Are we being served by our ABC

FROM MY CORNER ... with Ann Brunswick

It is not often that your columnist agrees with anything any politician on any side of politics utters at any time on any subject. But there was a nod of agreement from me when news recently came over the wireless that a number of federal Coalition MPs had criticised the storyline of ABC TV’s comedy mini-series At Home With Julia.

If you haven’t seen the show, it is meant to be a light-hearted look at the home life at The Lodge of our PM Julia Gillard and her live-in male friend Tim Mathieson. The episode causing such excitement supposedly featured a scene showing the PM and Mr Mathieson engaging in, shall we say, an intimate embrace on the floor of her office under our national flag.
One supposedly outraged MP, the National Party’s John Forrest, called for a return to “traditional” comedies of the calibre of UK 1970s sitcom Are You Being Served? I must say my initial nod soon turned to loud agreement with the very sensible Mr Forrest.
If only those who penned Are You Being Served? had a hand in At Home With Julia. It would probably have drawn a lot more positive comment and reviews if there had been fewer sexual innuendos and a few more lines about our PM’s pussy.

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On the subject of ABC TV, your columnist has noticed a somewhat disturbing personal reaction when it comes to our national broadcaster’s new programs. There now appears to be an inverse relationship between my willingness to watch a new ABC TV program and the amount of promotion and publicity it receives.

Over the past few years it was a great pleasure watching Chris Lilley’s initial two comedy/drama series, the mockumentaries We Can Be Heroes and Summer Heights High. But the seemingly non-stop promotion by the ABC in the lead-up to the screening of his latest efforts, the Angry Boys series, left me cold. In fact, rather than sit down and watch it, I studiously ignored it. Never mind, it can always be seen on DVD.
The same goes for the ABC’s latest comedy mini-series Twentysomething. Apart from the fact its central characters look like they are hitting 40, the bombardment of promotions urging viewers to turn on the show had the opposite effect on me. The same goes for The Slap, the ABC’s adaptation of the Christos Tsiolkas novel.

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A colleague and friends of your columnist had tickets to see Le Grand Cirque’s show Adrenaline at the Lyric Theatre at South Bank. The show’s website declared that ticketholders were entitled to free travel on any Translink services to and from the venue. All you had to do was show your tickets to the bus driver or rail inspectors or ticket collectors and you got your free ride.

But what happened when the party of circus goers boarded a Brisbane City Council bus to head off for their afternoon of high-flying entertainment? They got a blank look from the driver, that’s what. He had never heard of the deal. But, to his credit, let them travel free anyway. What we had there was a failure to communicate, to paraphrase a trivia question answer.

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Telstra has just unveiled its new cutting-edge logo. It’s the same old logo, but presented in a range of different colours. Wow! And to think, if media reports are correct, that “major brand evolution” as Telstra described it, cost the company only about $3 million. What genius came up with the idea?

Well, Telstra explains that advertising agency the DDB Group’s specialist brand agency Interbrand worked with the company “on the brand identity”. Interesting, I thought when reading that, so a quick search of Interbrand’s website found it had worked with dozens of other major corporates on their “brand identity”. In one case study, it outlined its approach by saying: “We identified that the new name had to evoke feelings of prestige and innovation, demonstrating an evolution in design. A bespoke naming methodology was created. Research and sonic branding techniques were used, alongside traditional naming methodologies.” All that to work out Toyota should use the name “Aurion” for its upmarket Camry. Maybe Telstra paid $3 million just to get out of the same room as them.