Collectors to resume without host

Collectors will return on July 9th minus host Andy Muirhead, who is facing a charge of accessing child pornography.

Panellists Claudia Chan-Shaw, Adrian Franklin and Gordon Brown will host the show.

The ABC told the Mercury newspaper the show would return after an outcry around the nation from the program’s fans, and remain in production in Tasmania.

“The Collectors production team are now full steam ahead in Hobart producing the series for the rest of the year,” an ABC spokesman said.

Two months’ worth of episodes that have already been recorded will be shelved.

It was Muirhead who approached the ABC on Thursday ahead of the news breaking on Friday, and requested being placed on leave without pay.

The ABC responded swiftly to the charges by suspending the show from airing, deleting it from its website and even removing the show from the Publicity materials made available to journalists.

Now before any case has been heard it is to return the show without Muirhead.

Suspending the show while the case is pending is one thing, but the network is wrong to resume it in his absence.

Halting the episodes from airing showed that the network would let justice take its natural course. Now it is clearly divesting itself of that outcome. Will the network reinstate Muirhead should he be found innocent?

Having made the decision to halt episodes, the ABC could have waited the 6 weeks for the case to be heard -presuming of course, there would be an outcome in August.

Barrister Greg Barnes wrote an editorial on ABC’s website The Drum on the weekend, saying: “By making Muirhead swiftly disappear from its airwaves, website and publicity machine in a manner that fairly harked back to the days when the KGB used to do similar things to those in the Kremlin who deviated from the norm or fell out of favour with the regime, the ABC is giving the impression that Muirhead is guilty of the offences with which he has been charged.

“The message sent out by the ABC to its audience and the community generally is that Muirhead has done something so wrong that the broadcaster must sever any connection with him. That this was indeed the message being conveyed was made more apparent by the abject failure of the ABC’s media statement to note that Muirhead is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

Comments are closed due to legal case pending.

Source: The Mercury, The Drum