ABC’s fun cops crash the King’s joyful celebration
In a classic episode of The Simpsons (the closest thing to Shakespeare the 20th century produced), Lisa has a fever dream in which she joins a band of second-bests, performing alongside Garfunkel, Oates and Messina.
It is supposed to be a salutary life lesson about not always needing to be No.1, but midway through the performance the audience turns on the band and starts howling them down. Lisa wakes in horror, only to suddenly pause and ask herself: “Why would they come to our concert just to boo us?”
I found myself pondering this over the weekend during the coronation of King Charles, an event which seemed to strangely energise a lot of people who claimed it was immaterial and captured the attention of a lot of people who claimed it was irrelevant.
At the pointy end of this were the small bands of protesters who took to the streetside celebrations, jumping up and down with placards saying “NOT MY KING”.
OK, fair enough. So why are you at his party then? Indeed, this absurdity was exquisitely highlighted by a meme that appeared of Prince Harry with a sign saying “NOT MY DAD”.
And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? If the whole thing’s so ghastly and oppressive or offensive or traumatising, just don’t go.
Just don’t watch.
Which brings us to the ABC’s rather bizarre editorial decisionmaking, in which the national broadcaster devoted hours of live rolling coverage to something its presenters kept saying was terrible.
Why would you do that?
By all means criticise the monarchy and even attack the monarchy, but why would you do that throughout a program specifically dedicated to celebrating the monarchy?
And sure enough it appears that sensible Australians just didn’t watch.
Usually for big, significant events like this the ABC hits its straps and trounces its commercial rivals. But poor old Aunty got absolutely trousered by both Seven and Nine during the King’s coronation.
Seven won the major metros thumpingly with 739,000 on its main channel despite, or perhaps because of, showing the AFL on its Melbourne broadcast – a telling lesson in the true religion of the southern capital.
And Nine also had a solid result for a Saturday, pulling in 558,000 in the five capitals. But the ABC managed only 513,000. At least it beat Channel 10. To get an idea of just how embarrassingly paltry this is, one only needs to compare it to the BBC – the ABC’s British sister organisation and indeed the public broadcaster upon which it was modelled.
The Beeb left its commercial rivals flailing in the dust, peaking at
15.5 million viewers compared to 3.6 million for ITV and 800,000 for the UK’s Sky News (a free-to-air network not linked to subscriptionbased Sky News Australia).
And that is perhaps because unlike the ABC’s tortured hand-wringing, the BBC had no qualms or equivocation about what its role was supposed to be.
As chief content officer Charlotte Moore said after the ratings bonanza: “I’m proud of the unique and special role the BBC plays in delivering audiences moments of such huge historical significance.”
By contrast, poor old Aunty was in a bit of a bind. It had the same clear obligation to cover such a significant event but has become so captive to and fearful of its feral Twitter critics that it clearly felt it also had to flagellate itself for doing so, which it then proceeded to do for several hours on live TV.
And so as a result the show was about as fun to watch as a public whipping – or at least so I am told.
Like most Australians watching I was watching elsewhere because – as noted previously – why would you waste hours of your life doing something that makes you unhappy?
Because this brings us to what is really at the heart of this ever-burning bonfire – namely, people looking for things to be outraged about.
Whatever the monarchy’s past sins – and believe me they are legion – it is today so purely ceremonial and so purely symbolic that is what makes it so fascinating for those who do have a sense of occasion or history.
Indeed, even the worst crimes committed in the age of empire were done at the behest of parliaments, prime ministers, administrators, private colonialists and corporate giants.
If people want vengeance for history they should be calling for the abolition of Whitehall and Westminster more than Buckingham Palace.
Or maybe we should just focus on trying to fix the problems that history has left us with instead of trying to fix history itself.