After last year’s abysmal ceremony – possibly the worst ever – this year was actually pretty good. Bert Newton was great – as expected. He was charming, at ease, funny, and received a standing ovation. Everyone loves Bert.

I’ve got to say though, I was worried. With Hey Hey back on Nine, I was sure we would be treated to stupid Hey Hey inspired comedy skits. Fortunately there were none. And fortunately Hey Hey didn’t win any awards. There is hope for Australian television after all.

Straight out of the gate we had Shaun Micallef. The guy is a comic genius, and his acceptance speech was hilarious as always. In fact, Shaun, or at least the show he hosts, won 3 awards. So we saw a lot of Shaun that night.

I’m still annoyed that we have to have “international” guests at the Logies. I don’t get why we can’t seem to stand on our own feet? Couldn’t we have had Paul Kelly instead of John Mayer for example? How good would that have been?!

Having said that, k.d. lang was brilliant. Absolutely magnificent.

It wasn’t all roses though. There was not enough Bert for a start. It started well, and then Bert disappeared for most of the night. We had a rather lame Don Lane tribute (Don’s son PJ seems rather talentless, yet keeps showing up each year at these awards). And the night went on far too long.

We were also witness to a new trend in Australian television award ceremonies – when you win an award, you must stand up with every cast member and backstage hand, spend 10 minutes finding each other, hug, kiss, congratulate each other, and then slowly wind your way through the tables in order to bring the entire mob up on to stage with you. No wonder it went on so long.

Ray Meagher winning the Gold Logie added some Aussie colour to the proceedings with a comment about winning a chook raffle. That brought some life back in to a long night – but unfortunately, that was the end of evening.

Anyway, overall one of the better Logies.  Would be great though to one day just celebrate Aussie talent.

Sadly, Michael Jackson passed away last week. I was a fan, so a sad day.

A large memorial was planned and televised around the world. Although I was a fan, I wasn’t a big enough fan to tune in to the telecast in the early hours of the morning here in Australia. But I did happen to see a repeat telecast in the afternoon.

So, a little about the memorial. First, the memorial was Classy with a capital C. I mean, you had a gold coffin:

And all the men in the family wore a single silver glove:

But this post isn’t about the Jackson family and their cashed-up-bogan style. It’s actually all about Channel 7 – the Australian Free-to-air commercial television network that has its own style as classy as the Jackson’s.

Take a look back at those stills. We have a 7 network logo in the top left hand corner. Nice. Subtle.

Then look at the bottom left hand corner. Oh, classy. A hat, glasses and silver glove – just like Michael Jackson. Taking up almost a quarter of the screen. And on screen continuously throughout the broadcast.

Yep, that’s right – two “watermarks” on screen throughout the broadcast. Nice one Seven. That big orange and black one was nice and subtle.

But that’s not all. This is Seven’s SD channel. What’s on the HD Channel? Let’s take a look:

Oh they didn’t? Oh yes they did. An obscure 1940′s black and white movie, 4:3, scratchy as hell. Nice one Seven. Great use of that HD channel of yours.

Free-to-air television in Australia is Crap. With a capital C.

What the Fuck?

I had considered just posting that. But I love a good whinge, so I couldn’t resist posting more. Where the hell do I start?

The Host

In 2006 we had 5 hosts at the Logies. In 2007 we had 3. Last year we had no hosts. This year we went back to 1. That host was ex-Big Brother host Gretel Killeen.

Let’s face it – Gretel is a crap host. She’s annoying, she speaks down to people, she’s annoying, she’s not funny, she’s annoying. And this year she was sporting a hairdo like a Vulcan. Ok, maybe I take back the fact that she isn’t funny.

I’m not sure if she writes her own material. If she does, the network shouldn’t let her. If she doesn’t, the network needs to fire the comedy team they used. Because there was little that came out of her mouth that was funny throughout the night. But then there was little that came out of anyone’s mouth last night that was funny.

To try and make her more interesting, someone decided it would be good to have her change her dress every couple of ads. Works for me when I have to give a presentation on software development. Here’s a selection of Gretel’s clothing changes. I didn’t include the one where she had cotton wool all over her to make it look like she was stuck in a cloud (that came from a painful sketch involving her falling through heaven).

Wil Anderson once described Gretel as “mutton dressed as hooker”. I’ll say no more.

Overseas Guests

You know, I’ve been critical each year about the Logies bringing over overseas guests to try and make the night more interesting. I’ve always believed we should be able to stand on our own and celebrate Australian TV. This year we almost did just that.

We had Jessica Mauboy to start off the show. She chose to sing a song that didn’t sound totally like an American pop song with a Black American rap half way through, so that was good. Unfortunately it looked and sounded like she mimed it (I could be wrong though – see below on sync issues).

We had Tom Burlinson – best known for his role in “The Man From Snowy River”. I thought his singing was piss poor, but at least he was another Australian.

It was looking good, but then we got Annie Lennox. I’d like to say she was crap, but I’d have to say she was probably the only good thing the entire night. Go Australia!

Comedy

I was in pain. The audience looked to be in pain. And then we had The Umbilical Brothers. Mime is generally not funny. It doesn’t get funny just because you add silly sound effects to it. And it doesn’t become comedy gold when you spend 5 minutes adding stupid voiceovers and sound effects to the nominee videos. One minute of that crap would have been enough – I’m betting many people turned over at this point thinking they were watching Australia’s Funniest Home Videos.

Every comedy routine was painful to watch, and I think Matthew Newton said it best when he, after yet another pre-scripted routine failed, turned to the camera and quipped:

Who said Vaudeville’s dead?

If only The Logies were dead.

Out of Sync

Ok, here is my biggest whinge. Watching the presentation on 9HD, the audio and video were out of sync. Only minor sync issues with the live presentation, but whenever there was a pre-recorded segment, the segment was totally out of sync. It was painful to watch, and I know of someone who changed to another station completely because he couldn’t handle it.

Now, it could be my TV tuner (inbuilt Sony HD tuner), but the commercials were in sync, and shows before and after the logies were in sync. So the question is, why can’t Channel 9 get this stuff right? Do they not have someone who watches their stuff on a normal TV so they can tell them when things aren’t working? My guess is that everyone at 9 was watching Borat on Channel 10.

So, I may have been unjust in dismissing Jessica Mauboy as having mimed her song. It could have just been a sync issue. Sorry Jessica.

Highlights

This is tough. I would say this was the worst Logies I have ever seen, and I’ve seen some shockers. But the highlights were probably:

• Kerry O’Brien sober.
• Don Lane’s son PJ looking quite unhappy when Rove referred to him as “gorgeous”.
• The Cadbury ad during the commercials with the two kids with dancing eyebrows.

Maybe my first comment on this review said it all.

Anyway, here’s a great spoof of the Freeview TV commercials. Thanks Grant for sending me the link. As I’ve said before, time to revoke the free-to-air licences and let some new blood run the system!

The great thing about Channel 7 is that they never fail to live up to their promises. It certainly is one show I’ll never forget. There was this one story about a man capturing dangerous crocodiles. The look of fake horror on the reporters face…the reporter “paralysed” with fear, unable to leave the boat… I will never forget that.

But you know, what I’ll never forget most of all are the new watermarks.

Yes, not content with one watermark, Channel 7 felt the need to have a second, and to move both of them in to the 4:3 space to make sure you didn’t miss them. Oh, and yes, it was the same on 7 HD – because there are so many people out there with 4:3 sets watching 7 HD.

Actually, is anyone watching 7 HD? During the Australian Open it wasn’t even worth watching the tennis on 7 HD because Channel 7 without warning switched to other shows at 9:30 each night in the middle of a game.

I can’t believe I have shares in Channel 7. What was I thinking?

Anyway, I recorded both episodes on my Mac using EyeTV, as I tend to do with most shows these days. Once recorded, I then edit TV shows to remove commercials (take that Australian TiVo). Here’s the EyeTV timeline showing where the ads are (the blue/grey areas) in episode 2:

That seems to me to be an awful lot of ads in one TV show (or in this case, part 2 of a TV show).

So, I did some calculations:

• The show’s total length was 2 hours 47 minutes
• There were 12 ad breaks
• Removing ads the show went for 2 hours 6 minutes
• The commercials shown went for a total of 41 minutes

That’s right – a show that went for 2 hours 6 minutes had 41 minutes of commercials – 1/4 of the entire show was advertising, or to put it another way, they added commercials making up 1/3 of the total running time of the actual movie. And that doesn’t include:

• Popup advertising showing the next TV show:

• Lotto results:

• The incredibly insulting squashing of credits to advertise other shows at the end of the show:

It really is no wonder that people are turning away from Free-to-air television. The commercial stations need to find a new source of revenue – more and more people are not going to put up with this crap. Which of the Australian networks is most likely to be first to realise this? Seven doesn’t look like a candidate.

Read the credits carefully. Well, what they are passing off as credits. Who created the show? Who stars in the show?

Yes, you need to go to the website to find the credits. Now having the credits online is great – and TEN to their credit have them all online as easy to read PDFs, though I had to do a search on the site for “Rush credits” to find them. But are TEN going to maintain the PDFs forever?

I applaud TEN for putting the credits online. But why take them off the show itself? So you can fit in an extra minute of advertising?

Are other shows starting to do this? Is this happening overseas as well?

Tonight Ten HD gave us The Gladiator. In glorious widescreen high definition. Here’s a sample.

Thanks Ten. At least the commercials were widescreen.

Tonight, I turned on the TV to 9 HD, and was greeted with this watermark:

I have not doctored this image. This is what Channel 9 were showing on their HD TV station here in Australia, 10:38 PM EST.

As you can see, it is the usual watermark, but in two different locations. After a few minutes they finally made up their minds and went with this:

Back to normal. But actually I’m not so sure. Have they shifted the watermark just a little to the right? Well, let’s compare to a shot I took back in May:

Yes, it appears they have moved the watermark just a little to the right. I’m not sure if this transition took place tonight while I was watching TV live, or happened some time back.

Regardless, it still is not enough. Not even close.

Today I thought I’d revisit the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and look at their HD offering – ABC HD.

First, let’s compare the watermarks. This is ABC 1.

And this is ABC HD.

Yes, John Clarke is looking away from that disaster of a watermark in disgust.

Here are those watermarks close up:

What the hell is going on with the ABC? Is that a “HD” or an “I-D”? Why is the D cut off by the green bounding box? Why is the “1″ a different font from the “HD”? Why is there a huge vertical gap between the ABC logo and the text? Why is the colour of the ABC logo odd (grey?) in the HD watermark? Why is the watermark still not over towards the right edge of the widescreen image?

Why is there a watermark at all on a non-commercial station owned and paid for by the tax payers?!

The entire industry is run by old men with no idea about technology. They don’t get typography. They have no sense of style. And they’re letting the hacks digitally damage everything we watch.

And they wonder why people are turning away from Free-To-Air television.

To me, this fine seemed a good way to keep the stations honest, and as a boy TV stations tended to run their programmes to schedule.

Fast forward to today.

A week or so ago I was recording Channel 9′s “Scorched”. It was advertised as running from 8:30pm to 10:30pm on a Sunday night. At 10:40pm that night Channel 10 were showing an episode of “Dexter”. I set my PVR accordingly.

At 10:40pm, Scorched was still running. It stopped at 10:45pm – 15 minutes late.

Fortunately Dexter started 10 minutes late, so it worked out in the end. But only because both stations abused their schedules, and I came in and checked on it and ensured it didn’t switch stations until Scorched finished (yes, I need another tuner).

Was there any reason why both stations delayed their broadcasts? Was there a big news story that day? Not that I could see.

The next day I discussed this with some friends. One of them noted that his PVR only allows him to set a buffer of 10 minutes on a TV show. So basically he missed the last 5 minutes of Scorched. I haven’t watched Scorched yet, so I can’t tell you if he missed anything – it was Australian drama after all, so chances are high he didn’t.

So, what has happened to keeping the stations honest? I can only see three possibilities here:

• My father was wrong about the fines, and the TV stations were just more honest 30 years ago.
• They no longer fine the TV stations.
• The fine is still at a 70s monetary value, so abusing the schedule ensures more money is made than is lost in paying the fine.

Whatever the reason, this isn’t good enough. Anyone who watches Australian TV knows that programmes are always running overtime (the exceptions being the government broadcast stations ABC and SBS). I have my PVR set with a buffer of 30 minutes each way (!) and even that has missed shows on occasion.

Who is to blame for this. Well, obviously the TV stations hold some of the blame, but they aren’t the only ones. It is the government body that oversees this industry that is at fault here. We see the abuse every day, and the government does nothing – abused schedules, advertising popups all over programmes, massive watermarks obscuring vision, disrespect for programmes, disrespect in general.

Enough is enough. Anyone up for creating a new political party “The TV Party” with a platform on clearing up the Free-to-Air networks, revoking licences, and stopping the madness?

Australian TV just sucks.

So, there I was Sunday night watching Channel 7′s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony. And my, what a slog that was. Boring as bat shit.

Anyway, there was rumour of a kung fu display to come, so I decided to hang out until the end. There was no display.

Instead, there was Jackie Chan, singing with another Hong Kong legend, Andy Lau. I’d been hanging out all through the Olympics for Jackie, and finally, there he was!

Jackie Chan at the Beijing Olympics Closing Ceremony

And what did our Channel 7 commentators say? They didn’t even recognise him! The most recognisable Chinese face in the Western world, a martial arts legend, a Hong Kong actor with close ties to Australia where he lived for a number of years, and the Channel 7 commentators had no idea! What chance did Andy Lau have – I mean, the commentators would have had to have watched a non-English speaking movie to have seen him before. What were the chances of that?

Obviously the camera man recognised him, as there were quite a few close ups on Jackie. But even that wasn’t clue enough for our brainiac commentators. They just talked about how everyone was so relaxed and having fun.

What? All asians look the same?

Holy crap. For god’s sake would the government just revoke the free-to-air licences and let some competent people start up some new and relevant TV networks?!

And this is what we see on Channel 7 in HD.

Then you have all the other info on screen, all in the 4:3 space. And this is the HD channel. There is this thing called widescreen – perhaps Channel 7 have heard of it?

I don’t just blame Channel 7. I blame the IOC. They should have mandated that the bid winner for broadcast rights had to put any on screen displays in 16:9 space, not 4:3, for any HD broadcast. And any station identifier should be made transparent, and placed in the outer part of the 16:9 space.

Here’s what we should have got:

Yeah, we wish.

Sure, Channel 7 invested a lot of money in getting the Olympics. It is cheaper for them to use the same graphics on screen for SD and HD broadcasts. In fact, it’s probably just an upscaled SD image on their HD channel. But Channel 7 could have used these Olympics to show the world what is possible with the technology. Start with proper use of widescreen. Move on to imaginative ways to tie into the internet. But nope – we got the basics.

And apparently the first week of the Olympics consists of just swimming.

Channel Ten in Australia have started showing the X-Files TV series from the beginning. On their HD channel (Ten HD).

Great news if you like the series. But when you watch it, you may find something doesn’t quite feel right. Everyone seems to be a little too close, like they are encroaching in to your personal space. There seem to be a lot of extreme close-ups in the show and at times the stars have parts of their heads cut off.

So, what’s going on?

Well, Channel Ten, in their ultimate wisdom, have decided that people won’t watch the show in HD unless it is widescreen. So, they’ve taken the 4:3 show (the first few seasons were filmed in 4:3), and chopped off the tops and bottoms, stretching it out to give the appearance of a widescreen programme.

Here’s a clip from the episode last week:

And here’s that same scene from the original broadcast:

No wonder everything seems so close.

You’ll notice though that it isn’t fully widescreen – it looks like even Channel Ten staff noticed the clipping if they made it fully widescreen, so they cut it back just a little.

So why am I complaining? I’m offended when people mess with original content. And the point is that Channel Ten don’t get technology.

Widescreen TVs come with a button you can push to tell it to zoom a 4:3 programme to fit a widescreen TV, if that is what you want. So why force everyone to view a bastardised version of the programme when you can offer people choice?

But then it’s the same issue all the TV stations have with technology. I can work out what channel I’m on by pushing the “info” button on my remote – yet they continue to ruin the viewing experience by putting the station identifier on the screen and saying it helps people to know what station they are watching. That Ten HD watermark is huge!

It seems there isn’t a single network with any respect for TV programmes anymore. Revoke all their Free To Air licences!

I love my Japanese game shows. Probably the highlight of every trip I make to Japan. And for years I’ve been saying on these trips: “We should take some of these shows to Australia – people will love them!”. So when I heard we were getting this show I was excited.

And then I realised we weren’t getting an entire show. Instead we were getting a segment of a show (Brain Wall), stretched out to make an entire show. Mistake number one.

So, the idea of the show is that contestants (celebrities) stand on the “Play Area”, and walls come toward them with shapes cut out – and they have to fit through the shapes, or get pushed in to a pool. You can’t really get that wrong…can you?

Well, here is an example of a “Hole” in a wall.

And now let’s take a look at the male celebrities Channel 9 chose for the first episode.

Notice anything (apart from the fact that the male body in spandex is rarely a good look)? Yes, at least two of these guys (Jacko and Tim) are obese. And look at the hole in the wall. No matter how hard you try, those guys will NOT fit through that hole.

And there is the second problem. It is only funny the first time you present the contestants with holes they can’t fit through. If you continue to do that, it just isn’t funny. And half an hour later the guys had scored a big fat zero.

So Channel 9, you need to actually do a bit of work if you want something to work in Australia. You can’t just buy all the props from Japan, slap it all together and hope it will work. You may not have noticed, but generally Japanese blokes are much skinnier than your average Aussie blokes. So you have to build new props (with cut out stomachs for Jacko and Tim to fit through apparently), or only choose skinny women as contestants (don’t get me started on the sexist comments the host made about the women in the show).

As usual, Channel 9 are idiots. They don’t deserve rights to the show. They don’t deserve a free to air TV licence. And that watermark is still annoying.

I should point out though that the show rated very well. Perhaps like me people were expecting more. I can’t see it lasting as is.

That watermark is so good, we need to take a close up look at it. And by close up, I mean let’s look at this thing as it would appear on your reasonable sized TV screen.

You’ve gotta love that!

What an absolute typographical nightmare. The H is cut off, but the D isn’t, so the whole circle-thing is lopsided. In fact, the first vertical stroke of the H appears to be longer than the second, though it might just be an illusion brought on by having the H cut off in that way. Spacing is inconsistent between elements, and the font itself is so vastly different from the font used on the 9 that it sticks out like dog’s balls. The watermark now takes up even more space, and of course is still in the 4:3 space.

Why would Channel 9 do this? Well, clearly they haven’t the creativity to come up with something unique, so they’ve copied the 7 HD watermark. But in Microsoft style, they’ve changed it slightly to try not to look like they’ve copied it (“Let’s use a circle instead of a square!”) and ended up with something cheap and nasty.

Channel 9 – laughing-stock of the industry.

It was all very strange. In past years the Logies have been full of hype, international guests, and an ever increasing number of hosts – reaching an incredible (and ridiculous) 5 in 2006. This year, there were no hosts at all. They maintained last years back stage team (Hamish and Andy), but that was it. Just a voice over guy, and people presenting awards.

Cost Cutting?

Perhaps. Ironically, the cost cutting actually fixed one of my biggest complaints about the Logies each year – the parade of international guests that sycophantic local TV celebrities fawn over. This year we had no international celebrities up on stage! Absolutely fantastic. If only this was done for the right reasons – it seems more likely it was done to save money, or there were no big US movies about to be released here so no Hollywood stars out here peddling their wares.

So, celebrations are in order. It really is just a shame that the whole affair was so incredibly boring. The show needed Bert as host – I almost fell asleep at times.

Highlights

Really, there were only two highlights.

The legendary Garry McDonald presented one award. His introductory speech was a ripper, but was met with uneasy laughter and the distant sound of crickets:

You know, recently audiences have been spoilt for comedy in this country, with such a diverse variety of programming culminating in nominations going to each free-to-air network.

Well except Channel 9.

Which is shame considering their programming schedule this year actually delivered the most laughs.

Ironical isn’t it, in the year that David Leckie discovered that he might never be able to give the finger again Channel 9 just keep giving him reasons to.

Sounds like Garry hates Channel 9 as much as the rest of us do.

However, best quote of the night goes to my favourite Australian comedian Shaun Micallef who started his award presentation with the following gem:

50 years ago, television was like a nymphomaniac clairvoyant…
a medium you turned on with a knob.

Comedy Gold.

The rest of the night was a snorefest.

Here is the watermark as I discussed some time back:

And here it is now:

So, the ABC “listened” to the complaints. They made it a little bit smaller, and a little bit more translucent.

And apparently everyone is now happy. “The ABC care about us”. “The ABC listened”.

No. The ABC served everyone a shit sandwich. And when there were complaints, they put some sugar on it. And people ate it and thanked them.

People today are conditioned to accept crap. Whether it’s the software they use, the cinemas they sit in, or the TV stations they watch. Near enough is good enough.

Where are the people questioning why we need this watermark at all? Or why it has to be so large? Or why it has to be in the 4:3 region of wide screen broadcasts?

And more importantly, how could anyone in charge of such an organisation have allowed the first version of the watermark to be released – regardless of whether they later “fixed it”?

The people of Australia own the ABC. We pay for it in taxes. We should be demanding the removal of this watermark from our screens – not celebrating that they reduced it in size! That’s not a victory!

I hope you are enjoying that sandwich.

Well, Channel Nine are at it again (yes, I’m a bit late on this – they changed it a week or so ago, but I got a bit busy, and then the ABC thing came up).

Here’s Channel Nine’s new HD wartermark in action.

That’s quite the improvement over the previous attempt, no? Let’s see them side by side.

So, what’s the problem? It’s smaller. Are you never satisfied Jamie?

Well, check out the location of the new Nine HD logo. See the wide gap to the right of the logo? The watermark is actually positioned for a 4:3 picture.

I can tell you right now Channel Nine, no one is watching Nine HD in 4:3. No one.

You stupid, stupid people. Stop messing with the picture! We don’t need to continually see what station we are watching – that is what the ‘info’ button on a digital set top box remote reveals when required. Do you not understand technology? Your logo doesn’t stop people copying your shows and putting them on BitTorrent. All it does is annoy everyone who watches your shows. You really don’t get the internet either. No wonder your ratings continue to plummet.

Here’s a collection of all the watermarks, except SBS – that’s another rant yet to come. I guess the only reason I haven’t ripped in to 7 HD is that they’ve at least stuck with their first attempt (annoying as it is). Keep in mind that 3 of these watermarks are in a 4:3 frame, 1 is too far out from the corner, and all are annoying as hell!