A light breakfast

by MATT QUARTERMAINE

How do people manage to watch the morning television programs before they go to work?

I attempted to watch Sunrise, weekdays 6AM to 9PM on Channel 7, while under the extreme pressure of getting the kids off to school.

The pressure in my house has come from one of my daughter's friends having her sandwiches cut in the shapes of bows; as if I didn't have enough complications in my life. Further pressure is put on me because the show runs opposite the Mutant Ninja Turtles and my son was threatening me with his Mutant Ninja nunchukas.

Amidst the morning mayhem of my house I tried the Sunrise breakfast; light fluffy conversation, over a compote of ads and a smattering of news. Sunrise is a light breakfast, and I mean light. This television is lighter than air; it's the hydrogen of television shows.

David Koch and Melissa Doyle host a passing parade of guests to uninform your day. I didn't even know David was his first name, because all of Australia knows him as Kochie or that bloke who climbed into the ambulance with the rescued miners from Beaconsfield.

I wanted to like Kochie, because on television you don't get many bald blokes with big noses and a voice that sounds like a choirboy choking on gravel, but actually he is a humourless, self-important financial advisor.

Mel smiles bravely and tries to smooth over the awkward moments of Kochie's spin on world events. Channel Seven promotes him as your average bloke next door, but if Kochie lived next door to me I'd check if his car was there, before I ventured out the front door.

Sunrise has a plethora of guests who provide the fodder for Kochie and Mel's inane banter. There's the fat bloke doing movie reviews, the mandatory gay bloke doing Hollywood gossip, the nerd doing traffic reports, the whingeing sports reporter, the cooking chef, the doctor giving health advice and the old bloke with a hat doing music news.

There's Kochie's joke of the day, which shows Kochie is to humour what John Howard is to reconciliation.

Sunrise often has an entertaining musical guest, but irritatingly sets them against an open window with passers-by on their way to work. Consequently, during the close-up of Ben Lee performing his new single, I was checking out someone's prosthetic leg.

While the banter drones on, information scrolls across the bottom of the screen. During the news, the weather scrolls and during the weather the news scrolls. So much information bombards the viewer and almost none of it comes from Kochie and Mel. Some of the news stories used clips from the ABC news and the 7.30 Report. Watching Sunrise is like watching snippets the ABC news with all he irritating information taken out.

The Sunrise team promote the show as having breakfast with friends and with friends like these who needs enemas? Eventually, Sunrise did inspire my day though. I gave my daughter the "Sunrise Sandwich"; all filler, no sandwich.

This story first appeared in Big Issue.

18 September 2007

australianrules.com.au

Disclaimer