Ten needs to do better than this

CHANNEL 10 is a diverse network, with one of the industry’s most powerful women in charge of programming, but it dropped the ball with its recent show announcements, writes Colin Vickery.

ARE we living in 1950?

That was my reaction when I saw the artwork that accompanied my announcement of the TV shows coming up on Channel 10’s Pilot Week.

Initially I had got caught up in the excitement of Ten’s initiative which sees eight new shows — mostly comedies — trialled in August with viewers having a say in which will potentially go to series.

But on seeing the group of photos of the eight hosts, I realised that they were all very male and for the most part very white — and that lack of diversity feels wrong in this day and age.

Kyle Sandilands (Trial by Kyle), Dave O’Neil (Dave), Troy Kinne (Kinne Tonight), Rhys Darby and Stephen Curry (Drunk History), Harley Breen (Taboo), Sam Dastyari (Disgrace!), Rove McManus (Bring Back Saturday Night), and Heath Franklin (Skit Happens) are front and centre.

The Bachelor’s Anna Heinrich — part of Trial by Kyle — is the only woman mentioned in Ten’s Pilot Week media release other than Angela Bishop who will host the week of programs with Grant Denyer.

It was a shock coming from Ten. This is the network that recently wooed Lisa Wilkinson from Nine and Jennifer Keyte from Seven to front major news-based programs.

It is also the network that has championed women in dramas Offspring and The Wrong Girl and is in the middle of filming Playing for Keeps which has four female leads including Madeleine West and Olympia Valance.

Oh Look!! How very exciting for all these men!!! And look! ... There’s a lady in this picture with the remote control so she can watch all the clever funny men who have the opportunity to pilot their own shows @channelten @Colvick @theheraldsun @DailyMailUK @dailytelegraph pic.twitter.com/amzX7N9EJv

— Jane Kennedy (@Jane_L_Kennedy) July 22, 2018

Ten’s MasterChef Australia celebrates ethnic diversity and Ten has one of Aussie television’s most progressive current affairs programs — The Project with Waleed Aly and Carrie Bickmore.

But there were warning bells going before the announcement of Pilot Week. Ten’s hosts for new quiz show Pointless, which premieres tonight, also fall into the white male camp — Mark Humphries and Andrew Rochford.

It didn’t take long for some of Australia’s biggest female comedy stars including Jane Kennedy, Magda Szubanski, Mishel Laurie and Wendy Harmer to fire up on Twitter about Pilot Week and with good reason.

“Oh look. How exciting for all these men,” Kennedy tweeted. “There’s a lady in this picture with the remote control so she can watch all these clever funny men who have the opportunity to pilot their own shows.”

Szubanski posted: “We hoped after Kath and Kim things would change. But no. Women still can’t get a guernsey”.

Laurie posted: “I’m over it. Can’t be bothered spending my time and energy begging for a seat at the table where I’m not valued.”

It would bother Ten that they are getting strongly criticised by their own. Kennedy is part of the Working Dog team that produces Have You Been Paying Attention! and made The Panel and Thank God You’re Here.

Szubanski has made regular appearances on The Project. Laurie hosted the 2011 season of Can of Worms on Ten.

The weird thing in all of this is that the person responsible for commissioning the eight shows is one of the most powerful women in Australian television — Ten program chief Beverley McGarvey.

That means critics can’t label the pro-male bias of the Pilot Week line-up as some sort of “boys club” conspiracy.

Earlier today McGarvey told me that she is disappointed by the criticism and that the Pilot Week shows have to be seen in a wider context.

“We (Ten) have 21 new shows on air this year and Pilot Week is eight of them,” McGarvey said.

“When we look at our (total programming slate) there are strong female voices at the top of our shows.

“In areas where we are under-represented we have gone out looking for female voices.”

Ten programming chief Beverley McGarvey.

True, but Ten’s three other major comedy offerings this year are also male-driven — Dave Hughes’ Hughesy — We Have a Problem, Rove McManus’ Show Me the Movie and Glenn Robbins’ Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures.

Kennedy’s Have You Been Paying Attention? features female panellists but the host is male — Tom Gleisner.

This is at a time when Aussie Hannah Gadsby has won global acclaim for her Netflix special Nanette. The streaming service also recently announced that it has signed Urzila Carlson (a regular on Have You Been Paying Attention?) and Cal Wilson to stand-up deals.

Ten’s recent white male skew also seems out of step with the philosophy of new owner America’s CBS network.

CBS has purposefully expanded diversity in recent years. An example of that is its new two year first-look deal with NCIS star Wilmer Valderrama to create “culturally relevant projects”.

Ten’s worst nightmare would be if the backlash leads to a boycott of Pilot Week but the way anger is building I can see that happening.

O’Neil is clearly worried, tweeting “After doing comedy for 30 years I decided to have a crack at doing my own show. So I wrote it, produced it and paid for it myself. I shopped it around and Ch 10 said they would show it in Pilot Week. I was so happy. Please give it a chance.”

Pilot Week should have been an exciting initiative at a time when the commercial networks are happy to churn out carbon copy reality shows — more cooking, more renovation, more dating.

But I can’t help thinking that Ten’s all-male line-up has undermined that excitement. It is too easy to see it as either tin-eared or outright sexist.

Whatever the reason, it is not good enough in 2018.

Colin Vickery is a Herald Sun TV writer.

@Colvick