Paul Henry coming to Ten’s Breakfast
November 8th, 2011 at 03:52am
If Sunrise and Today are cereal, and ABC News Breakfast is toast with soy-bean butter, then Ten’s new breakfast show might just be bacon and eggs: worthwhile and not ashamed to not fit the notion of a “healthy and balanced breakfast”. OK, so I’m stretching the analogy a bit too thin (like Vegemite…oops, sorry) but I am quite pleased to see that the Ten Network’s entry in to the adult Breakfast Television market will contain New Zealand broadcaster Paul Henry who, until recently, hosted a similar show on New Zealand television.
Paul is a controversial figure, but seems to be unafraid to say what he thinks. Given the current state of free speech in this country, this could be just what the doctor ordered.
I have been wondering for a while what Ten have been planning with their new show, as there really is no room for yet another Sunrise or Today. Those two barely have enough room for each other. ABC News 24 has carved out its own niche in both being more news focussed than Today and Sunrise, and also stealing the left-wing audience from Radio National. I was thinking that Ten’s show might try being heavily news focussed in an effort to take some of the ABC audience and starve Sunrise and Today of the viewers who actually care about the news but won’t watch ABC News…instead I think they’re going one better, news with solid opinions to back it up.
Given that Andrew Bolt works for the Ten Network and MTR1377’s future remains under a large cloud of confusion, I wonder what the chances are that Andrew will make regular appearances on Ten’s Breakfast. I would love to see Paul and Andrew host the show (it won’t happen, but I’d like to see it)…I’m sure that the people at Ten who deal with viewer complaints would dread such a thing, but I reckon it would set a record for ratings of a breakfast television show.
Another option, and Ten, please consider this, is to borrow what NBC Today does. They use David Gregory, the despicable “moderator” of NBC’s Meet The Depressed as a political analyst, giving him seemingly endless amounts of time to opine on matters of…uh…something (sorry, I struggle to stay awake through his editorials and I find myself yelling loudly at him whenever he interviews anyone) and Ten could do something similar with Bolt, albeit something much more interesting seeing as Bolt is infinitely more interesting than David Gregory. My proposal is that Ten’s Breakfast could use Andrew Bolt, “host of The Bolt Report” as their resident political analyst, opining on the matters of the day. It would be a bit like the “Kings of Talkback” segment on Sunrise, except that the hosts of the show would actually be paying attention…and I can imagine some great conversations between Paul Henry and Andrew Bolt.
Anyway, as sent by our good friend Padders over at The Right Aussie, here’s a fun clip of Paul Henry on breakfast television in New Zealand during the utterly bizarre “Maori Language Week”.
And here’s a highlight which gave me a good laugh.
I hope we get to see plenty of Paul at his best when he joins Australian television next year.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: TV/Radio/Media
1 Comment
1. John Moulis | November 10th, 2011 at 4:28 pm
Paul Henry will have to do something about masking his thick NZ accent before he starts on Channel Ten. Australians don’t like Kiwi accents at the best of times, and with Henry you can barely make out what he is saying.