1. Thinking about the telly
Russell Grenning
Now that I am officially a senior citizen having entered the twilight years – hopefully
the twilight decades – I have been giving a bit of thought to getting cable television.
My otherwise loving partner abandons me to my lonely lot at 6.30 am and returns
home around 5.30pm. In those eleven hours I am supposed to have done a whole list
of chores such as taking the meat out of the freezer for dinner at the appropriate time.
Frankly, there is simply no appreciation of how choc-a-block my life is – or, perhaps
more honestly – how it could be.
Can you believe that one stage this ingrate suggested that since I was now living in
glorious retirement that perhaps we could dispense with the services of the cleaner?
Imagine that! Have I knocked off professional daily toil to start sweeping and dusting
our modest worker’s cottage? The question answers itself really.
Anyhow, back to the telly or, rather, what I’ve been thinking about it.
If there has been one constant in my professional life it has been my insistence that no
decision should be taken without appropriate research; due diligence and all of that.
Adamant I am about that.
I read this terrifically interesting research paper put out by a bunch of university types
all of whom are garlanded with PhD’s in subjects like sociology. No doubt at vast
taxpayers’ expense, they concluded after their “scoping study” (what?) that seniors
watch more television than the rest of the populace.
Isn’t that revealing? Of course I could have saved taxpayers a fortune by reporting
that after a short stroll around my mummy’s twilight facility. There the old dears sit
transfixed in the “television lounge” – an aggressively cheery place with some really
nice plastic flowers. It seems every time I visit, the program is a loud and noisily
flamboyant show by the Dutch fiddler Andre Rieu and his group but it keeps their
attention and that is all that matters, isn’t it?
I wondered why some channel would play the same program every Sunday but
ultimately realised it was a tape or perhaps a dvd. Not much gets by me I’ll have you
know.
I playfully suggested to a “carer” – yes, they get paid to care – that the telly be
switched over to – I think – the SBS or one of the ABC channels because I had read
there was an informative program on about cataracts – ie, waterfalls around the world.
She gave me a very stony look, not in the least caring at all. Some folks have no sense
of humour which I would have thought is essential to care properly.

2. Now this aforementioned research paper concluded that the demographic they
tactfully called “the younger old” – is that an oxymoron? – aged from 55 to 84
watched more telly than those over 84. Again not that spectacularly revealing given
that so many of those over 84 can’t see much at all let alone Andre Rieu and his merry
band. I refer you again to my personal observations at mummy’s home which,
incidentally, is an “integrated multi-functional facility with a highly trained staff in
landscaped garden surrounds”. Why is the staff outdoors when the “guests” are
inside? Just my little joke!
Anyhow, I am now among the “younger old” and have only about 22 years before I
become, presumably, one of the “older old”. It means that to conform to the
expectation of the “scoping study”, I have to up the daily intake of our carefully
chosen and mightily interesting daily shows.
When the previously mentioned partner arrives home, the remote is a shared
appliance and usually I surrender it given that I did forget to take the meat out of the
freezer and I’m anxious to make amends. Daytime TV is thus the only choice to meet
my “younger old” quota.
Actually the lots and lots of new “free to air” stations have come just in the nick of
time for us “younger old” because we can tune in to things like British “comedies”
made circa 1971 and, with the help of a medicinal sherry, pretend we are young again.
One really warming thing about this for me is the fact that I must have been a very
mature chappie in my early 20s because I didn’t think Benny Hill was hilarious then
and I still don’t.
Ditto lots of others as well.
I was on the telly back then. Well, I was a boy reporter with the ABC and had
occasional reports on “breaking” stories screened in flattering black and white which
didn’t show the pimples all that much.
Based on my experience there in 1968 – 1971, I know a good deal about television as
you would expect. Unfortunately in retrospect, I didn’t hang around long enough or
appear frequently enough to be a “personality”. I have wondered now and again how
TV managements decide who is a “personality” and who isn’t. Is there some sort of
graded system which transforms a person from being “on air”, to “personality” and
finally to “star”?
You wouldn’t believe this bit but when I abandoned what I somewhat grandly
referred to my “tertiary studies” after two years to join Aunty, I had very muted –
even faintly disapproving – reaction from mummy. I would have thought she would
be mightily pleased given that she was a lifelong ABC viewer, well listener anyhow.

3. I did gather from her without the words actually being spoken, that the ABC had
declined from being a respectable organisation to a communist conspiracy. I was a
Young Liberal then so perhaps I was employed to provide some balance.
Mummy was a devoted listener to “Blue Hills” which started a few months before my
entry to the world in 1949 and – if further evidence was needed about the ABC being
a nest of traitors – it ceased production in 1976, the first year of the Fraser regime
which, it was suggested to me, was a deliberate and calculated snub to those devoted
to the cause of The Family Unit, Queen and Country. Never you mind that the
authoress Gwen Meredith said she had simply “had enough”.
I bet you didn’t know that the catchy little tune that introduced this gripping wireless
drama was a work by British composer Ronald Hanmer? Ronnie didn’t have a clue
the ABC was using his distinctive toe-tapper until he migrated here in 1975. Later he
worked it into a longer tune he imaginatively called “Blue Hills Rhapsody” and which
was recorded by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra.
That certainly gives the lie to those of the leftish persuasion who scandalously assert
Queensland was a “cultural desert” in the earlier years of the benevolent Joh Bjele-
Petersen.
I wonder if Ronnie ever got any royalties? Maybe that’s how he paid for his trip here?
I also gathered from mummy that the ABC’s decline into leftish rabble rousing started
on Australia Day in 1966 when Sir Robert Menzies retired as PM. A lot of decay set
in then, don’t you know?
Mummy’s Aunt Jessie – a maiden lady then in her early 90s – never came to grips
with decimal currency when it was introduced only about a fortnight and a half after
Sir Robert exited stage right. Great Aunt Jessie bowled up a googly when she asked
me why they – the Government, I suppose - hadn’t held off on this new-fangled
money until all the old people had died off.
What I do know is that come Christmas that year I got five dollars and not five
pounds from her who was full of complaints about how everything had doubled in
price. That would never have happened if Sir Robert was still there.
Now, where was I?
Oh yes, cable TV. Well, I need to do some more research before I make a decision.
Can’t be too careful, can one?
But now it’s time for Benny Hill and a sherry. I mustn’t forget to take the meat out
either – later, of course.