MediaOwl Also caught a bit of #hungrybeast but can’t equate placing tragic story of Private Benjamin Ranaudo within comedy tilt program.
Well – like I said last week about Hungry Beast’s first episode – I’m still at a loss with this ABC TV show. Is it because they’re trying to cram too much 
content with too many disparate elements? I still can only keep track of one or two of the presenters, mostly because I like one of them in particular. However, now I don’t see any difference between:
- Web-Content-Director-of-Fun-Lollies-and-Origami-Cut-Outs or
- Reporter-on-Scene-with-Rather-Distracting-Wacky-Hair and/or Hat (plural, I might add) or even
- Head-of-Governance-and-Editing-Bright-Shiny-Graphics-That-Bounce-Appealingly
They’re all reporting. Everyone. Was that the point? I think there were some new people in the mix too. I couldn’t be sure. They might have been swapping hair-styles to distract us like some televisual Hungry Beast cups-and-balls-trick.
Regarding the inclusion of serious content, reporter (web-content creator? editor? producer? tinker? tailor?) Elmo Keep spoke about how when ‘we decided to do the story (on the death of a soldier last week) …because we wanted to know more’. Well, I guess that’s a reason. Kind of. Errr…
Jessicah Mendes then introduces another interview on another case of an Australian lost in military service overseas… yet I’m more confused than I was last week. That takes some doing.
Sure, I also love the Beatles – but if I have to follow a scatter-gun story of a non-piano-playing-piano-player grumbling bitterly about them being overexposed in the media (That’s news? My gran was grumbling that back in the 70s! And not even a funny song to accompany you?) straight after that tragic tale? Speaking of which, it was preceeded with a humourous but rushed science-based tale (graphically well illustrated, mind, um… not in THAT way…) which gave the impression that ‘one study helps demonstrate that the rumours of sperm decline due to tight pants isn’t true’ (yes, studies like ‘Are Boxer Shorts Really Better? A Critical Analysis of the Role of Underwear Type in Male Subertility‘, The Journal of Urology, Volume 160, Issue 4, October 1998 and ‘Declining Worldwide Sperm Counts: Disproving a Myth‘, Urologic Clinics of North America, Volume 35, Issue 2, May 2008).
…Honestly, I’m not going to bother watching yet another serious report on the topic of Australians in the military in the future, no matter how emotionally invested the reporters are by the research. Because every time, it’s diluted by teh funny.
Maybe again it’s the mixture of genres that are familar to viewers who do enjoy current affairs and reportage which are being turned into hit-the-ground-running soundbites rather than fully-fleshed items? Are they Media Watch – urging us to dob in Nestle for fruit-rollups, question our banks ‘giving’ us money and just how environmentally friendly are mining industry advertisement claims?
Are they trying to be like the old SBS’s Vox Pop with a street-segment done in some of the most notoriously ‘bogan’ coastal towns in NSW (who then proceed to challenge the racist stereotypes, amusingly enough)? Which is then followed by a ‘what’s up next week’ with one of their reporters doing a Jewish mother-in-law impersonation in shadow-play. WTF?
Maybe it’s too many reporters, too many ideas, not enough time to get them across without them clashing like personalities. Again, I feel like I just spent half an hour on Twitter idly chasing links after someone posts ‘I’m bored at work – give me something to entertain me while the boss is in a meeting’.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
First time I saw the show – I think I was pretty confused too. How much editing opportunities were the reporters given? Did they edit their own material? Because at times it seemed as if they were cut short — the bit where they were talking about sperm-count and pants really speed past, even after all the creative paper-cut outs that you mention or at least refer to, with the composition of the story.
hated it. still hate it. gave it two chances, never again.
God I hate this smugger- than- smug show, with its its pious wanker presenters. It reminds me of an hour long rant by the loser that sells The Socialist Worker outside the Uni bar. In a country of 20 million, we found five slightly bigoted comments about Muslims on a website… wow man, Australias, like, so racist hey, makes you think right? Wrong, you bad haired wankers! Andrew Denton was always a smug, smarmy little shit, and this show from his production company is more of the same. I particularly hate the prematurely bald boy with the stupid gelled up remnants, obviously the new generations version of the comb-over… If these arent the kids who got beaten up at school, a bully somewhere has seriously dropped the ball!
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