A Sad State of (Current) Affairs

A Current Affair/Today Tonight (Nine & Seven Networks)

I used to work in Australia's TV news and current affairs industry.

At various times over the course of 20 years, I was a reporter, producer, documentary maker, chief-of-staff, and studio presenter. It's now more than five years since I changed careers, and in some respects, I can scarcely recognise some of the shows that I used to work on.

What is now called 'current affairs' - A Current Affair, say, or Today Tonight - is a sad shadow of what it used to be. The frightening thing is, taking the shows' content WAAAAAY downmarket appears to have paid off for the TV networks.

In the 70s and 80s, even the early 90s, current affairs shows tried to examine the issues of the day in some meaningful manner. They'd follow up in a bit of depth the necessarily superficial treatment given to stories on the evening's news bulletins, which had to summarise the most significant events from around the world in just 30 minutes, less commercials and the weather forecast.

Now? A predictable, revolving parade of miracle diets, cures for illness, neighbourhood tiffs and a few other reliable favourites. There are the "consumer investigations" which typically consist of a product comparison survey conducted by a dedicated consumer magazine, the result of which can be easily recycled for television. This could involve anything from plastic food wrap to toothbrushes to washing powder - usually domestic items, the less important and relevant to real life, the better. Is knowing the difference in saturated fat levels contained in respective brands of frozen potato chips really going to make a difference to people's health?

The magazine hands over its survey results - often a day or so in advance of the magazine's publication, to boost sales - in return for five minutes or so of national TV exposure. The TV program gets its story without having to expend too much time, creative energy, or money. Win-win. Though maybe not for the discerning viewer who wants to see something original and meaningful.

Worse still is the recent trend towards 'spoiler' stories. Program A airs a promo inviting viewers to tune in for a story on the show later in the week - say, on Thursday night. But Program B, on the rival network, sees the promo, hurriedly slaps together its own story on the same topic, and airs it on Wednesday night - thereby 'spoiling' the audience numbers for the opposition.

That's the theory, anyway.

Where are these people who comparison-watch both current affairs shows, on both networks? The fear of them was a dreaded presence when I worked in newsrooms - the news director's greatest terror was that the other channel might have a story that we hadn't. It wasn't professional pride, it was the belief that the mere appearance of a given story on the opposition bulletin might somehow persuade tens of thousands of 'our' viewers to abandon Us in favour of Them.

No one was ever able to explain to me how someone watching our news would ever know that the other station had a story we didn't, or that we didn't have a story that they did.

But the theory regularly caused last-minute re-ordering of the evening's bulletin rundown to accommodate a matching story hastily-assembled from file footage, or overseas video feeds, and wire copy.

But back to current affairs.

Poor Ray Martin. Night after night he sits there, uncomfortable, awkwardly imploring his audience to treat seriously a story he is clearly embarrassed to have to introduce.

The groundbreaking, thoughtful reports he filed for Sixty Minutes in the early days are a long time ago now. You can steal glimpses of them occasionally, when he disappears from the screen for a few days 'on assignment', then returns to introduce his own story a few nights later. But the subject matter usually is unworthy of the skilful treatment he's capable of giving it, and the lavish post-production his relaxed schedule allows.

No such angst for his Seven Network counterpart, Naomi Robson. Unlike Ray, Naomi is not troubled by having a glorious journalistic history to compare unfavourably against the pap she now fronts each night.

Her hair ironed flat, and her once sharply attractive face now valiantly resisting the onset of middle age, Naomi intros each story with the shrill, righteous indignation of the morally unimpeachable, notwithstanding her recent torrent of recorded profanity, which is still doing the office email rounds.

Naomi is living proof of the TV maxim that suggests that regardless of actual journalistic talent or experience, if you are attractive enough, and you hang around a TV station long enough, that eventually you will prosper. With Melbourne's edition of TT now networked to Sydney and Brisbane, and gaining on or overtaking the former market leader ACA, she is the apotheosis of this theory.