There’s been a bit in the papers recently about the ABC. Is the national broadcaster vital to combat disinformation? And if disinformation is such a big problem, is Joe Rogan’s podcast really to blame? For what it’s worth, I only know Joe Rogan from when he played Garrelli on NewsRadio back in the ’90s. The character was the station’s handyman, and if Joe’s bringing to his podcast that character’s streetwise cynicism about corporate America and the government’s cover-up of alien bodies at Area 52, then more power to him.
I can speak with a little more authority on the ABC. Some people insist it’s a hotbed of lefty bias intent on destroying the Western values of this country. I think that sometimes and I work there, but that’s just my natural paranoia. Sure, you get a note now and then from someone in editorial policies about a pronoun, but once you’ve been through the Kafkaesque nightmare of getting a show commissioned, they generally leave you alone to make the show the way you want. There’s no requirement to plug yourself into any hivemind during the induction period (at least not for light entertainment shows — it might be different with news).
My first contact with the ABC other than as a casual viewer was way back in 1984 when I was in a team of so-called improvisers appearing on a television version of Theatre Sports. For those who never saw it, it was a little like Thank God You’re Here but with no scenery, props, costumes, supporting cast, production values or indeed anything else that would make it watchable. I was in the team from Adelaide with Francis Greenslade. We lasted a couple of episodes before being given our marching orders. I found the studios at Gore Hill shabby and rundown. On the upside, I did get to meet Andrew Denton.
My next contact was a year later when Denton rang me about a debating series he was involved with for Aunty. I thought this might be my big break, but it turned out Andrew was only after Greenslade’s phone number. As an afterthought, a few days later and maybe as something of a consolation prize, I was asked to be a reserve speaker. Things looked hopeful on the night when Richard Neville was late turning up, but he eventually did, and I ended up watching the show from side-stage. I was not paid.
Fast forward a decade or so and I have my own sketch comedy show on the ABC called The Micallef P(r)ogram(me). This time the studios, though still shabby and rundown, are in Elsternwick. These are the good old days when the budgets were still unnecessarily bloated and Aunty could afford to look at a program it was shooting — like, say, The Damnation of Harvey McHugh — and order it all be refilmed because it wasn’t up to standard. Today, the ABC wouldn’t think of scrapping a show midway and starting again. No matter how bad it was going, it would stick with it, air it and probably commission it for a second series. That was certainly the case with my sitcom, The Ex-PM.
These were halcyon years. Everyone pitched in to help regardless of demarcation. Enthusiasm reigned supreme under the stewardship of Brian Johns. Future managing director David Anderson, only in his 20s at the time, popped down with scores of others from their offices to ignore H&S and hang off ropes to help with our elaborate rotating set sketches.
The only trouble I had with the ABC in this period was when Mr Johns rang me to ask that a sketch be cut because Cardinal Pell had complained about it. Given that the sketch was about a priest offering slices of pizza to his congregation instead of communion wafers, the Cardinal’s concern was understandable. However, I told Mr Johns the sketch was from the first season that had been recorded a year before and was being repeated, and I couldn’t cut it because it had already gone to air (twice). He told me he had assured Cardinal Pell it would not go to air again. True to his word, The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) — all three seasons, just to make sure — were never repeated.
(There was also a sketch about Weary Dunlop that then communications minister Richard Alston got a bit cross about. We were asked to cut that one too, but because it was before it went to air it was easier to comply. Oddly enough, the sketch was about people complaining about the sketch and it being abandoned before anyone had seen it, so the fact it was removed because someone didn’t like the idea of it was very prescient of us.)
Despite not one but two lousy sitcoms from me, I was welcomed back by Aunty in 2012 to host a show called Mad as Hell. The new studios at Southbank didn’t have the shabby, rundown charm of the old place, but no matter. It was 11 years of unalloyed pleasure. The only trouble we ever had during what I regard as my golden era was with a sketch in the last season about a hero dolphin that had won the Dickin Medal for animal bravery having been found to have committed war atrocities. The judgment in the Ben Roberts-Smith defamation case had not yet been handed down and the fear was that Mr Roberts-Smith might think we were talking about him and sue.
Because Mr Roberts-Smith was not mentioned by name in the sketch, I felt that to succeed in any action, he would have to argue in court that he was the dolphin and that, given all the publicity he’d received so far, it was unlikely he would want to do that. My argument rightly fell on deaf ears and the ABC lawyers said we could only air the sketch after a judgment had been handed down in the original case and only if it wasn’t in favour of Mr Roberts-Smith. Sadly a judgment in those terms was delivered after we’d wrapped our final season. (I was going to include the script here for the edification of Crikey readers but I’m on Seven next year for Dancing with the Stars and can do without the trouble.)
So, to those who don’t watch the ABC and resent their taxes being spent on keeping it running, can I just say that while I have never in my life driven up the federally funded Pacific Motorway, I don’t begrudge others using it — nor do you hear me complaining about it interminably on social media or, even worse, in Quadrant.
Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
