this day he appreciates good cartooning and illustration, with the exceptions of Snake Tales, Bristow, and Fred Bassett.

With the formalities over, the next part of the evening was the draw off, which was like Pictionary, or that segment on Spicks and Specks, but with book titles. Two teams of three, with members drawn from the audience, and Micallef captaining one of the teams, competed for the reward of recognition from their artistic peers.

To be honest, I felt a little out of place mingling with artistic, creative types. This wasn't quite my cup of tea. I don't have an artistic bone in my body. It's not that I don't like art, or appreciate artistic talent, but I don't understand it, and can't be bothered putting the time in to develop an appreciation for it. Having said that, I appreciate good writers and speakers.

As a longtime fan of Shaun Micallef's work, in television, print, and radio, I wanted to hear what he had to say. I'm not one for small talk or fawning over celebrities, so this time I didn't bother to buy the book or have it signed by anyone who contributed to it. However, that didn't stop me from once attending the 2004 Melbourne Writer's Festival launch of Shaun Micallef's own book, Smithereens (Penguin, ISBN 0143001213, $24.95) and having it personally signed by the author, with whom I chatted briefly on the night.

For more information on this book, which should be available direct from the publisher, visit http://www.sleeperspublishing.com/

Me kick football

Aside from being the high point of the Melbourne sporting calendar, the AFL Grand Final also displays the cringeworthy spectacle of players from each team stumbling and mumbling their way through our national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.

On the other hand, it seems to me that football club songs are unsophisticated both lyrically and musically, specifically designed for ease of recall. Write a few verses of one or two syllable words, and set them to a well known public domain tune, and you have your song. It doesn't need to sung in tune, but suitable to be sung in unison as a team bonding exercise after winning a game, or possibly by drunken fans having a celebratory tipple.

Footballers have often been pilloried, sometimes deservedly for their lack of eloquence in speaking to the media and in other contexts, most notably by comedian Shaun Micallef in his hilarious Phillip Quist sketches on Full Frontal. In these sketches Micallef played Phillip Quist, a documentary film maker and art critic. Due to network staff shortages, he found himself having to work as a TV sports reporter, doing post-match interviews with footy players, a task which he considers beneath him. He demonstrates this with his arrogant, patronising interview technique, belittling the players for their inability to correctly use spoken English.