On Sunday 21st April at 7pm on TV3 the local version of ‘The X Factor’ will begin. NZ On Air gave an eye-watering $1.6m to Mediaworks for an even more eye-watering 30 episodes. That’s a lot of X factoring.
Mediaworks had bought the rights in 2010, so they were probably hanging out for a deal to be made to get the production underway. They cut that deal last year. It must be an epic undertaking, so why is that level of planning and priority not evident in the judging panel – arguably the real stars of the show?
The spry man child, Dominic Bowden, with a Hollywood notch in his narrow plastic man child belt is a good choice to host… as far as man children go. People will at least have some vague recognition of this man. Child. He’s a smooth unit, a young Robbie Rakete channeling Pete Sinclair. The four judges however will be unknown to most punters. I vaguely know about one of them without having to consult good old Googs and on second thought I knew another name, but I’m sorry, Ms Blatt and Ms Frost – I have no clue (as John Key would say – only I’m telling the truth). It’s even worse than ‘The Voice’ – at least I recognise who Ricky Martin is. The NZ On Air money obviously didn’t extend to getting anyone with any name recognition, we can’t blame them for that. Looks like that cost was minimal.
The format must have ticked the right boxes with NZ On Air – certainly the primetime placement appeals – but the notion that some of this state subsidy will be going to pay a surly Pommy prick with a bad haircut and a big ego for having had a slightly different, more tediously drawn out take on the talent show, is raising eyebrows, temperatures and hackles (whatever hackles are). Same complaint with the Maori version of NZ On Air, Te Mangai Paho, giving ‘The GC’ $420k for the second season of soft porn and jandals. Is the nation that creatively sterile, that shallow, that the TV funding agencies are going to be able to piss these budgets away, piss them up against the cultural wall?
Both of these programmes are heinously and shamelessly commercial, primetime propositions that by all outward appearances would be and should be paying its own way along with all the other interchangeable pap for mass consumption. The public good or social outcome for which the state subsidy is given in these two cases is so very tenuous. The pitch would have been like walking a tightrope between two Len Lye installations, and yet these two shows managed that feat. The limited opportunities however makes the cupboard look bare, awfully bare. One wonders what alternatives to these bigger items were knocked back. And for all the public money are they any more classy, or less tacky at least, than they would have otherwise been without the subsidy? It is difficult to believe they could be any less than what they are. The X Factor format is set as it is.
With the Nats giving Warner Bros a sweetheart tax deal over ‘The Hobbit’ Trilogy is it any wonder the X Factor is now a subsidy mill for Sony Music. These public-private and private-private partnerships abound in modern television – John Campbell does his own little ad for the sponsor’s car company at the start of every one of his shows for example – and it has progressed, or as I see it deteriorated, greatly since L V Martin & Son sponsoring It’s In The Bag and Pete Sinclair and Rothmans endorsements might have been the ethical concern of the day.
Some would say these relationships and cross-interests are a modern necessity, a legitimate quid pro quo – the effects harmless and fleeting – the mode to view the content requiring the toleration we show to any awkward reference to Christianity or religion. Ignore it. But when Simon is a record magnate and Randy is a fellow vulture looking to own a piece of the talent the conflicts are hard to ignore. When the cooking shows and the DIYs and the other reality shows are all multiple layers of commercial rights and the output is what the commercial interests dictate then what is this art we are experiencing?
They aren’t after the best singer or they’d be appointing singing teachers after all. The judges are there to create, to initiate, the process of manufacture, on the raw material. The raw material with the best potential to produce for the agent and the company will win. There is an age division within the pool at 25 to underscore the expectation of a younger conventionally saleable talent prevailing and to keep the meat fresh they have put the NZ X Factor age at 14 – for maximum potential exploitation. A machine needing little oiling from the taxpayer one would have thought.
The case for The GC is weaker than the X Factor because the Maori funding agency is primarily concerned with the language, Te Reo, than whatever it is the programme is supposed to be doing, because they aren’t talking the Reo. They aren’t even in Aotearoa. There are Maori in it – that’s about it.
Maori design tattoos in every shot is a by-product of having few clothes as possible because it’s a t & a job, but it must be being treated as if it were fulfilling some quota the way it is. Can’t see what else could be meeting any Maori dimension in a show which has turned them into Mozzie Kardashians. Not so incidentally the real-life people are making real-life coin out of the exposure as one now expects. If they spend most of their time expressing their Aussieness on screen though, then what is the point?
They must, surely, have changed the focus for this series. If they have – and can take the characters back to their Maori roots in some way – then it could be a redemption lurking at the end of what has been hitherto boring and trashy television.
Both of these programmes are heinously and shamelessly commercial, primetime propositions that by all outward appearances would be and should be paying its own way along with all the other interchangeable pap for mass consumption
And there is the rub. The practice doesn’t stop with television, commercial “popular” music, which almost by definition should have the same ability to pay its own way, and many of its established artists, have a long track record of expecting and receiving handouts.
They aren’t after the best singer or they’d be appointing singing teachers after all.
Why any serious performer would debase themselves by consenting to be judged in these formats escapes me. If television were interested in real talent they might even show an interest in what is going on in places like Auckland University School of Music, NZ School of Music etc. Any first year student in such courses knows more about the subject than most of the judges paraded at these charades.
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