It was poet and philosopher George Santayana who said, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.”  Such is the case with TVNZ’s homage to its own history, the jauntily named “Cheers To 50 Years.”

This was a programme touted as a celebration of all that we’ve known and loved on the box for the past half-century but which resulted in the boring vying with the banal for two excruciating, culture-cringing hours.

Given that TVNZ began broadcasting in this country – and indeed were the only game in town for nearly thirty years – you’d think that they’d want to mark the moment using the not inconsiderable resources of their Archives, which is, let’s face it, a rich resource to exploit.

What we got was a mash-up of the State Broadcaster at its worst, a game-show that was so badly done even host Jason Gunn looked as if he was dying from rigor mortis by the programme’s end.

The panel was comprised of children who barely knew the answers to this decades telly questions, let alone the last 50, while those who actually made television history were caught in cut-away shots in the audience, no doubt thanking their lucky stars they weren’t actually up on-stage, dying like their younger colleagues.

The channel responded to the national thumbs down in their usual, insular way.  “Well, it rated,” was their answer.

Ratings have now become television’s gold and only standard.  The ultimate in quantity over quality.

So it was a terrible programme that was an insult to its audience and all who worked on it? Who cares, it rated, mate!

Ratings equal revenue. It’s the cash coming in that counts for a beleaguered broadcaster like TVNZ. Best business news headline of the week, by the way, was the one that said “TVNZ Makes A Small Profit – Much to Its Surprise”.

I suspect the high ratings the programme received indicated more an audience desire to enjoy an evening of television nostalgia (a desire cruelly thwarted by the self-congratulatory twaddle they were dished up) than any real viewer endorsement of what they received.

This supposed showcase of TVNZ’s cultural fire-power comes at an interesting juncture in its survival. Television, like all media, is at a crossroads. Its future depends on its ability to be relevant to its audiences.  After all, ‘Content On Every Screen’ is the network’s mission statement.

“Cheers” was not relevant, did not engage its audience and simply burned off a lot of preciously needed viewer loyalty and respect for TVNZ.

Interestingly, just 24 hours before this excrement was dished up, the network launched Heartland Channel, not surprisingly on its own Freeview platform but on Sky, the competition.

Heartland, a channel comprised of “repeats”, is a much better tribute to our television history than “Cheers to 50 Years” could ever hope to have been.

Maybe we’ll be better served by the documentary series “50 Years of Television” screening on Prime from Sunday, June 13^th.

How ironic if a private broadcaster, funded by NZ ON Air, delivers a better serving of our TV history than the official state broadcaster.

So, a final irony. Whereas TVNZ could have accessed some marvellous archive material for free, no doubt Prime has had to pay top dollar for the same privilege using tax-payers money.

I bet it’ll be no-contest on which network delivers the better product.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Corporate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.