Mark Humphries’ satire is back
In news no one was expecting, including possibly Mark Humphries himself, Mark Humphries is back on TV doing satire. On Channel 7’s 6pm Sydney news bulletin, no less.
An article in The Australian gives further details on this but we’re too cheap to pay to read them, so here’s our thoughts on what we know about this story instead…
WHAT?!
No, seriously, what?! On Channel 7?!
Channel 7 doesn’t exactly have a fine tradition – or in fact, any tradition – of making satire. And given the closest it gets to making comedy these days is whatever Paul Fenech has thrown together recently, it’s not exactly the home of quality laughs either.
As for its news output, a typical 7 News bulletin focuses on the latest ram-raids, stabbings and servo hold-ups in your area. Want to know what’s going in Ukraine? Or how the government’s trying to tackle the climate crisis? Or the rental crisis? Er, try the ABC or SBS.
So, what is 7 News Sydney doing creating a satire slot? That doesn’t seem to fit with everything else they do or have ever done. Or indeed, anything Mark Humphries does or has ever done. Humphries’ satire on 7.30, and elsewhere, has tended to focus on political news and big issues. And isn’t a sketch about something that happened in Canberra going to look weird after a bulletin dominated by fear-mongering stories about African immigrants, and nonsense stories about how Boomers are coping with falling house prices?
A satire slot which takes the piss out of stories about sensationalist commercial news stories would be fun, but Channel 7 Sydney’s 6pm News bulletin seems an unlikely place for that to happen.
Or are we looking at this the wrong way? Perhaps the thinking goes like this: why should satire be focused on the stories that people who watch ABC News and read The Guardian care about? Isn’t it time for satire which comes from the perspective of people worried about local crime, immigrants, and house prices?
And yes, that perspective has been historically under-represented in satire, but why go to Mark Humphries to make it? A satirist whose recent work includes this video for the Climate Council.
Honestly, this whole thing sounds a bit weird. And are we sure it isn’t 1st April?
But given it’s June and this story is real, we’re intrigued to see how this pans out. And if it doesn’t, how quickly Humphries gets the arse.
this is such a bizarre marriage I can’t even begin to unpack.
Channel 7’s news audience wouldn’t exactly be the type to appreciate political satire. How many of them will see a Mark Humphries segment and think it’s real news and before you know they’re calling Ben Fordham or Ray Hadley to whip up some sort of hysterical click bait nonsense based on something that was on “the news” last night. Because we know 2GB shock jocks aren’t great at nuance or fact checking, either.
Unpaywalled version of the Australian article: https://archive.md/d9hDH
[…] Seven nightly news recently announced they were considering introducing a short astrology segment to their evening bulletin. Maybe if they had they could have predicted that getting Mark Humphries in to do an end-of-week comedy segment was going to suck. Or, you know, they could have just asked around. […]