A rambling post on television

A warning: this blog entry is going to seem a little like a self-indulgent whinge.

Correction: this blog entry is going to seem a little more like a self-indulgent whinge than my usual slightly self-indulgent entries.

Anyway, last week Rosso, or Merrick and Rosso "fame", announced he was quitting his breakfast radio show in Nova in Sydney. He currently hosts the show with his comedic partner, and former Home and Away actress Kate Ritchie.

The news coverage about this was something akin to the moon landing.

This morning the lead article on both the Herald-Sun and The Age websites was about Rove McManus ending his self-titled Channel Ten show.

For me, Merrick and Rosso are just some comedians who have had some success. They had a TV show on Channel Nine called Merrick and Rosso: Unplanned (I used to call it Merrick and Rosso: Unwatched), and I liked Merrick's work on The Hollowmen (I, rather surprisingly, didn't like the show overall).

While Rove won three Gold Logies, this is not the big deal it was in the 1980s. For God's sake, Kate Ritchie won Gold Logies in consecutive years, the second just last year! Rove's three wins just go to show the dearth of real personalities we have on Australian television, considering the award is for the most popular personality. Actors have won 10 of the last 13 Gold Logies.

Rove's flagship Channel Ten show was never "Can't Miss" TV the way IMT or the Don Lane Show was, anyway. You could argue that the last Australian "Can't Miss" TV show that wasn't acted or news-related was The Comedy Company.

Australian television has been veering towards low-cost entertainment that use unknowns as the stars for sometime. It's just embarrassing that if in 2002, instead of giving it to Georgie Parker, they had given the Gold Logie to the person who probably was the most popular personality on TV in the preceding 12 months: Sara-Marie Fedele from Big Brother.

Next week, Australian Idol will conclude, and Channel Ten has promised at least another year. It will probably be it's last.

I know shows like Today and Sunrise have to fill their 3 hours somehow, but a little bit of proportion please. The end of Merrick and Watts on radio is not Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis breaking up, and Rove leaving his tired show isn't exactly big news.

Maybe I'm just too concerned about television for someone who is getting married in 20 days. My fiance would agree with me. For once.