★★★★★ 0/5

Even Hot Seat changed with the times

Years ago they were referred to on screen as 'friends' but same-sex partners are now part of the increased diversity in game show land.

8
Leave a comment

Yesterday Nine confirmed it was replacing Hot Seat next January which, together with the original Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, will conclude a 25 year run (14 for the Hot Seat spin-off).

I was reminded that even game shows have had to reflect progress and diversity on screen.

I still remember, for instance, when same-sex partners were often referred to by game show hosts as someone’s ‘friend.’

Cameras would be lucky to get a shot of them sitting in the audience.

Over the years, together with the advancement of Marriage Equality, inclusion has improved for the better.

Partners, husbands and wives are rightly recognised in accordance with their status. They are no longer left to a discreet back row shot but brought into the conversation and sharing in the moment.

In 2021 Hot Seat even had a million dollar winner in LGBTQIA+ activist and charity worker Antony McManus.

McManus, who has always rented, told TV Tonight he had since bought a house and a car and hoped to spend more time working for LGTBQIA+ charity Positive Attitude.

Over the years Hot Seat has also increased the number contestants from multicultural backgrounds and people with disabilities.

“We had an Indigenous woman here tonight,” Eddie recently said of the show’s 2500 episode. “You look at her sacrifice -that’s a documentary. For a couple of minutes in the chair you hear an amazing story about an woman who gave up her career, breaking through the glass ceiling to look after a 15 year old brother after her mum had died. And here she is doing great things. That’s a great story.”

In announcing the news yesterday, Eddie McGuire added, “What I love about it is I’ve seen multicultural Australia, people who have come out in their sexuality, coming on the show and feeling really free to do so. I’ve seen a snapshot of Australia,” he said.

“Every person’s got a story, they’ve got battles in their life, they don’t want big a handout, they just want a bit of sunshine come their way.”

8 Responses

  1. I liked the questions and to see how many i knew or could guess logically. Most times I was correct. Having said that, my biggest issue is the attitude towards contestants who didnt know or not into sport, and Eddie would scoff. He hated??? it. I myself am not into sport apart from gymnastics ie watching it., or some parts of Olympics/C games. But thats it. Not everyone is into sport. He has though, toned down from how he used to be, but it can still flare. I don understand the term ‘woke’.. To me it simply means to wake up from sleeping.

  2. David, very astute observation about Hot Seat keeping up with the times and celebrating diversity of our great nation. Certainly made more interesting viewing (for people such as me, at least).
    I wonder, however, if critics might apply the phrase: “Go woke, go broke”. Possibly the target audience of Hot Seat were put off by Nine pushing diversity and ratings declined as a result. That’ maybe a long bow to draw but one often made by a popular media group.

    2. I think there’s a line between woke and diverse. It’s like NITV where the focus is not on wokeness. The focus is on Indigenous culture, even on a global scale. There’s a vast amount of documentation going into the foreign affairs and trade department concepts and documentation over successive governments over many decades. And the Indigenous Australian and Torres Strait associations and organisations. It’s quite diverse with varying views.

      There’s also an explanation that beyond Anglo-Australian culture, you could go even further to the indigenous British coming to Britain from Spain, Scandinavia etc.

      I think not all diversity is “woke”, even if it’s progressive nonetheless.

    3. Roger…sometimes it is a bugger keeping up with the times…when it comes to critics they need to move on from “woke” in reality it means discrimination…and also the craze of being “cancelled” used to mean to boycott, remove or not go ahead etc…these terms can be and are offensive to some…it amuses and sometimes bothers me how people latch onto a fad or trend and become followers, then it escalates and on it goes till some bright spark thinks of another trendy word to describe something and everyone is off again using it without thinking of the consequences it may cause…..Is proper English that offence?…David has reminded me of 3 gay cousins I had/have introducing their partners as “friends” back in the 70s and that was because of “discrimination”…

      1. I was in a discussion a couple of weeks ago about how what people call woke is nothing new. They were doing gender studies on ABC’s Open Learning from decades ago. It’d be described as woke today, but it’s the same, nothing new, just new modern terminology. I don’t know what it was called in those days. Maybe it was being progressive and being open-minded.

    4. I don’t think anyone ever could accuse Eddie McGuire of being “woke”. I rarely if ever watched Hot Seat but it hardly struck me as a show that was heavy on pushing agendas. Acknowledging that same-sex couples exist is not “woke” and I think he’s merely pointing out that the show was merely reflecting a change in society, not pushing for it.

      1. I agree. The ‘go woke or go broke’ expression I feel applies to any situation in which identity politics is pushed upon a consumer in a forced, gratuitous, artificial, or patronising way that reduces the entertainment or pleasure value of the product.

        From the few episodes of Hot Seat I’ve seen, the ‘diversity’ of the contestants is acknowledged matter-of-factly, but never feels forced or artificial. And I feel this is a desirable balance between the entertainment purpose of the show, and the efforts to treat contestants without discrimination.

Leave a Reply