Comedy cuts aren’t funny
Broadcaster Jesse Mulligan ended Wednesday night’s The Project with a rant about the scaling back of the long-running comedy show 7 Days, and the axing of Three’s hit new show, New Zealand Today. Even the fake eyelashes, hair extensions, alleged domestic violence of one participant, and slut-shaming that went into the fun and trauma of Married at First Sight were for the chop.
Viewers accustomed to Mulligan projecting his signature boy-next-door, all-round Mr Nice Guy persona may have been startled by the bitter tone of his soundbite editorial-ette. In a tirade against the Government, Mr Congeniality maintained that competitor TVNZ had the ace card of being able to claim quasi-public broadcasting status.
TVNZ had recently posted a $17 million-plus loss, to which the Government’s response, according to Mulligan, was ‘‘whatevs’’, with the taxpayer footing the bill. Meanwhile, hard-done-by Three, owned by MediaWorks, had to compete for viewers and advertising on ‘‘not a level playing field’’. He failed to mention that 7 Days and New Zealand Today have both been recipients of hefty NZ on Air funding grants, paid for by taxpayers.
Money at the home of Three was too tight to mention, but was being mentioned. If MediaWorks was to go down the dunny, Mulligan warned that New Zealand television could return to the nightmare scenario of the 1980s.
To illustrate his point, the screen pulsated with test patterns and grainy news footage of bulletins presented by moustachioed antidiluvian news hosts from that decade.
Not only had the Government turned TVNZ into a ‘‘not-for-profit’’ competing with a private business, but imagine what skulduggery the Government might be able to get away with if there was no Newshub and just one free-to-air local news channel, Mulligan said.
Nearly two days later, the announcement was made that MediaWorks was putting the TV side of its operation up for sale, and an external adviser had been appointed to identify potential buyers.
Mulligan is a man of many parts, or gigs. Not only is he the weeknight co-host of The Project, he also solo hosts Afternoons with Jesse Mulligan on RNZ. These top jobs are an embarrassment of riches in a media environment where, for years now, the slaughterhouse rules have seen mass media jobs disappearing down the sink hole.
Mulligan has also had a successful career as a comedian, and is mates with the giggle gang at 7 Days. His Three homeboy peers have been regularly recycled through The Project in guest spots. It’s been a cosy arrangement, with viewers subjected to the mind-set of a particular group, who were about to commit the sin of becoming middleaged. One of them even hosted a game show.
For more than 10 years, the high-rating 7 Days has been touted as the best thing on Three’s Friday night spread, its stars deeply embedded in the channel’s brand. Mulligan’s dark projections of Broadcasting Minister Kris Faafoi’s as-yet unrevealed end-of-year policy made Faafoi sound like a sinister gang buster-upperer.
The successful colonisation of a TV channel by a bunch of standup clowns is an amazing achievement. Now that the TV side of MediaWorks is up for grabs, the comics may get bought up in a collective package by a new employer.
With their heightened profiles, they could always go back to live standup. Or enter politics and do a Volodymyr Zelensky, that eastern European comedian-turned-president whose notorious meeting with Donald Trump left the leader of the free world smelling the Ukrainian on his breath.