Currently facing racial discrimination charges, climate-change denier and resident News Ltd wing nut, Andrew Bolt has been given a Sunday morning TV show on the same day that Fox in America has had to cancel Glen Beck's program after plummeting ratings and consumer boycotts of the show's advertisers. Beck's decision to label President Obama as a racist was a key step towards his demise.
Of course, it's just a coincidence, and Bolt is no Beck. Bolt will struggle to be entertaining and interesting every week, especially to anyone not a politics tragic. Beck made conspiracy an art-form, his faux academic lecture style would have been hilarious had its content not been so ugly. Beck's brand of manic right wing lunacy is in a category all it's own. He achieved a cult status. But Beck's demise does show that even in Tea Party America there are limits to how far you can go. I wonder whether Beck's demise indicates that this is another trend that has run its course. Perhaps, the formula of chasing audiences with ever more incendiary commentary has had its moment. Certainly, the odium that Abbott attracted for appearing in front of bitch and witch signs at the recent Canberra rally suggests that even stronger boundaries apply in Australia.
In Sydney, the commercial radio stations are trying to out do each other in being more Alan Jones than Alan Jones. They both have presenter lineups which are comprised almost entirely of white, anglo, middle class, male jocks who with very few exceptions are borderline hysterics. Like Beck, they have taken to organising and speaking at political rallies. Despite their enthusiasm for right-wing nonsense, commercial talk radio continues its slide into obscurity. Other areas of the Australian media have not yet gone full throttle on using right-wing political campaigns to try and build audiences, but News Ltd is pretty close.
We can only hope that today's announcements suggest nothing more than that Australia has jumped on a bandwagon that has already started to stumble.
Jumped the Shark more like with Hateline at 10am on a Sunday.
Posted by: Hillbilly Skeleton | 08 April 2011 at 02:44 PM
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought one of the issues leading to the cancellation of Glenn Beck's show was a steady erosion of revenue from advertisers willing to be associated with the program.
If so, and possibly of particular relevance given the Ten network's own revenue problems, is there a chance that something similar will happen to Mr Bolt in due course? If so, how soon and how dependent is it on Ms Rinehart's largesse?
Posted by: Seamus | 08 April 2011 at 03:03 PM