Who you can’t vote for in the Logies…

It is that time of year when TV Week asks its readers, and the wider TV viewing population, to vote for their favourite personalities and programs for the annual TV Week Logie Awards.

This year’s presentation, to be held on 2 May, marks the 52nd annual presentation of the awards first named by Graham Kennedy, who decided that the middle name of TV pioneer John Logie Baird sounded like a good name for an award and, in naming the award after him, it would forever be a tribute to his achievement.  (It was remarked in later years that had Kennedy known just what an impact the Logies would have had on Australian TV culture, he would named them after his own middle name – Cyril)

These days, viewers can vote for the awards without having to buy a copy of TV Week.  In the past, votes could only be made via coupons printed in the magazine or by using a unique PIN printed inside the magazine when voting online.

However, despite the voting being conducted online for a few years now, the online interface used to collect the votes is essentially just a basic web poll.  None of the glamour or excitement of TV’s night of nights here.  No colour.  No pictures, or even video clips of the people we are being asked to nominate (and this can be handy when trying to identify some of today’s TV starlets who aren’t easily recognised by name alone). In fact, voting for your favourite TV stars and programs now looks to be as clinical and enjoyable as filling in your average tax return, especially now as the stars and shows are reduced to mere numbers or tick boxes. 

Also curious are the omissions from TV Week’s list of voting ‘suggestions’ (although they are our only options, there is no “other” allowed here).  Just a few that this author noticed missing from the categories:

Most Popular Actor: Tom Oliver (Neighbours), Alan Fletcher (Neighbours), Andrew Supanz (All Saints), Kip Gamblin (All Saints), John Waters (All Saints)

Most Popular Actress: Janet Andrewartha (Neighbours)

Most Popular Presenter: Larry Emdur (The Morning Show), Kylie Gillies (The Morning Show), David Reyne (9AM With David And Kim), Kim Watkins (9AM With David And Kim), Sandra Sully (Ten News), Dave Hughes (The 7PM Project), Peter Everett (Ready Steady Cook), Sam Pang (ADbc), Grant Bowler (Border Security), Ed Kavalee (TV Burp), Daryl Somers (Hey Hey It’s Saturday – The Reunion), Jonathon Holmes (Media Watch), Magda Szubanski (The Spearman Experiment).

There also seems to be some inconsistency in what qualifies as “presenter” – Masterchef’s three judges are listed as potential nominations for the category, but the show’s (then) host, Sarah Wilson, is not.  The Biggest Loser’s fitness coaches, Shannan Ponton and Michelle Bridges, are listed in the “presenter” category, but the show’s (former) host, Ajay Rochester, is not.  The Seven Network’s talent quest, Australia’s Got Talent, gets a guernsey, with host Grant Denyer and judge Dannii Minogue qualified for a mention, but no mention of Minogue’s colleagues, Red Symons and Tom Burlinson.  For rival show Australian Idol, Andrew Günsberg is listed as host, but no mention of any of the show’s three judges, Ian ‘Dicko’ Dickson, Marcia Hines, Jay Dee Springbett and ousted judge Kyle Sandilands (who did appear in the preliminary stages of the show in 2009).  SBS newsreader Anton Enus qualifies for a vote, but his weekend counterpart, Lee Lin Chin, does not.

Australia’s Got Talent qualifies in the category of “most popular light entertainment program”, but a rival show of essentially a similar format, Australian Idol, is categorised under “reality”.

Most Popular Light Entertainment Program: TV Burp, Hungry Beast, Double Take, Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?, Hot Seat, The Einstein Factor and The New Inventors are all missing from the nominations list.  The one-off special Rove Presents Hamish And Andy’s American Caravan Of Courage is allowed to be voted, but another one-off special from the same network, Shaun Micallef’s New Year Rave, is not.

These are just the omissions noticed by this one author.  There may be plenty more that TV Week and the networks have failed to acknowledge as being worthy of a vote – and yet the Logie Awards are intended to be the ‘people’s choice’ awards covering all the various genres of television and allowing all on-air talent – with the only eligibility being that they appeared in a credited role during the 2009 television year – an equal opportunity of being voted for.

It is surprising that, after 52 years, TV Week and the publicity agents from all the networks can not get together and muster up a complete list of eligible personalities and programs and be consistent in what, or who, qualifies for a particular category.  The gaps in these voting categories only serve to add ammunition to growing public sentiment that the Logie Awards are no longer a credible recognition of the achievements of our television industry.

TV Week’s Logie Awards site (with the link to vote online) is at tvweek.com.au.

Ding Dong Denise back on daytime TV

Denise Drysdale is set to make her return to TV as a panellist on the upcoming Ten Network program, The Circle.

One of Australia’s true TV veterans, Drysdale was a performer in children’s television in the 1960s, later featuring in pop music shows Kommotion, Uptight and Dig We Must and on Graham Kennedy’s In Melbourne Tonight. 

A number of guest appearances in Crawford dramas Division Four and Homicide later led to her becoming Ernie Sigley’s sidekick on the Nine Network’s The Ernie Sigley Show.  Their popularity led to them, in 1975, winning TV Week Gold Logies for most popular male and female on Australian TV.  Drysdale then won a second Gold Logie the following year.

She also starred in the sitcom The Bluestone Boys and musical special The 20s And All That Jazz (pictured) and appeared on Young Talent Time, Cop Shop, Countdown, The Penthouse Club, The Truckies, The Don Lane Show, The Mike Walsh Show, The Daryl Somers Show and co-hosted Hey Hey It’s Saturday after the departure of Jacki MacDonald from the show.  Living on a farm since the late-‘70s, she also hosted her own weekly program in the 1980s on local channel GLV8, based in Gippsland, Victoria.

The new Ten Network show marks Drysdale’s return to daytime TV after previous success when re-united with Sigley for In Melbourne Today in the late ‘80s, the program later titled Ernie And Denise when the show went national.  Then after two years as co-host on the revived In Melbourne Tonight with Frankie J Holden, Drysdale had her own daytime show, Denise, on the Seven Network in the late 1990s.

Recently, she has appeared as a guest on ABC’s Spicks And Specks and in the Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunion.

The Circle, due to start on Tuesday 9 February, is the replacement for Ten’s 9AM With David And Kim which wound up in December after four years on-air.  (The last two months have seen a “best of” collection of segments from the show airing as 9AM Summertime in the two-hour morning timeslot)

Also appearing as regulars on The Circle will be Foxtel presenter Yumi Stynes, performer and TV presenter Gorgi Coghlan and former Big Brother contestant and Vega FM breakfast presenter Chrissie Swan.

Scheduled to air weekdays from 10.00am, the new two-hour show promises topical chat with audience interaction.  The existing one-hour Ten News bulletin at 11.00am will move to 9.00am.

From the outset, it appears that The Circle looks like a daytime twist on Ten’s early evening The 7PM Project, a program that also features regular and guest panellists discussing issues of the day with some audience interaction.  The Circle’s all-female panel format also appears to bear a resemblance to the popular US show The View (shown in Australia on Foxtel and Nine), and its less-successful Australian adaptation, The Catch-Up, which aired on Nine in 2007.  It will be interesting to see if The Circle can overcome these perceptions and offer a viable alternative to The Morning Show and Mornings With Kerri-Anne on rival networks Seven and Nine.

YouTube: Good Morning Murwillu.... Melbourne

Another rare gem from the world of YouTube with a flashback to December 1988, and ATV10's Good Morning Melbourne with hosts Roy Hampson and Annette Allison:

This clip includes guests Mark Trevorrow and Gina Riley as their comic alter-egos Bob Downe and Coralee Hollow, hosts of the fictional regional TV program Good Morning Murwillumbah, a send-up of the low-budget chat-show format that morning television is invariably known for. The pair are on Good Morning Melbourne to promote their show Pick A Hit at Melbourne comedy venue The Last Laugh.

Good Morning Melbourne, which ran until the end of 1988, essentially began as far back as 1967 when Melbourne's ATV0 - after three years on-air - was making its first tentative steps into morning television. Morning Magazine, hosted by Roy Hampson and Katrina Pye, began as a half-hour program on ATV0 at 10.30am on Tuesday 8 August 1967. The program continued the same basic format with Hampson at the helm, although the name changed numerous times: Chit Chat, Roundabout, The Roy Hampson Show, In Melbourne Today.

On 19 February 1979, the title changed to Everyday and Hampson was joined by Annette Allison, a former Queenslander who had come to Melbourne to read the news for ATV0.

In 1981 the title changed to Good Morning Melbourne, and continued through to the show's eventual demise in 1988. Replacing Good Morning Melbourne and its interstate counterparts in 1989 was the national program 'Til Ten, produced from TEN10 Sydney and hosted by Joan McInnes. 'Til Ten was succeeded in 1992 by the Melbourne-based The Morning Show with Bert Newton (pictured). The program adopted the title Good Morning Australia the following year, and embracing the advertorial segments that turned the normally quiet morning TV landscape into a multi-million dollar cash cow for the Ten Network, then recovering from financial decline, and saw the concept extend to rival programs on the Nine and Seven networks.

Good Morning Australia came to an end in December 2005, replaced the following month by 9AM With David And Kim, hosted by David Reyne and Kim Watkins.

YouTube: bobdowne4real