The gospel according to John supporters
MediaWorks won’t be able to catch a break when it comes to John Campbell’s departure.
Every network explanation will be confronted and challenged by his ardent viewers, who have been well trained in such matters.
Announcing the news smack on the delivery of the Budget was either just gaspingly inept or insultingly cynical and gaspingly inept. Far from minimising the resulting public fuss, this amplified it. MediaWorks insists Campbell wasn’t pushed; he refused a co-hosting position and walked. They’re gutted. (Some of them should be, right fans?).
A great many of Campbell’s admirers, primed by accounts of upper-level malice,, stand ready to proclaim what exactly it was he walked away from.
Not so much a personally diminished position, but a role in what would be a thoroughly diminished programme. The rebranded replacement show will be looking at ‘‘a wider mix of stories’’, says head of news Mark Jennings. Aha, say the readers. Width as opposed to depth; particularly a focus away from quite so many of those politically discomforting stories and towards something that segues rather more easily into the cheap melodrama of the later ‘‘reality’’ TV shows.
Even the bog-standard pieces of wait-till-you-see-the-replacement puffery are quickly turning sceptic. Normally Jennings’ assertion that ‘‘we will be bringing the best of Campbell Live over to the new show’’ would be a take-it or leave-it reassurance.
But hang on, are they really saying that John Campbell himself didn’t rank among the best assets?
Even overseas events weren’t helping the impression of network bastardry. Late-night chatshow presenter David Letterman was being afforded an extravagant series of departure episodes.
Over here the most memorable image may well prove to be that of Campbell’s colleague Hilary Barry, immediately following the broadcast story announcing his departure, choking up not in the emotion of a fond farewell, but in palpably miserable distress. Campbell Live’s ratings had increased impressively since the threat of the axe became public.
But MediaWorks isn’t a public broadcaster – remember those? – and the fact remains that daily current affairs is expensive and this show delivered the wrong sort of satisfactions for the network’s model.
The extent to which it served the public good was judged to be neither here nor there.