60 Minutes
Channel Nine, Sunday night, varying times
IN THE creaky, spooky elephant graveyard of old media, it’s time for the biggest old tusker of them all to lay down its weary head.
Come in 60 Minutes – your time is up.
60 Minutes is of course a misnomer: it’s more like 40 minutes after the ads are taken out.
The famous ticking clock is still there – ticking more ominously than ever, it seems – but are the big advertisers still around? If Toyota’s still about, I haven’t noticed them… which means they might as well not be there.
The usual 60 Minutes format of one vaguely hard news story, one wonder of nature/cute fluffy animal and one celebrity flirt piece leaves me weary beyond belief.
Sunday night’s Craigieburn terrorist story was so out of the usual run of fare as to have almost broke the modern 60 Minutes mould. It was a reminder of how seldom the show reaches those heights these days.
When there are terrorists coming from Craigieburn, even 60 Minutes is forced to take notice.
But the halcyon days when this show formed the basis of all Monday work water-cooler conversation are long, long gone.
Even the timeslot has Alzheimer’s… given the vagaries of cricket, you can find the show on any time between 7pm and 9.30pm.
And the days of tuning in “to see what George is doing tonight” have vanished – as has the gravitas once attached to this former current affairs flagship.
The deft hand that ruled in the days of Packer Senior seem long gone.
Channel 7’s Sunday night, the bold young challenger nipping at the staid old dowager’s heels, is generally a better bet… irrespective of whether Denham Hitchcock has his shirt on or not.
But the middle ground of current affairs… below 7.30 and above A Current Affair… remains ripe for the taking. Which station will be the first to realise it, and pitch a show to the middle?
– Jason Beck
