Eight male media personalities to front Ten’s Pilot Week
Network Ten has revealed the lineup for its inaugural Pilot Week, with eight male comedians and media personalities to appear in the locally-produced one off programs.
The week – which will see a number of local programs launch a pilot episode and put them to an audience vote – will be hosted by broadcaster and 2DayFM radio co-host Grant Denyer and Studio Ten co-host Angela Bishop and will run from August 19 across Ten and WIN.
The week will run from August 19
Ten’s lineup includes recently announced Trial By Kyle, a half-hour narrative comedy by Dave O’Neil, a half-hour show with ‘opinion, insight and laughs’ from former politician Sam Dastyari and a Saturday night show featuring Rove McManus.
Maybe it’s more to do with demographics. Ten already does well with female audiences with The Bachelor/ette (in Paradise), Masterchef etc. Maybe they’re looking for something to appeal to a male audience, hence why all these are male driven.
The programming boss is a woman after all. If you have a show idea Jane, maybe set a chat with Bev?
Context is everything. @Damien could be right.
I’m all for gender equality but that doesn’t mean everything has to be politically correct. Let’s just hope it was a conscious decision. Let’s also hope that appealing to a male audience doesn’t have to exclude women as a given either. It is a complex environment, but being deliberate and planning with equality in mind across the board is what counts.
Thanks for that insight Damien. Particularly the bit about Masterchef being for women. We should all be staying home to learn how to cook, after all. Definitely not for a Male audience, Masterchef, with its FOUR male hosts.
I don’t believe I said Masterchef was for women. I speculated that it may rate well among women (along with their other stripped reality franchises) which is why Ten could be looking for a hook for a male audience.
Bev is this an oversight? From what I know of you – you’d be mortified by this. Just admit the mistake and get some non white male talent up there too.
Mumbrella equally reports female digital site for Channel Nine too… it goes both ways, so don’t get sucked into outrage here.
https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/nines-future-women-site-officially-launches-530810
So having viewers vote on a mish-mash of “new” programs makes Ten an innovator.
In all other TV Networks around the world you have skilled people who could make a decision about what programs would work and what wouldn’t. They’re called heads of entertainment/drama/etc and programmers.
Seems that Ten has given up trying to make its own decisions. Probably a good thing with the track record of those running the place. But really…
Pretty sad for Rove that his rebooted variety show has to “compete” with a bunch of people who have never had their own shows in order to possibly get a run…
Both Kinne and Franklin have had their own series before, and most of the others have been on air in various guises.
I thought Rove had proven how desperately unfunny he was on that thoroughly bad radio show he was booted off in Sydney..? Without the safety net of writers and pre-taped TV segments he’s just a very average, rather witless, privileged white guy.
And even with the writers he isn’t that funny. Neither was Mr Somers of course. Yet people like Nick Richardson and Laurence Mooney haven’t got a show at the moment…
The ABC did this in 2016, so not very innovative (probably why they used the specifics of “commercial channels”. ABC ended up developing Ronny Chieng: International Student and The Letdown, but well done Ten you are supporting local talent, albeit only male talent.
We can only hope that Ten will commission eight female-hosted comedy pilots next year.
This said, if Ten had commissioned the one eight-episode series fronted by a man, no-one would have noticed his gender. Just as it has commissioned numerous female fronted dramas with many more episodes than this in recent years.
Oh dear. Knee jerk outrage and PC blinkers working brilliantly here.
International women’s day, women’s this, women’s that, and most of us rejoice, a pissy comedy show with eight men, and a few posters get disgruntled and a number of hens start squawking.
The world is made up of people, so many women so many men, and a number of others who identify or not with one or the other or both or neither. Let the world be.
The only reason for outrage here is that Kyle is getting another go at a TV show. Did we lose the tape of the last show he fronted? Ten, just show 22 minutes of grass growing, it would be more interesting.
If a network won’t take a punt on diversity as part of a ‘pilot week’ scenario then what hope is there? A number of these could have gone straight to series based on the experience of the individual – Rove, Kinne, O’Neil, Sandilands – and their success could have been tested in the usual way. Surely pilot week is a chance to try things that are new, different or simply diverse? And as for ‘viewer voting’, Ch 10 have already made most of the decisions for the broader audience – many people will have no interest in any of the programs, leaving them with the particular demographic they actually want. As a network in rebuilding mode they had a rare chance to play both safe and risky with a stack of formats – what a terrible missed opportunity.
Seriously – Jane Kennedy is part owner of Working Dog !??!
that produce are you paying attention and Russel Coight – if she wants a more balanced representation in front of camera perhaps she could start at home.