Media
Comic relief
by Staff Writers
Sorry to see you go, Tony? Don’t make us laugh.
The folk at Auckland’s comedy club, the Classic, will be celebrating the news that TVNZ commissioning manager Tony Holden has resigned. At the recent Comedy Guild Awards, MC Jeremy Elwood said that he was wishing for Holden’s departure, as he had a perfect musical number in mind. “Does anybody have a copy of ‘Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead’?” The crowd of comics, united in their dire opinion of the state broadcaster’s commitment to develop-ing local comedy, applauded lustily. Holden’s replacement, rumoured to be NZ Idol producer Andrew Shaw, will have his work cut out to avoid a repeat roasting.
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So Truth has been sold by Fairfax because it “doesn’t fit in with Fairfax’s other titles”. What that means is that Fairfax has gone all squeamish over Truth’s tits-and-bums style. In its heyday, the weekly boasted a circulation of more than 200,000, but that’s dwindled to 12,000 in the latest audit. Fairfax’s predecessor, INL, put up with Truth’s seedy reputation and grubby content because the paper contributed about $300,000 in profits, mostly from sex-trade advertising. Trouble was, profits struggled to keep ahead of hefty legal bills and the odd monster defamation award. The last biggie involved Ray Columbus and wife, who scored more than $600,000 from the courts; word is the case cost INL $1 million all up. The new owner is Dermot Malley and colleagues. For a while Malley owned and ran the rather staid NZ Gardener magazine, which he sold to INL in the early 1990s. Imagine the possibilities now – Sex & Spuds, Beans & Boobs, Corn & Porn … you name it.
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Staff at the Dompost will be making their own lettuce-and-Marmite sarnies on Sundays now that management has trampled on the age-old tradition of shouting lunch – usually a deli chicken and salads from New World – for those who work on the sabbath. There was an attempt at phasing it out about six months ago, but staff resistance persuaded management to wait until after Christmas to bring in the new, leaner regime. Well, there’s always free wine and a wafer at your local church.
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The effects of the eviction of Jade Goody from TV’s Celebrity Big Brother in the UK for apparently racist behaviour are more far-reaching than just Goody’s perfume being taken off the shelves at Debenhams. Questions are being asked about leadership at Channel 4 after both the chairman and the chief executive, the latter a former margarine marketing guy, failed miserably to handle the publicity crisis. The C4 board has got some tough questions for its executives, and Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator in the UK, is to write to the channel following the – count ’em – 40,000 complaints it received.
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There must be a few faces that turned a whiter shade of pale at Fairfax Sundays. Last week, for the first time since its launch in October 2004, the compact Herald on Sunday overtook the broadsheet Sunday Star-Times in supermarket sales in centres from Taupo north. Admittedly it was just by a nose (AC Nielsen scan data shows the Herald on Sunday was 76 papers ahead of its competitor), but given that more than half the country lives from Taupo north, and the Sunday Star-Times only recently launched a major redesign, the numbers must have caused Fairfax bosses to blanch. Adding to the pall was the fact that last weekend the Herald on Sunday produced its biggest paper ever, 288 pages in seven sections. Ouch.
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Former flamboyant Kiwi magazine maestro Michael McHugh, turned flamboyant chief executive of Aussie magazine company FPC, is rumoured to be counting his money, great piles of it, following the sale of FPC to News Ltd. The pile has apparently been ever so slightly dented with a recent purchase of a property on Waiheke Island. No word on his future with new Rupert Murdoch bosses, but expect an extremely air-brushed press release some time soon.
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Reality TV squillionairess in denial shock: further to our item of January 13, Julie Christie says she has never made an offer for the Documentary Channel and has no interest in acquiring it.
Email: mediacolumnist@listener.co.nz
