Is Rove Live already exhausted?

All televisions programs reach an exhaustion point, after which they start to fade from our screens - slowly or quickly, depending on how much (advertising) blood the TV executives think they can still squeeze out. Unfortunately for the viewer it's usually a painful process, for those ever-dribbling executives are always optimistic about the blood reserves. With the wasteland that Australian television presently is, there are, alas and woe, dying and dead programs right into the distant bone-dry horizon.

Network Ten's top program, Rove Live, headed by a relatively young compere for a tonight show-style program, has succeeded in providing a little gleaming puddle in the surrounding desert - despite the usual contaminating bacteria. But is that puddle drying up? Are the spirits exhausted of those maintaining the puddle?

A sure sign of exhaustion is when TV stars and programmers, lacking inspiration, reach for the easy targets to kick and bash. At the top of the list for media kicking and bashing are the Catholic Church and the British Royal family. After all, everybody knows what a corrupt institution the Church is; everybody knows how ignorant and superstitious the Church's adherents have to be; everybody knows (in contrast to themselves) how dysfunctional the British Royal Family is etc etc.

Well, a little way into last Tuesday's program, that crude ignorant buffoon Peter Helliar thought he would liven things up by sticking it to the head of the Catholic Church. How original. To show just how clever and original he can be, he brought on screen a still picture of the Pope at the window of the hospital he had been admitted to after experiencing difficulties in breathing. You know, the Pope who suffers from Parkinson's disease, arthritis and other ailments, that same person proclaimed by Catholics and non-Catholics alike to be one of the great men of the twentieth century. Of no consideration to the crude gutter-level minds that parade on our television screens. Anyhow, to further admire Helliar's cleverness, he then had a mouth superimposed over the Pope's mouth, a mouth rabbiting on in an incoherent manner. Get it? Showing a sick physically broken man, admired the world over for his courage and principle talking the greatest nonsense. Really funny, isn't it?

Imagine the uproar from the PC class if the target of Helliar's mockery had been anybody else - like an aboriginal elder, a Jewish rabbi and (worst of all) a homosexual activist! It bears not thinking about. The thunderous might of the Victorian Administrative Tribunal would descend on all involved. The pillory! The Scaffold! Just ask John Laws and Steve Price. But Helliar is safe. Those same sages on that illustrious bench were probably nodding with approval during his clever stunt.

Australia's television is a wasteland presided over by people whose only limits are what they can get away with in attracting attention. Any crudity, nastiness and vulgarity will do as long as the ABA is kept at bay.

Peter Helliar is having his moment of being noticed. He will shortly go the way of a thousand such crude buffoons who have passed before our eyes. And the television networks wonder why they are losing viewers. For me, the balance of Rove Live has passed into the red zone. I could not be bothered any longer.