No more Rudd on Rove, please
The PM makes his third and dullest appearance on TEN's variety show but leaves variety at the door.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
Memo to Kevin Rudd’s minders, and Rove‘s producers too:
If he’s going to appear on the show again can we please ban the political agenda? There are plenty of other television programmes for this kind of content: The 7:3o Report, Lateline, Meet the Press even Sunday Night, A Current Affair and Today Tonight are all supposed to have current affairs in them.
Rove is pitched as variety / light entertainment. There was very little of it in this exchange. Rudd enthralled us with the wonders of ‘ute-gate’ fake emails, climate change, education, global recession, jobs, schools and assorted dry talking points. Sure he was answering Rove‘s question, but it was a laboured, pardon the pun, reply.
An appearance on Rove is a chance to communicate with a wide, young audience. It would have been a great chance to showcase the PM’s personal side. Instead his third appearance was his dullest so far.
At one point our intrepid host had to ask of one of Rudd’s anecdotes: “is this going to be a long story?”
Sure sounded like it.
Dave Hughes tried to jump in and save another moment.
We even missed out on any hope of Rudd appearing on set with Bruno, though there were reportedly joint pics posed backstage. Which is more than John Howard would have ever agreed to.
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- Tagged with A Current Affair, Lateline, Meet the Press, Rove, Sunday Night, The 7:3o Report, Today Tonight
65 Responses
The jokes Rove made on sunday night regarding michael jackson were very disrespectful. Rove should be ashamed of himself. im sure he wouldnt have liked jokes being made about belinda when she died. he was way, way out of line!!
Im with David on this, K-Rudds appearance on Rove last night was a pointless, at times cringeworthy waste of time…during election campaigns, he wants us to vote for him so I see the point of him appearing, but his interview last night was a waste of time for him, Rove and most importantly, the viewers…
and good work airing you opinion David, everyone else gets to, so, why shouldnt you…
For the record I actually enjoyed his first 2 appearances, including the one before his election in which he nominated Hillary over Obama (yes we remember). But this one was a snore-fest full of point-scoring.
personally I don’t watch the show much but I tuned in briefly last night only to hear Rove making jokes at the expense of Michael Jackson. i thought it was in very poor taste to say the least. It wasn’t that long ago that the man’s own wife had passed away and I’m sure that if anyone were making jokes at her expense he wouldn’t appreciate it one bit.
Whether your a fan or not I find it in extreme poor taste to be taking cheap cracks at someone elses expense. Especially when that person has just passed away and not even buried yet.
Shame on you Rove!!
I don’t know what you’re expecting David. It might be opinion, but it isn’t really a poignant one. A man who isn’t an entertainer goes on a show, and gets asked a political question.. what’s he to do? Stand up and tap dance? What would it look like if he didn’t answer it? That would be bigger news than if he actually did Tap Dance.
I’m not sure what he was doing on the show either, but he was, and you can’t blame the man for answering the questions he was thrown.
If he had longer, he might’ve showed us how he does his hair. Great stuff for the Y-generation who spend more time on their hair than any generation in the history of Homo Sapiens.
Which is why the post was addressed to Rove producers and Rudd minders.
Great to see your opinion, David. I didn’t ‘get’ Ruddy on Rove last night either….not sure where the value is in responding to a variety of questions with ‘I’m sure you’d feel that way too’ *exhale through nose* (or similar) as he did several times… I would’ve preferred to watch something that made me proud of my Prime Minister who presented as a hard-working, articulate, progressive Australian rather than the homophobic vibes I got from him last night….
I don’t think you should have to defend giving your opinion on your own website.
Keep the opinion’s coming David… whether I agree or not I still appreciate getting you’re take.
Read TV week if you would rather an opinion less… “everything’s swell” reporting.
@ Marco and @ James,
Whenever Sacha Baron Cohen does an interview in character they are always scripted. He was very definitely looking at the autocue. Check out Ali G’s interview with Michael Parkinson for the same thing.
bruno is only a character, even if you were homophobic why would you feel uncomfortable around someone who is only pretending to be gay. i don’t think that is why rudd would have had a problem, if in fact he did have one, it would have been fear that he was going to be pranked in some way.
I read in a mag last year that rudd had a gay butler wroking for them at the time so i dont think he would have been that uncomfortable around Bruno … he might have actually liked it and better still improve upon that nerdy image .. what a missed opportunity !!
Keep up the good work David. Your news and opinion is always valuable and entertaining…. and time to go Rove.
Even if David was ‘pushing an agenda’ – which is just an absolutely ridiculous statement – I do believe this site is his and if he wanted to could print the most biased stories he felt like.
Just because you don’t agree does not make him biased.
David I agree with Andrew. Sometimes it appears you have your own agenda to push.
Of course there is opinion. It’s a media commentary blog. That said it is only opinion -thankfully we have plenty who agree and disagree with me on all manner of topics. Healthy debate is a good thing.
If I am commenting on shows, networks, programming, public image, talent, executives, media campaigns etc it’s impossible not to have an opinion, and frankly I would like to think it has helped define this site.
Spot on David. Rove is no spot for any politician, of any political persuasion. Rudd was truly propagating or at least just spurting rehearsed lines. I know most entertainers do this when interviewed, but at least they are half funny. It was awkward alright, and I think the crowd’s reaction to the whole segment spoke for itself.
David,
Judging by last nights ratings, I think we can be assured he WILL be back. Even without Bruno.
@Marco – I took Bruno to be looking at himself in the TV with him on the screen…
agree david totally, if rudd is going to go on a show like rove who has young viewers watching then he should atleast act like a human being. his segment was boring, they should have had a challange for the pm.
I have no doubt that Rudd’s minders would have insisted that he not appear on camera with Bruno. It would have been a pre-condition of his participation in the show and quite a sensible one from Rudd’s perspective
I was really hoping to see Bruno and Rudd on set at the same time too. It seems they did get a photo together though, just unfortunate they weren’t on set at the same time.
how come there are so many opinion pieces by david recently? there was the ‘appalling’ article yesterday and now this. in the past, david posted unopinionated pieces allowing readers to post opinions but now all people are saying is ‘i agree’ and ‘spot on’ which makes it less interesting.
this article shouldn’t be under ‘news’ but under ‘opinion pieces’ or ‘editorials’.
There have always been opinion pieces, dating back to 2007 when the site started. As a media commentator it is my role to provide opinion and contextualise. Most of the stories on here include comment, even in Programming stories. For instance in that vertical you will see posts with ‘news’ that a show has moved and then ‘opinion’ on why, but it still comes under Programming.
Rudd’s appearance on Rove is also news in mainstream media, so why wouldn’t it qualify as News here?
The site has always been and will continue to be a mix of news and opinion. It is a media commentary blog.
i agree with juzzy, i thought the word that was censored was katie holmes too based on seeing his lip movements, and yes the reason for censoring must have been fear of a defamation suit by tom cruise.
You can find a pic of Kevin Rudd with Bruno backstage at Rove on the front page of The Australian newspaper today.
How bad was Bruno constantly looking off to what I can only gather was an auto-cue to prompt him with his lines??? There were some very funny bits though, including the shock at seeing the bits in Rove’s knitted outfit. I just whizzed through the recording when Rudd came on….yawn.
i actually though that rove would pay tribute to Michael Jackson rather than try to make jokes, although they weren’t overly offensive, they weren’t funny either and seemed like they were just for the sake of it.
does anyone know if mj was mentioned on the american talk shows(letterman, o’brian etc) and if they where tribute or jokes?
Bruno was good but Rove is not a very on the spot comic like other comedy talk show hosts and really needs to work on having a genuine conversation rather then asking the scripted questions and being lost for words the rest of the time.
It was funny when he came out in the outfit and was chased head first into the camera knocking him flat on his back, he seemed a bit uptight about Bruno antics at some points i felt.