Media Take: Brown-washing

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First there was Media7, then there was Media3, now the Russell Brown appreciation society is called Media Take and screens on Maori TV at the traditional NZ On Air niche-funding dump time of 10:30pm, on the niche-funding mid-week dump day of Tuesday, with a repeat – also at the same late night hour on Thursday. As with the previous two iterations, Brown’s formula is as predictable as the tides and as mundane as toenail clipping. After seven years – which is about thirty television years – we see nothing has changed.

The sponsor is now Maori TV, so we can add a few awkward moments of Brown having to share the desk with someone else (Toi Iti) and say ‘Tena Koe’ as the only novelty in what was always a very light lunch consisting of portions of stale white bread.

Expectations were met if not exceeded. As long as Russell Brown has a Wellington-style floral/patterned shirt, an audience in the studio to supply an air of sophistication and the oxygen of ego, then all that is needed are some Pakeha academics and – hey presto! – let the magic begin.

Firstly, setting the tone of the show is an atonal cacophony – the ear-bleeding techno cat-fight that is the introduction music. It defies genre. It defies harmony. It’s drum and bass meets lawnmower and chainsaw with frightened animals thrown in. It is perhaps even worse than any previous effort. If the last one was like a grandfather clock tumbling down six flights of stairs – and it was – then this current version of the theme is like a recording of an earthquake in a gift shop. It is such a gawdawful racket it is a wonder any human would continue to watch. Whoever devised this ‘music’ must be very good chums of Brown because it is, without doubt, the worst TV theme I have ever heard in all my years.

As expected, Brown is the host and Toi Iti provides the comic interludes and the Maori content. This is very much Brown’s show and Iti comes off like the Tamati Coffey of Maori TV. Are we going to hear that he is Tame Iti’s son in every episode? This just adds to the sense that Iti is tacked opportunistically on the side to secure a broadcaster to secure funding to secure Brown’s career. Iti’s function is token.

A few years back Russell Brown had edited a book called the Great NZ Argument in which he didn’t include any Maori – but he went ahead and included a parody piece by a Pakeha pretending to be a Maori because he initially couldn’t tell the difference and stated that he could find no actual Maori who had ever written any argument worth publishing! These are sad facts, printed in black and white at his expense. Brown is monumentally woeful as far as Maori are concerned, obviously. But here we have him, still at the trough, and using Maori to do it. Brown isn’t even good enough for Pakeha television anymore and yet here he is using an indigenous broadcaster to peddle his tepid, plodding, politically correct musings.

In the second episode I watched Brown establish he was the host – and relegate Iti – when they appear at the desk together, then interview Jon Stephenson on Afghanistan and Antony Royal on NetHui, and then the wrap. All of which was very earnest – and very dull. Mates talking to mates, geeks talking to geeks. This is no place for revelation, it is an echo-chamber.

Toi Iti, for all of his limited input, was everything Russell Brown is not: handsome, humorous, dynamic, young and Maori. In addition to these talents Iti proved himself quite capable of conducting a panel discussion. For these sins, Iti – like all Maori are well used to experiencing – play a second fiddle to the Pakeha establishment and their representatives. What a great pity this is true on Maori Television. To me the situation is rather offensive.

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8 COMMENTS

  1. geeks talking to geeks….blah blah.

    Neither talk-back radio standards nor geek radio, it’s anybody’s guess as to what will make you happy.

  2. Little is bitchier than media industry insiders going at it, apart maybe from top level writers spats.

    Put the sledgehammer away Tim, the nut that is Brown was well cracked a while back when he chose hobbits over union members.

  3. watch it not impressed hate the talking head interviews that go either too far or not far enough. On Demand is great you can skip forward. But do not understand why Russell is on Maori TV he does not appear to have any understanding of the audience and alternately ignores and patronizes them. I have excluded myself as I wouldn’t have looked and any second look would be to skip through to interviews done by Iti who did not play with his notes and pen during the interview and listened to the interviewees.

  4. Russell Brown may appear a bit “dull” at times, but hey, it beats the Paul Henry Show and Seven Sharp, I must say, as we do at least at times get some thoughtful reports and interviews, which Henry and Hosking are naturally incapable of delivering.

  5. “Wellington-style floral/patterned shirt” – apart from being inaccurate what does this have to do with anything?

  6. Tim, I find your long one-way feud with me more puzzling than anything else, but I’d rather you didn’t invent quotes for me. This is nonsense:

    “A few years back Russell Brown had edited a book called the Great NZ Argument in which he didn’t include any Maori – but he went ahead and included a parody piece by a Pakeha pretending to be a Maori because he initially couldn’t tell the difference and stated that he could find no actual Maori who had ever written any argument worth publishing! These are sad facts, printed in black and white at his expense.”

    The fact, sad or otherwise is that I wrote *this* in the book:

    “In different ways, all of them are ‘others’ measuring themselves in arguments framed by Maori. What are not included in this book — but will be in a future one — are arguments by and about Maori themselves.”

    Unfortunately, our little publishing imprint didn’t prove sustainable and there wasn’t a follow-up. I tried.

    Also:

    – The shirt is from Strangely Normal in Auckland.

    – Toi and I are co-hosts. You seem to have missed the part where he introduced the second programme.

    – Yes, Toi is a handsome man and I can only apologise that I have not met your standards in this respect. I further apologise for not being younger.

    – The theme tune is library music. We couldn’t afford a commission. I don’t mind it, but I didn’t choose it.

    – No one and nothing was “added to secure funding”. NZ On Air held over our existing funding when Media3 was let go by TV3. Then-Maori Television CEO Jim Mather was a fan of Media3 and things developed from there.

    Cheers,

    Russell

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