What Gleeson’s Gold Logie win says about Australian TV

In a year where not even a million people bothered tuning in to TV’s night of nights, comedian Tom Gleeson has become the perfect embodiment of where the industry is at right now, and what it needs next, writes Cameron Adams.

Did Tom Gleeson just stick the heart paddles on the Logies and add a few years to its life?

It sure seems so.

His winning the Gold Logie on Sunday night has given the award show, which has been kicked around like a dog for years, some truly amazing publicity that no amount of red carpet hype could buy.

Of course, Gleeson won it by sticking the boot in himself, running a parody campaign which backfired (or succeeded depending on how you see it) when his name was read out at the bitter, bitter end of the epic broadcast. Even he looked shocked to learn that he’d actually pulled it off.

However, that sabotage campaign stirred up a passion for the Logies that hasn’t been displayed publicly in years.

RELATED: Winners and highlights from the 2019 Logies award ceremony

Gleeson taking the piss out of the Logies reminded people why they love, like, or at the very least need the Logies. Even the trolls who love to hate tweet along realised how much they’d miss it were it to actually go anywhere.

No one seemed more surprised with Tom Gleeson’s win than Tom Gleeson himself. Picture: Nine

The Logies has been defended in the last week like never before. And right now it needs it. Ratings continue to drop — last night also unable to crack the magic million mark on preliminary figures — and more awards were taken out by subscription services Stan and Foxtel than Channels 7, 9 and 10 combined.

To quote Gleeson in his acceptance speech, “Our industry is dying, and I’m part of that.”

The Logies are not perfect, but it’s all we’ve got to celebrate what the Australian public loves on TV.

In winning, and giving one of the most memorable speeches in a long time, Gleeson ripped the scab off the heart of Australia’s love of not taking things too seriously and how it often replaces genuine emotion and affection.

RELATED: In pictures: 2019 Logie Awards

He’s a comedian, extreme piss-taking is his schtick and it’s what fuels his show Hard Quiz, which, he rightly pointed out is the highest-rating quiz show in the country.

Gleeson detailed the anomalies of the Gold Logie — every year the nominees cause equal amounts of head scratching and affection — and how they may not exactly reflect the ratings on TV. But the TV rating system is a hot mess with dated technology that’s barely reflective of the entire nation.

Tom Gleeson was, in some ways, was considered least likely to win the Gold Logie. Picture: AAP/Darren England

Getting angry Gleeson won — by public vote — is a bit like getting angry that a novelty hit has kept Bruce Springsteen from No. 1 on the charts. You can’t argue with popularity (even if TV Week never reveal voting figures).

Gold Logie winners are always divisive. If Costa Georgiadis or Waleed Aly had won, there’d be a different kind of vitriol today. And frankly, after his opening roast of Channel 9 shows — on a Channel 9 show — Gleeson deserved his Gold Logie there and then for his Trojan Horse approach.

He was like a sniper, taking out Karl Stefanovic’s “tacky wedding”, MAFS bogans, the Today Show’s ratings, the Footy Show, and then circling back for Kochie and his fellow Gold Logie nominees — the dude from Sunrise and the girl from Neighbours.

RELATED: Comedian Tom Gleeson wins Gold Logie

The Logies can be pretty beige, so seeing a stand up comedian give zero effs and be equally disrespectful was refreshing and something we hadn’t seen in that way before.

Gleeson’s win has also come at an amazing time for the ABC. He’s their first Gold winner in four decades.

Channel 9 and Channel 7 didn’t win a single award on Sunday night. That’s remarkable — all the millions of people who watched MAFS and MKR didn’t bother voting for the shows.

So many ABC shows blitzed majorly-hyped commercial TV shows they were up against. In total, the broadcaster took out 10 awards — the most of any network for the evening.

Tom Gleeson’s comedy show, Hard Chat, is an additional spin-off to Hard Quiz. Picture: ABC

Since TV Week made voting digital, the game has changed. It’s become harder for PRs and stations to rig because you need to supply a mobile number to get a voting code, as opposed to buying countless copies of a magazine, cutting out a coupon, and physically posting it in, which was the job of many an intern and assistant for decades.

In years before the digital era, commercial TV networks have always gone hard Logies voting campaigns, and often, they can be manipulated if you play it smart. Which Gleeson did, but in a way few saw coming.

RELATED: How Tom Gleeson changed the Logies forever

And while, yeah, the Logies are written off as nonsense by some, they can literally keep people in a job. And not just the hundreds of people working on putting the show on TV.

Last year the drama Wentworth was on TV death row — behind the scenes it had filmed its final episodes, the cast and crew sworn to secrecy. But at the Logies it blitzed both public and industry awards, and so the show was greenlit for two more seasons.

Whatever your opinion on him personally or of his style of comedy, Gleeson has done wonders for the Logies.

He’s given himself a huge profile and brought Logies lovers out of the woodwork. He rallied those who think it needed the piss being ripped out of it and everyone won. Except those who didn’t and looked salty on camera. But to them, there’s always next year.

@cameron_adams