TV silly season cut short as broadcasters battle fierce competition

Once upon a time, the TV drought known as the “silly season” began when the free-to-air ratings wrapped late in November and stretched on until they cranked up again early in February. But since the pay-TV providers and streaming services arrived, the silly season has shrunk.

Hoping to start the year with a bang, Ten has debuted its new season of I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! a full month before the ratings season begins. Pictured: politician Jacqui Lambie, left, and gossip reporter Richard Reid.Credit:Ten

Now, for a range of reasons, the free-to-air networks are joining in and summer is no longer the desert it once was. With no Big Bash League to boost its line-up, Channel Ten had to get down to business earlier and it premiered I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! in the second week of January, a time that would once have been unthinkable.

So we’ve already seen hosts Julia Morris and Chris Brown back in the jungle, Julia doing her shrill “OMG!” shtick and Dr Chris playing the good-natured straight man. There’s a new gaggle of attention-seekers who’ve signed up to eat yucky bits of animals, get bitten by scorpions and have snakes dropped on their heads.

Today’s new line-up, L-R: Brooke Boney, Tom Steinfort, Deb Knight, Georgie Gardner and Tony Jones.
Credit:Luis Ascui

Noticeably lacking a headliner such as Bernard Tomic or Shane Warne to spur early interest, the fifth season stretches the notion of “celebrity” to extremes, offering two Goggleboxers, a pair of politicians, a comedian, a chef, a former AFL star, an entertainment reporter, a male model and an assortment of former TV presenters. The twist – because reality-TV contests always need a tweak to enable the familiar to appear fresh – is a camp split between Haves and Have Nots.

As if in recognition of the show’s age and this contingent of contestants, the network has opted for an unusually short stint of only four weeks for Celebrity. But with little free-to-air competition beyond the Big Bash League, its relentlessly hyped premiere drew more than a million viewers. If it can maintain even two thirds of that audience, Ten would feel amply rewarded by its decision to go early.

Over on Nine, the beleaguered Today show unveiled its new girl-power line-up featuring co-hosts Georgie Gardner and Deborah Knight. Nine bought itself a valuable asset with the Australian Open, which is a ticket to healthy audiences for a fortnight in January and a handy promotional platform for what follows. The network needed to bed in its remodelled breakfast show before the ratings start and sensibly opted to capitalise on the attention directed at the Open.

The shake-up at Today follows a year of widely publicised ructions, centred on the now-departed co-host, Karl Stefanovic, and an accompanying plunge in its ratings against its long-time rival, Seven’s Sunrise. As Stefanovic made headlines for all the wrong reasons – an acrimonious marriage breakdown, a new partner, a lavish Mexican wedding – Seven busily worked to present its guy, David Koch, as a devoted husband, father and grandfather. It reassured us that Sunrise was safe, dependable, family-friendly.

Today’s duo of female hosts upends the male-female configuration that has been the custom in this country. With Gardner the only woman left standing, or, more precisely, sitting at the desk, after the substantial shake-up, Nine, rather radically, decided to pair her with a journalist who’d proven popular with viewers during her stints as a fill-in host. And, with that bold, revitalising move, it has made its competitor look quaintly old-fashioned, like a comfy pair of slippers, while it’s proudly sporting fashionably shiny stilettos.

The first edition of the new era saw the co-hosts exhibiting an appealing warmth and ease. Depending on your age, they come across either as the kind of women who’d make fun girlfriends, or like a friend’s cool mum. The show itself projects a sense of refreshment and relief: as though the dust has finally settled into an agreeable pattern.

With its opening foray, it offered the customary weird and wonderful mix that is the bread and butter of breakfast television: news, traffic and weather reports; stories about a Melbourne car accident, the debate on music-festival pill testing following another tragic death, a fluff piece about Margo Robbie and her latest film, a Chinese inventor who makes musical instruments from vegetables. And because it’s brekky TV, as weather girl Lara Vella reported from Strachan in Tasmania there was also a short discussion about whether you’d eat the town’s famed scallop pies with tomato or barbecue sauce.

To add what passes as political muscle at this time of year, Scott Morrison, who now apparently wants to carve a reputation as the “Prime Minister for standards”, appeared in a live cross to argue his position on citizenship ceremonies and their appropriate dress codes.

And so a new year begins and TV in 2019 is already hotting up.

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