Annette Sharp: Small-screen stars in short supply on Aussie TV
Far from Kerry Packer’s golden years of television, free-to-air viewers today would be hard-pressed to find 10 big ‘bankable’ names on our small screens. But there are some bright lights, reports Annette Sharp.
Nine Network owner Kerry Packer spoke plainly when asked about his hefty investment in star talent, something he believed to be essential to winning the TV ratings war.
“Son, there’s only 10 good stars on television at any one time. Make sure you’ve got eight of them,” a former executive said, recalling one of Packer’s oft-repeated mantras for success during three decades in which Nine dominated Australian television.
As a consequence, the list of star talent on Packer’s Nine roster was long and impressive: Graham Kennedy, Brian Henderson, Bert Newton, Mike Walsh, Don Lane, Michael Willesee, Jana Wendt, Ray Martin, Daryl Somers, Richie Benaud, John Newcombe, motor racing legends Jackie Stewart and Barry Sheene, and a host of others.
Legendary gambler Packer was renowned for throwing money — along with cars, lavish trips and gifts — at his stars in the belief that Australians wanted these trusted names in their homes every night.
It was a philosophy that helped cement the magnate’s reputation as the most powerful man in Australian television.
Were Packer alive today, he might be stretched to find 10 major stars across Australian TV networks, let alone eight on his beloved Nine.
This is due, in part, to changing viewing habits and to network cost-cutting.
As digital television has redefined our viewing, old-style ‘tonight’ shows that once created an opportunity for rising stars to hone their craft before live studio audiences have lost their public appeal.
Where once The Don Lane Show was broadcast four nights a week and Hey Hey It’s Saturday was on air every week from February to November — the duration of the ratings year –—today very few stars remain on air all year.
Breakfast television and evening news broadcasts are rare cost-effective exceptions.
In place of big budget productions we today have a broad slate of reality programs that run for just half a season but provide more bang for the broadcaster’s buck and greater savings to the bottom line.
With the rise of the reality genre, networks now outsource shows to external production companies that build and maintain a program’s sets, hire and sack talent and crews, and absorb much of the risk.
Should these programs fail to rate, they can then be expeditiously dropped from a network’s schedule with minimal impact to day-to-day network studio operations.
These programs, the likes of Big Brother, Idol and Survivor, are the antithesis of the big star vehicles of the past. They rely instead on a vast reserve of non-celebrities signing up to cheap short-term contracts.
As retired Seven Network executive Glen Kinging said last week: “With these programs the format is bigger than the hosts are”.
The criteria Packer used to determine a star’s value in the seventies, eighties and nineties, is as relevant today as it was then. Ratings.
In recent years, much to the chagrin of commercial TV executives, the ABC has managed to erode the big three network’s longtime domination of the ratings.
This shift to the national broadcaster has been reflected at Australian television industry awards night, the Logies.
Last year the ABC took home nine major awards at the Logies, beating Ten with five, Nine with four, Seven with two.
While these popular awards don’t reflect network share, and in fact run contrary to the ratings where the inverse is true — Seven and Nine are the consistent overall winners — they do go some way to establishing who the biggest stars on the box are.
A star’s status can also be determined by the size of their salary, the number of weeks they appears in the prime time schedule, how prominently they appear in the network’s on-air promo, their exposure at the annual Upfronts industry sales event and, in old school terms, the placement of their spot in the company car park.
Using this criteria, Nine can still lay claim to top spot on television’s power list, with four-time Gold Logie nominee and two-time winner LEGO Masters host Hamish Blake at the top.
Thanks to her incredible exposure, Seven’s 2022 Gold Logie nominee Sonia Kruger — who in 2022 hosted back-to-back prime-time offerings The Voice, Big Brother, and Dancing With The Stars –— is currently the second-biggest star on Australian television.
Her stablemate, Sunrise host David Koch, lands at number three with his enormous live television workload and national appeal.
Global TV phenomenon Bluey is fourth, and The Block’s Scott Cam are at number five.
Positions six to 10 are, given the ABC’s successes, simply too close to call.
The contenders, in no particular order, are the ABC’s Tom Gleeson, Sarah Ferguson and the recently departed Shaun Micallef; Nine’s Andy Lee, Karl Stefanovic and Ali Langdon; and Ten’s Tom Gleisner, Osher Gunsberg, Julia Morris and the last star standing at The Project, Waleed Aly.
1. HAMISH BLAKE
LEGO Masters host Blake, 41, is Australian TV’s undisputed number-one man.
The two-time Gold Logie winner is cut from old-style television cloth: He’s a good-looking and funny radio veteran who has broad market appeal and is naturally likeable.
A year after Blake and his comedy partner Andy Lee launched their comedy careers in 2003, the Seven network came calling.
After honing their brand on radio, they eventually signed with Nine in 2011 after the network offered them carte blanche. They could produce whatever they liked.
The resulting 20-episode Hamish and Andy’s Gap Year became a family hit and positioned Blake as a family entertainer.
2. SONIA KRUGER
After 30 years in show business, Kruger’s success has been hard-won.
A minor role in Baz Luhrmann’s 1992 film Strictly Ballroom brought her to the attention of TV bosses at Nine.
A presenting stint on Nine’s Wonder World! led to an offer from rival Seven.
With her quick wit and bombshell good looks, Kruger was soon making appearances on news shows Today Tonight and Sunrise, before the perfect role came along in 2004 when she was drafted to play the dazzling yet glib co-host on Dancing With The Stars.
In 2011 Kruger returned to Nine to host daytime show Mornings.
Prime-time roles as the host of Big Brother and The Voice followed before Seven stole her back in 2019 to host four prime-time shows.
3. DAVID KOCH
Self-effacing and unassuming, breakfast show host Koch breaks the mould when it comes to TV stars, and one gets the distinct impression Kerry Packer might have passed on him — and lived to regret it.
The former accountant-turned-finance journalist would, however, find a firm supporter in television’s “other Kerry”, Stokes, Seven’s proprietor and Koch’s friend.
For the past 20 years, Koch has been breakfast television’s most consistent player as the host of the nation’s top rating breakfast show, Sunrise.
Despite his daggy dad-vibes, “Kochie”, who has called television “bullshit”, is said to be Seven’s highest paid star.
4. BLUEY
Two-time Logie winner Bluey is a young Blue Heeler from Brisbane with a heart of gold who, in four short Covid years, has taken the world by storm.
The animated series, co-commissioned by the ABC and BBC Studios and broadcast globally on Disney+, continued to kick broadcasting goals in 2022, when it ranked in the top 10 streaming programs in the US, beating comedy favourite Seinfeld.
Locally, the TikTok favourite topped the ABC’s co-viewing demographic (or people over 18 viewing with 0 to 17-year-olds).
Broadcast in more than 60 countries, including China, Bluey is television phenomenon.
5. SCOTT CAM
Rounding out our top five of family favourites is Scott Cam, host of Nine’s The Block.
Despite a ratings decline in 2022, The Block was still the only non-sporting broadcast to rank in the top 10 television programs of 2022, coming in at number seven with 2,506,000 viewers across all platforms.
Since being scouted to Nine’s Backyard Blitz in the nineties, the reluctant TV star and former chippie Cam has taunted contestants on Domestic Blitz, Our Place and Reno Rumble before taking the reigns of The Block in 2010.
The one-time Gold Logie winner is an everyman presenter to whom archetypal Aussies can relate.
He can build a house, he can drink beer — and one gets the impression he can probably do them both at once.
Got an entertainment news tip? Email annette.sharp@news.com.au
Trump’s ‘sick’ tirade about murdered director
