Impersonation ban upsets ‘Week of If'

Press, 6 November 1978, Page 1

Impersonation ban upsets ‘Week of If'

A ban on impersonating political leaders in “A Week of It” may cause some of the show’s scriptwriters to shun skits planned for election night. The writers received a directive from South Pacific Television’s head office last Thursday saying that there were to be no impersonations of political figures before the election. There was apparently no question of the show’s being taken off the air and jokes about the political leaders would still be allowed. The writers, upset by the restriction, met the producer David McPhail, on Friday and later sent a telegram to the DirectorGeneral of TV2 (Mr A. .Martin). After further discussions on Saturday, when an episode of the show was televised without impersonations. the writers sent another telegram of protest to Mr Martin. In a statement to “The Press” last, evening, t.hev said. “Political impersonations have been one of the strengths of the last 37 enisodes of ‘A Week of It.' We regret Television 2’s decision to ban them for the last two programmes and regard this as censorshin which cannot be justified in a programme of political satire." The statement was sinned bv A<an Grant, Chris McVeigh. John Gadsby, Bruce Ans'e.v, Peter Hawes, and Ken Ellis. Mr Grant said the writers were obliged to honour their contract for the remaining two episodes of the show this year.

“What will be affected is election night,” He indicated that he would not be writing any skits planned for when results came in on November 25. Fie knew of others in the writing team who shared his reaction. The boycott would be a form of protest. “It is absurd to participate in an election-night programme when we have been told we cannot impersonate Muldoon, Rowling, and the others now." said Mr Grant. There had been little interference of this sort before and he had been pleased about its absence. It was ironic that a picture of David McPhail impersonating Mr Muldoon had been featured on the cover of last week’s edition of the “New Zealand Women’s Weekly.”

The controller of programmes for TV2 (Mr Kevan Moore) said that before elections, television, like other broadcasting media, had to “observe a very careful period of political balance." All broadcasting institutions had to remember that they had to remain impartial in an election; “When we get in the realms’ of satire that, sort of balance becomes impossible.” Mr Moore said. Skits which did not use impersonation were completely different from those that did. It. was a control-led-comedy situation in the third person: no-one was putting words in other people’s mouths. It would be “unfortunate” if writers for "A Week of It” chose not to write skits for election night.