TV’s gold rush begins early

Who was the most popular personality on Australian television in 2008?

The list of nominees for the major award for this year’s TV Week Logie Awards has found itself inadvertently promoted in advance of the awards’ launch party scheduled for today.

The Nine Network yesterday (Sunday) ran advertisements for the special edition of TV Week, due out today, promoting the list of nominees.  The ad was pulled after a couple of screenings but the cat was already out of the bag.

So, in no particular order, these are the nominees for the TV Week Gold Logie:

Rebecca Gibney (Packed To The Rafters)
Kate Ritchie (Home And Away)
Simmone Jade MacKinnon (McLeod’s Daughters)
Ian Smith (Neighbours)
Adam Hills (pictured. Spicks And Specks)
Andrew Denton (Enough Rope With Andrew Denton)
Natalie Bassingthwaighte (So You Think You Can Dance)
Rove McManus (Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader, Rove)

The list contains a couple of curious names – particularly Kate Ritchie, whose only TV appearances last year were restricted to a couple of months in soapie Home And Away, and Simmone Jade MacKinnon, a barely familiar name from a series that the Nine Network barely ran last year before hiding the episodes away in an obscure timeslot over summer.  It could be easy to say that nominees such as these add fuel to the long-running speculation that the popular-voted categories are steered by over-zealous network publicity agents.  Though, why would Seven want to push Kate Ritchie’s profile from Home And Away when this year she’s been more famous for Nine’s Underbelly: A Tale Of Two Cities?  And why would Nine push for MacKinnon given the network’s lack lustre treatment of McLeod’s Daughters last year, which has been cancelled anyway.

Ian Smith is an obviously sentimental nomination from the public given his recent departure from Neighbours after over twenty years although his appearances in the show during 2008 were staggered as he actually left the program as a full-time cast member during 2007.

Adam Hills and Andrew Denton (pictured) presided over two of ABC’s most popular shows of last year.  Both were also nominated for the gold last year.

Former Neighbours star and member of the Rogue Traders, Natalie Bassingthwaighte, is host of So You Think You Can Dance which returned huge ratings for the Ten Network for its debut series last year.

Rove McManus has already won the Gold Logie three times now.  His Sunday night show had mixed but decent ratings results last year.

Rebecca Gibney, as one of the principle cast members of the ratings hit Packed To The Rafters and a long-running favourite with viewers over the years, must be a favourite to take the award this year.

Nominees for the other publicly-voted award categories will be announced at today’s launch function and will appear in this week’s TV Week.

The TV Week Logie Awards will be held in Melbourne on 3 May, hosted by Gretel Killeen and telecast across the Nine Network.

Source: Herald Sun

Denton's had enough of Rope

After six seasons and almost 200 episodes, Andrew Denton (pictured) has decided it's time to move on from his weekly interview show Enough Rope With Andrew Denton.

Beginning on ABC in March 2003, Enough Rope With Andrew Denton marked a return to television after seven years for Denton.  His TV career began in 1988 as host of variety/comedy show Blah Blah Blah on ABC, followed by The Money Or The Gun and the Friday night sports show Live And Sweaty.  In the mid-1990s, Denton moved to the Seven Network with his own self-titled show that ran for two years, before moving into breakfast radio on Sydney's Triple M with Denton colleague Amanda Keller.

On the same night that Enough Rope With Andrew Denton premiered the Seven Network launched its own talk show, The Chat Room, featuring a number of radio personalities including Keller.  The Chat Room had a short life, having proved that breakfast radio presenters don't always translate to prime time television, but Enough Rope went on to become a consistent ratings performer for ABC with Denton's interviewing style becoming a hit with viewers.

Enough Rope has attracted acclaim for its high-profile guests from a range of fields including politics, business, entertainment, sports, the arts and medicine.  The program has also featured people behind major news stories, such as Joanne Lees, the partner of abducted English tourist Peter Falconio, and Major Michael Mori, the military lawyer for former Guantanamo Bay detainee David Hicks.

Some of the international guests to have appeared on Enough Rope: Bill Clinton, Michael Parkinson, Jerry Seinfeld, Sir Bob Geldof, Billy Connolly, Al Gore, Sir Elton John, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Jamie Oliver, Bono, Helen Mirren, Rudy Giuliani, Crown Prince Frederick and Princess Mary of Denmark. Local guests have included: Steve and Terri Irwin, Jane and Glenn McGrath, Pauline Hanson, Maggie Tabberer, Michael Leunig, John Laws, Jimmy Barnes, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, Mike Willesee, Raelene Boyle, Judith Lucy.

And part of the charm of Enough Rope was not just its high-profile guest list, but also in featuring 'ordinary' Australians, from less-glamorous fields, such as nurses, cab drivers, priests, driving instructors and butchers, all of whose stories could be as equally enthralling as those of the big-ticket names.

The program also staged a ten-year reunion of cancer sufferers featured in an earlier Denton documentary, The Topic Of Cancer, and has taken the show out to regional Australia, to towns such as Rainbow and Mt Isa, to give a unique insight into rural Australia. 

This year, Enough Rope also featured a special series of episodes, Elders, featuring interviews with some of our most prominent older citizens.  And Denton was nominated earlier this year for a TV Week Gold Logie award as Most Popular Personality on Australian Television.

In moving away from Enough Rope, Denton is keen to pursue other projects behind the cameras with his company Zapruder's Other Films.  The company has already turned The Chaser into a household name with CNNNN and The Election Chaser, and also had success this year with The Gruen Transfer, going behind-the-scenes in the advertising industry.

The final episode of Enough Rope With Andrew Denton appears on Monday 8 December on ABC1.