Banter, however, is free, and cheap laughs can be seen as a viable alternative to grim and depressing news from reality. Having the hosts of your news shows talk shit for a while, and commenting on the news of the day, and offering up their very own hot takes, is the easiest form of TV journalism there is, and you don’t have to send anybody out into the field for it, it can all be done from the comfort of the studio.
Okay, technically speaking, having the hosts of a news show banter among themselves does cost money, because the ability to appear on television without looking like a total spaz-cock is actually a skill you have to pay proper money for. Joe Fuckstick, sitting at home, might think it looks easy, but that's because these people are paid to make it look easy.
But as more and more news time on our biggest networks is sucked into banter, it all gets a bit fucking tiring, with desperate attempts to gather LOLs and likes, rather than inform, and the more you let the TV show hosts ramble on, the more likely something will go viral.
Good banter still has a place, it's still infinitely preferable to dead air, and there is always a place for it – live cricket commentary desperately needs good banter artists to keep things moving during five days of slow, turgid results. And Paul Holmes used to spout all sorts of shit before his current affairs show wrapped up, and for all his faults, he was a fucking master at filling in the time when the show unexpectedly ran 60 seconds early.
But instead of informing the audience of what is actually happening, things like the Breakfast shows and the 7pm current affairs shows give almost equal time to the reckons and feels of the hosts as they do to the story they're talking about, and that can get mighty oppressive.
The regular news shows at 6pm and later in the day are fairly banter-free – there might be a few seconds in the handover to the sports or weather crew, or the quick remark about some brave penguins or something similarly soft, but they're onto the next item quick smart. Single-host shows - like the late night shows, TVNZ's lunch bulletin, Prime's 5.30pm hit and the forthcoming 4pm daily bulletin on Three that is starting next week - are the best for straight-up news injections.
Which is only right and proper – you don’t need to know what Mike McRoberts thinks about that last story. He's unlikely to have something radically new to say, and his opinions on the stories he presents is, frankly, none of your fucking business.
But there is so much of it now on the television. Radio was lost to the banter battle a long time ago, many commercial radio slots - especially in the morning - are nothing more than mad opinioning, but more and more TV is becoming a banter factory.
It's especially disappointing when there are often actual news stories on these shows. The 7pm crews have some pretty fucking dedicated reporters, editors, producers and camerapeople doing the hard yards, but their stories aren’t often much longer than a regular news report, before slamming back to the studio for the latest 'well, actually' from Mike or Kanoa.
It's easy when you've got the right personalities around the desk (even if it can fucking hard to get that right mix in the first place), but making the stars more important than the news also exposes a lack of depth, the search for laughs and all that endless fucking cross promotion can feel forced and be tiring as hell, for everybody involved.
We just see so much time going into laughs and opinions, and no time for the exposing of truth and injustice. Politicians are grilled for a matter of seconds and coverage of the big news events doesn't go much further than the surface facts, before it shoots back to the studio and some more talk.
We're not at the stage of the 24-hour overseas news channels, which have refined banter and bullshit to artistically gross levels, with the reliance of idiot pundits exposing all the worst the media has to offer the world, but we're going that way. Unless we shut up and listen for a change.
- Katherine Grant
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