Beastly behaviour

After their sneaky fake Press Release from the fictional Levitt Institute fooled media last year, the Hungry Beast team are promising to behave themselves this year. Sort of.

Their fake survey results on supposedly-gullible cities made news on numerous radio, television and print media.

Host Dan Ilic tells TV Tonight there are no plans to pull another stunt like that this season.

“Though I say that and I’m sure your readers will see it and say ‘Yeah, sure you’re not,” he says.

More significantly, since pulling that swifty, he hears other media now have their guard up, which is a measure of the show’s arrival.

“I have friends who work at ACA and people who work at Today and I hear that anytime a story comes up, producers put it aside and say ‘No, that could be Hungry Beast –we won’t do that, it could be Hungry Beast.’

“So the test we did with the ‘Levitt Institute’ has kind of ricocheted across the Australian media landscape. So that’s pretty exciting. It’s kind of nice to think the media has taken notice of that and maybe researching a little harder into the stories that they do.”

Ilic says he even has gotten over ABC’s own Jonathan Holmes debunking the story on Media Watch.

“We’re old mates now. It’s water under the bridge,” he laughs.

This year Hungry Beast has streamlined from seven to four hosts: Kirsten Drysdale, Nick Hayden, Monique Schafter and Ilic.

“We basically mud wrestled, and because I’m a slightly heavier person of short stature my lower centre of gravity really played well into my hands,” he says.

“No, it wasn’t like that at all. It was decided by people other than me. People who know television better than myself.

“It’s really just a functional job to help get from one story to the next. There will be lots of other people doing stories but we will be the four guides, if you like, to the stories that are created on Hungry Beast.”

All will remain involved in stories, which means the pressure is on to tackle both reporting and hosting. The first episode features a topic that is attracting considerable debate.

“In the first episode we’re going to be talking about the internet filter. We’re hoping to get some key decision makers in to have a chat about it as well.

“Our show is a magazine show. We do serious stuff, we do funny stuff. Hopefully it’s interesting and hopefully it brings our audience to some things that they’re not really aware of or we provide an interesting take on something that’s already out there,” says Ilic.

“Our show is made by young people so hopefully it will attract young people to it. I’ve certainly had some young people in the street come up to me and say they think it’s great. So I think this is an issue that they would really embrace.

“I’m quite excited about what we can do this season and the internet filter is going to kick it off, hopefully.”

Hungry Beast returns 9pm Wednesday on ABC1.