This blogpost is basically a rant, so Millennials might want to stop reading here. The other week it was announced that the comedy program ‘Tonightly’, featuring host Tom Ballard, would not be funded in the coming year. For all intents and purposes this means the end of the program, which I had never watched. ‘The Weekly’ with Charlie Pickering (another host aged in his thirties) is one I do watch. I find the abrasive Tom Gleeson refreshing.
But the reaction to the canning of Tom Ballard’s program caused widespread consternation. People commented frequently on social media in support of the show. It became something of a minor cause celebre around the traps. You didn’t have to look far to find someone willing to put their name out there in favour of keeping the show on-air.
My interest was piqued, so I went out of my way to look at some of the segments that had been put on the TV. In general, I have to admit that as a result of my research I can’t see the appeal of the program. It’s too narrow in its focus, and too likely to stay on subjects of interest only to people aged in their thirties (I’m 56). The median age in Australia (the age at which half of the population is older and the other half younger) is 37, so presumably ‘Tonightly’ was aimed directly at the mainstream, but what I saw wasn’t very encouraging in the way it illustrated the taste, the education, the character, or the intelligence of its creators.
Going all the way out there in the naughty stakes, much like Steve Bannon making like a maverick and talking over the top of Sarah Ferguson last week during his infamous ‘4 Corners’ interview, one segment on ‘Tonightly’ was titled ‘Why the Fuck Not’. The slot’s title served merely to give the creators the opportunity to use a bad word. Shock, horror! You don’t need to be clever these days, you just have to be rude. One of the segments with this title had a fat man with a beard writhing in a plastic pool filled with some sort of lubricating substance. It was called ‘Mr Oily’. This was no doubt aimed at making some cutting comment about sexism and the objectification of women, but I’m not sure I understand what it has to do with Baby Boomers, which was evidently the target of this attempt at satire. Going by domestic violence rates that are reported in the media it doesn’t appear that the current generation of Australian husbands is any more or less likely to disrespect women than any that came before it.
Then there was a segment in which the creators had a narrator using a DNA testing service in order to discover things about his ancestry. There are several companies in this market who charge you a fee to make an ethnicity profile and to link you, through their website, to people in your extended family who are also listed there. They have charges for some of their website’s features. They also share the data they discover as a result of doing your DNA profile with other companies, although they don’t advertise this aspect of their business model.
But what really irritated me about this segment was they way the narrator, a young man, spoke dismissively to his putative grandmother, who had offered to tell him about his family history. It was harsh and unkind. It’s a fact that older people are more interested in genealogy but it’s not surprising if you think about it for a moment. Older people have raised children and seen them grow into adults themselves. They have also probably buried parents, and so have different feelings about their forebears than young people do. Just making fun of old people because of something that is as natural for them as it is for a young person to want to see a rock band play loud music is trite and puerile, and it caused offense to me. My father when he retired spent a decade writing his memoir and also making family trees that he put into spreadsheets. He died in 2011 of dementia and complications stemming from it. His memoir is precious and irreplaceable, quite unlike the bad ‘Tonightly’ sketch that cruelly pokes fun at grandmothers for doing what comes naturally to them.
My last example is a segment that looked at the outrage industry, during which the host brought in an academic to give his expert advice about how the public sphere operates. I thought that the segment betrayed an alarming lack of self-awareness, especially since there are plenty of articles (some written by me, by the way) about the way social media has developed over the years. It’s not rocket science to think that Twitter is an abrasive, unhealthy, narcissistic environment filled with people who are motivated by the worst instincts to behave in some cases in appalling ways. But ‘Tongihtly’ thinks it is breaking a big story by running a segment that deploys one person with educated opinions talking about this widespread problem. You wonder where the creators usually go for their information, and if they have somehow missed the widely-available sources you yourself use to keep yourself up-to-date.
If this review appears unnecessarily negative, I would add that things I’ve seen elsewhere tend to cement the views I built from watching the segments talked about here. One day, for example, as I was walking on the street near my home I saw three young men, aged in their early thirties, walking toward me. As they went along the pavement one of them, who was telling a story to his friends probably while they went to get something to eat for lunch, said loudly, “He literally got down on his knees and sucked my d***!” (using the common slang word for a part of the male anatomy). And he said it not once, but twice, evidently thinking that to repeat his unsavoury remark gave him added appeal in his companions’ eyes.
This, I remind myself, is the audience for ‘Tonightly’. This crass generation that flocks to see dull, amateurish superhero movies at the cinema and that complains about drinking restrictions in parts of NSW that have resulted in earlier pub closing times. This is the future, I tell myself, but the feelings this thought inspires are not reassuring.
UPDATE 2pm 13 Sept 2018: I was informed on Twitter this morning that in the 'Tonightly' sketch about DNA testing, the narrator is supposed to look uncaring and thoughtless after he tells his "grandmother" that he doesn't want to hear about the family history. I'm unsure how you're supposed to grasp this meaning, there is no obvious clue given to the viewer at the time the comments are made. I have to take the information from my source as truthful however.
But the reaction to the canning of Tom Ballard’s program caused widespread consternation. People commented frequently on social media in support of the show. It became something of a minor cause celebre around the traps. You didn’t have to look far to find someone willing to put their name out there in favour of keeping the show on-air.
My interest was piqued, so I went out of my way to look at some of the segments that had been put on the TV. In general, I have to admit that as a result of my research I can’t see the appeal of the program. It’s too narrow in its focus, and too likely to stay on subjects of interest only to people aged in their thirties (I’m 56). The median age in Australia (the age at which half of the population is older and the other half younger) is 37, so presumably ‘Tonightly’ was aimed directly at the mainstream, but what I saw wasn’t very encouraging in the way it illustrated the taste, the education, the character, or the intelligence of its creators.
Going all the way out there in the naughty stakes, much like Steve Bannon making like a maverick and talking over the top of Sarah Ferguson last week during his infamous ‘4 Corners’ interview, one segment on ‘Tonightly’ was titled ‘Why the Fuck Not’. The slot’s title served merely to give the creators the opportunity to use a bad word. Shock, horror! You don’t need to be clever these days, you just have to be rude. One of the segments with this title had a fat man with a beard writhing in a plastic pool filled with some sort of lubricating substance. It was called ‘Mr Oily’. This was no doubt aimed at making some cutting comment about sexism and the objectification of women, but I’m not sure I understand what it has to do with Baby Boomers, which was evidently the target of this attempt at satire. Going by domestic violence rates that are reported in the media it doesn’t appear that the current generation of Australian husbands is any more or less likely to disrespect women than any that came before it.
Then there was a segment in which the creators had a narrator using a DNA testing service in order to discover things about his ancestry. There are several companies in this market who charge you a fee to make an ethnicity profile and to link you, through their website, to people in your extended family who are also listed there. They have charges for some of their website’s features. They also share the data they discover as a result of doing your DNA profile with other companies, although they don’t advertise this aspect of their business model.
But what really irritated me about this segment was they way the narrator, a young man, spoke dismissively to his putative grandmother, who had offered to tell him about his family history. It was harsh and unkind. It’s a fact that older people are more interested in genealogy but it’s not surprising if you think about it for a moment. Older people have raised children and seen them grow into adults themselves. They have also probably buried parents, and so have different feelings about their forebears than young people do. Just making fun of old people because of something that is as natural for them as it is for a young person to want to see a rock band play loud music is trite and puerile, and it caused offense to me. My father when he retired spent a decade writing his memoir and also making family trees that he put into spreadsheets. He died in 2011 of dementia and complications stemming from it. His memoir is precious and irreplaceable, quite unlike the bad ‘Tonightly’ sketch that cruelly pokes fun at grandmothers for doing what comes naturally to them.
My last example is a segment that looked at the outrage industry, during which the host brought in an academic to give his expert advice about how the public sphere operates. I thought that the segment betrayed an alarming lack of self-awareness, especially since there are plenty of articles (some written by me, by the way) about the way social media has developed over the years. It’s not rocket science to think that Twitter is an abrasive, unhealthy, narcissistic environment filled with people who are motivated by the worst instincts to behave in some cases in appalling ways. But ‘Tongihtly’ thinks it is breaking a big story by running a segment that deploys one person with educated opinions talking about this widespread problem. You wonder where the creators usually go for their information, and if they have somehow missed the widely-available sources you yourself use to keep yourself up-to-date.
If this review appears unnecessarily negative, I would add that things I’ve seen elsewhere tend to cement the views I built from watching the segments talked about here. One day, for example, as I was walking on the street near my home I saw three young men, aged in their early thirties, walking toward me. As they went along the pavement one of them, who was telling a story to his friends probably while they went to get something to eat for lunch, said loudly, “He literally got down on his knees and sucked my d***!” (using the common slang word for a part of the male anatomy). And he said it not once, but twice, evidently thinking that to repeat his unsavoury remark gave him added appeal in his companions’ eyes.
This, I remind myself, is the audience for ‘Tonightly’. This crass generation that flocks to see dull, amateurish superhero movies at the cinema and that complains about drinking restrictions in parts of NSW that have resulted in earlier pub closing times. This is the future, I tell myself, but the feelings this thought inspires are not reassuring.
UPDATE 2pm 13 Sept 2018: I was informed on Twitter this morning that in the 'Tonightly' sketch about DNA testing, the narrator is supposed to look uncaring and thoughtless after he tells his "grandmother" that he doesn't want to hear about the family history. I'm unsure how you're supposed to grasp this meaning, there is no obvious clue given to the viewer at the time the comments are made. I have to take the information from my source as truthful however.
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