Axing a harbinger?

Press, 8 December 1987, Page 15

Axing a harbinger?

A.K. Grant

The decision of the Controller of Network Two, Mr John Macrae, to axe the country music show "Dixie Chicken" after only two episodes bad been screened is presumably a harbinger of the aggressive programming we are going to see once TVNZ is competing with a third channel. As such it has to be welcomed. It is hard luck on the people in “Dixie Chicken"; as I said last week the show was unattractive visually but some of the music was all right. Still, at least those involved with the show can console themselves with the fact that it actually got to air before it was axed: the old NZBC, TV One and South Pacific, and TVNZ have all in their time made shows, lost their nerve about them. agonised for months or years over whether to show them or not, and then eventually decided not to show them. Putting shows on screen so that viewers can make up their minds about them is a much better and a more adventurous system. though it will make life more difficult for

on television

those who compile the programme pages of the “Listener.” They may have to issue special kits, so that readers can make up their own programme pages, depending on what has or hasn’t been axed during the week in question.

My word, life is going to be exciting. Unless you happen to be in a programme which gets axed, of course. Because we are a caring society, unlike America or Australia,

where programmes get axed after the first episode has only been on air for five minutes, I believe the BCNZ should set up special counselling flying squads, ready to move into action the moment a programme has been axed, to counsel and comfort the survivors, supply them with warm tea and blankets and all that sort of thing, and help them cope with the loss of selfesteem involved in being on a programme which has been axed. And also help them work through their anger at the persons who have done the axing. For only when the axing has been fully and finally accepted can spiritual regeneration, and a different series featuring the same people, begin. “Inspiration” on One on Friday night gave us a delightful glimpse into the world and personality of one of our most distinguished writers, Margaret Mahy. Margaret Mahy is that rarest of creatures, a writer who can talk interestingly about her own writing. Writers are not always very reliable when talking about their own writing: precisely because they

are the very people who do it they are often the last people to have any insight into it. But Margaret Mahy’s conversation was studded with unexpected phrases and observations; she is entirely her own person and looks and sounds as though she has been for a long time, and she would appear to be one of the most unselfconscious people in Canterbury.

One of the problems usually faced by producers of television programmes about writers is that writing is, visually, a very boring activity.

There is nothing interesting in a shot of someone seated at a typewriter, staring into space. Margaret Mahy solved that problem for the makers of “Inspiration” by being such good copy when they simply pointed the camera at her.

Writers are an odd lot, and often their characters are disappointingly at right angles to the nature of what they write, so it is agreeable to be shown a writer whose work and whose character run in parallel.