This week see’s the much-awaited return of one of the ABC’s most successful franchises Gruen.
Hosted by comedian Wil Anderson, with Todd Sampson and Russell Howcroft, the Rose d’Or winning series is hoping to recapture the magic that previously made it so popular.
“Do people still watch television?” asks Wil Anderson when we caught up recently. “I think unless we have cooking, home renovation, or dancing on our show, nobody’s going to watch it,”
“Maybe we have to replace Russell and Todd with cats that make you LOL. That’s what people are into these days. In fact, maybe a cat on one side and a dog on the other side so they can still disagree.”
While past series including Gruen Sweet, Gruen Nation, Gruen Transfer and Gruen Planet have focused on specific topics, this 12th incarnation of the show is about getting back to basics
“The reason we’ve taking it back to ‘Gruen’ is just to say to the audience, It doesn’t really matter if we’re talking politics or sports or pet food. The Gruen approach is why do we buy what we buy. How are we being sold to and is it effective.”
“I think the show is at it’s best when we take something small and extrapolate outwards. If we try to cover everything, we learn nothing, but often if we look at one little thing or pick apart a couple little bits of moment, we can learn a lot not just about advertising and marketing, but more broadly, what it says about us as a society.”
“The reason that advertising and marketing is interesting to me is that the people whose job it is to know us best are the people who are trying to sell us things. I think that we can learn a lot about ourselves as human beings through seeing ourselves reflected back in their eyes.”
While happy to be back, Anderson doesn’t mind hinting that this is likely the final goodbye for the series. The three stars are increasingly busy with other projects. Anderson spends the majority of the year living in the US, working hard to establish his stand-up career. His co-stars have both moved away from advertising. Howcroft is the General Manager of the Ten Network and Sampson has stepped down from his role at Leo Burnett to focus on other projects including board positions at Fairfax Media and Qantas.
“Look to be honest, I thought I was done with TV when we finished the last season of Gruen. I honestly believed that that was the case. I thought, ‘That’s it. I’m done,’ at least for a while.
But then there was a compelling enough argument for us to come back and do this again. We felt like there was enough stuff to talk about and it would be a new and dynamic conversation. That got me back.”
While hosting a successful program like Gruen would be a dream gig for many performers, Anderson is more than happy to walk away from Television at any moment if it gets in the way of performing his first love, stand-up comedy.
“Some people are already talking about next year saying, ‘There’s an Olympics and the Election will be on.’ I don’t know. I don’t love television, I’ve never really loved television, which I think is probably part of the reason that this show appeals to people, because we’re not pandering to anybody.
We’re not making a show going, ‘Ooh, I hope people like this so that we can do it again next year.’”
“We’re just trying to make the most interesting, most compelling show that we can make. Whether that’s something that people want to watch, or not want to watch is never a conversation we have. We just think, “How do we make this more interesting? What are the questions that we should be asking?”
I think if you’re too concerned about wanting to be a TV star or wanting to be invited to premieres or the Logies, then you start to pull your punches and you start to not ask those questions, because you don’t want to piss people off. You don’t want to piss sponsors off. You don’t want to piss these advertisers off; you might be the face of their advertising campaign. Well, the truth is that I don’t give a shit about any of those things, and I think that’s helpful to the program.”
“I think everybody knows that my number one job and number one priority is stand-up comedy. Obviously now that we’re back, when you agree to do something, you agree to do it 100 percent and throw yourself into it.
Russell and Todd both have other jobs and no one is surprised by that. No one expects Gruen to be Russell’s favourite job or to be Todd’s favourite job. People sometimes are surprised that I still do stand-up after being on TV. Some people still say to me, ‘Oh, you still do stand-up?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s all I do.’”
Part of the focus for the new season of Gruen will be to discuss the changing world of advertising as audiences move away from network television and increasingly get their news and entertainment online.
“I joke about television being like Weekend at Bernie’s, it’s dead but nobody has noticed the smell yet. When it comes to TV advertising you’re looking at advertisers having to compete with everybody flicking around. With online ads people only have to watch the first few seconds, maybe advertisers would just be better off making five second ads.
“There’s certainly an added element of desperation,” with modern advertising “because there’s so many competing voices.”
Gruen returns 8.30pm, Wednesday September 9th on ABC TV.
