BMGMartin – #hungrybeast was confused, lacked direction and mixed pisstakes which didn’t hit 
the mark with a serious i/v with grieving war widow. Fail.
I did have my hopes up initially for this first episode, because I know of one reporter’s credentials as a science communication / Science Circus graduate from the prestigious ANU course. I was also a little miffed that a good friend of mine didn’t make the cut to be on the show – so I guess I was hoping that it was going to rock regardless!
Yet even though I could see a somewhat ‘skeptical’ bent (a fake news report on gullibility that only Media Watch saw through; a scrolling-list of ‘bullshit’ topics that they’ll tackle every week – that showing support with a green avatar on Twitter for the Iran elections would honestly make any difference whatsover: “O we go change foreign policy OMFG LOL”)…
… I’m still feeling it really is a oh-so-hipster scattergun approach to snaring a demographic which is portrayed as having a YouTube-attention-span-of-five-minutes. Ha. Boo. Woo. Jeer. Bleah. Erm. Okay. When. Do. I. See. Some. Content. I’m. Starting. To. Have. Every. Presenter. Blur. Together. Like. Muppets. In. A. Spindryer.
Please don’t stereotype us, Denton – if I wanted YouTube? I’d go to YouTube for an evening full of cursor-clicking disparate elements directed by my friends’ Twitter links. This is my evening on the couch and you’re just giving me what I did during my coffee break earlier in the day. Lots of news items flashing past, a few Panda-kicking jokes that have nothing to do with environmentalism or ethics – yet you expect me to be emotionally engaged with a very drawn-out ‘um, what exactly happened to him?’ talking-head tale with the relatives of an Australian soldier.
In fact? The brief graphic-heavy news sequence which revealed ‘just how many CCTV cameras there are out there’? Just made me reconsider checking out ABC’s upcoming ‘Hunter‘ instead, which is a TV series and not a patchwork of post-teens getting giggly over genitalia-jokes. They’re better than that kind of portrayal and should be given a chance to show it.
So, thanks for that at least.
{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
I was torn. I so wanted it to work? I’d heard of all the auditions for it and thought that with Andrew Denton behind it, it’d be like either Money or the Gun (excellent early show in his career) or even the earlier Blah Blah Blah.
This really seemed as if they got way too many people, way too many ideas and just gunged up the works. Stick with something slightly more formulaic and then start working towards innovative extras would have been my suggestion. I couldn’t keep track of anyone either and felt as if they were throwing ‘characters’ at the screen and I wasn’t sure if I was meant to even care about how there was web-directors and the like. Big deal, they work behind the scenes, give them a blog rather than bounce them on a trampoline.
Agree with Ally — this was something I was really thinking might have been pro-science and pro-rationalism and kind of came across in the comedy parts as being a try-hard show with juxtaposition with the Perth reporter interviewing the grieving couple over their husband/son who died in the Middle East.
Certainly nothing to be held to the Chasers, but to be fair — it is early days. Shake it out, figure out what you really are and I’d really not be too dependent on online content. They were hired to do the job, they should really be doing the pulling together of their show, not getting the audience to do it.
It was dreadful. I don’t think there’s any other word for it. It reminded me of kids’ news week back in Primary School, except these weren’t 11 year olds, they were young adults – adults who had seemingly been through some sort of rigourous filtering process and deemed worthy by Sir Andrew.
…and this is what we get? The grieving couple segment was bog standard Current Affair stuff at best (except A Current Affair’s editing would have been far more accomplished).
The rest was your garden variety attempt at a culture/news/lifestyle/comedy crossover which we’ve seen dozens of times before. Done better. 10 years ago.
I can’t begrudge a network struggling for relevence to try the whole “let’s put hipsters on camera” approach again – what I couldn’t forgive was the sheer clueless ineptitude of what I was watching. Even the set looked like something designed in 1991, full of laboured visual metaphors like a wall of tv remotes stuck onto the side of a couch… come on, guys.
Completely agree with the thrust of this article. The show smacks of a 50 year old’s doomed perspective of how a young generation reacts to media – and I really didn’t expect so accomplished a veteran as Andrew Denton to be this naiive.
I loved “Money or the Gun”. Truly, truly loved it, it was such an inspiration for me as a teenager. Still have an ep on videotape somewhere – the ‘Year of the Patronising Bastards’. I guess I kind of hoped for that too.
Would a set focus help? Wouldn’t that eliminate the ‘viewer-donated content’ element?
Yes it really was bad. I bet some numbskull used the term “hyperlink tv” in a production meeting. It smacked of producers concerned more with checking off buzzwords (social media! internet generation! user generated content! reality tv!) than making a coherent show.
And incoherent it was – throwing twentysomethings in the deep end with a shot at ‘telling us something we don’t know’ sounded like a quasi-reality show, but there was no behind the scenes stuff. Starting off with how easy it is to dupe the national media, because they don’t check their sources, and then throwing a bunch random unsourced facts and figures at us? Uh, ok.
But worst of all was interviewing a dead soldier’s grieving family in the middle of lame comedy sketches, as mentioned. W. T. F.
It certainly did have that 90s kids show feel about it. Very patronizing.
It’s a shame excellent, edgy comedy like Review with Myles Barlow got stuck in late Fri night, and this gets the coveted Chaser time slot.
Oh well, at least we have Safran’s new show to look forward to!
I concur. While I really wanted to like to show, and indeed the individual points were excellent, it seriously lacked cohesion. Stay on the same freaking topic. Kinda felt like a talent show with schizophrenia. And the attempts at having the viewers interact was just fail. I visited the website and it was seriously half arsed.
Between this show and the naming of that vege-cheese spread I can’t help but think the “creative” departments around this country need to literally be shot.
I didn’t care much for the statistics sections – they struck me as opinion masquerading as fact. 24,000 CCTV cameras? Holy shit, my privacies! $680m in ATM fees? Those bastards! Let’s put a little journalism behind those eight reporters, please; “Hungry Beast” is a mile wide and an inch deep, and it shows.
I agree, and direct you to Scott Mitchell’s description of Hungry Beast: “A smarmy, leftist youth mouthpiece that is as derivative as it is contrived.” Scott Mitchell, I’d like to point out, is one of the show’s web content producers. I think it’s meant to be a joke, but then the truth is often said in jest, isn’t it?
Source: http://hungrybeast.abc.net.au/about
The time slot for Hungry Beast has become a down time in which to answer emails and perhaps back track Twitter or Digg for a week to see where the lame material for this immature flat piece of mediocre piece of fluff comes from. Fluff on the lower end of the interesting scale with a bunch of presenters who appear to have very few sincere thoughts or wit of their own apart from the flimsy script that is as excruciating as a nervous first NIDA audition.
As an ABC admirer I can’t wait for this Dire attempt to be long gone and wonder when we get to fast forward to John Saffron?
A little harsh? I don’t think so.
I am a loyal
I REALLY REALLY have to start blogging more of these eps – my issue for the past few weeks has been working every Wednesday night and it’s tough to catch up when there’s ongoing tasks to complete… but I have not forgotten.
Thanks, commentators, your enthusiasm (and critiques!) are really appreciated. Keeps me wanting to go back to contribute more to how its going! 
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