In the current A-League season the pickings for watching football on both free-to-air and Pay TV have been inordinately rich contrasted to previous seasons. Thanks to the TV rights deal that was arguably the greatest legacy left behind by ex-FFA CEO Ben Buckley negotiated with SBS (the traditional home of the sport on Australian television) the public broadcaster was brought back on board with domestic football programming through access to Friday night matches. To add to to the breadth of SBS’s return to major domestic football coverage the opening up of new digital platforms such as SBS 2 gave more available screen time to A-League related coverage and programming.
So when SBS announced the launch of a new football-focused program for its secondary digital channel, built around the concept of a Generation Y focused variety/comedy hour, with three rather unique hosting talents involved there was plenty of initial excitement from the broadcasters themselves and potential viewers. ‘Thursday FC’ was squarely aimed at doing for the broadened SBS football audience what AFL and NRL Footy Shows have done for Channel Nine and their relative sports. David Zdrillic brought several years of media experience, and his obvious history as an ex-Socceroo and long term professional footballer to the show. Lucy Zelic (sister of Australian legend Ned Zelic) brought a feminine voice to the program, plus (and I don’t believe even the most politically correct of SBS producers had a problem with this) a certain sexiness to get male eyes on the show. Possibly the most important member of the team was young comedian Matt Okine, as it was to be expected he would be known and appreciated by the younger target audience of the show, plus generate enough humour to reduce the ‘oh, it’s just another football show from SBS’ antipathy that may have been felt by a demographic yet to be engaged with by the broadcaster.
Matt Okine, Lucy Zelic, David Zdrilic…hosts of ‘Thursday FC’
This wasn’t the first time that SBS had endeavoured to merge its football broadcasting with comedy. During the 2010 World Cup Finals in South Africa SBS presented ‘Cup fever’, produced by the Working Dog team led by Santo Cilauro, and assisted by Sam Peng and Ed Kavalee. For most football fans it was very well received, thanks to its brevity, currency and undoubtedly the experience of Cilauro and ex-‘D-Generation’ fellow performer Rob Sitch. The skits were genuinely funny even if consciously corny or low budget, and provided excellent light relief from the heavier regime of Les, Fozzie and other SBS commentators calling games almost every night (including the Socceroo’s mediocre campaign).
Three years later Santo, Sam and Ed had switched to Foxtel, taking almost the exact same format to a Monday night slot on Fox Sports after every round. So the scene had been set, with both broadcast partners of the FFA deploying their talents and programming in the way they thought would best exploit the new TV rights environment. The 2013/14 A-League season had two light entertainment/comedy programs focused on its weekly games, news and players, and nominally things couldn’t be better for anyone with an interested in the situation. There was new and current A-League football related programming running from for five days a week; a brave new world that should have been a win-win for all interested parties.
Unfortunately the new kids on the block in the 8.30pm slot each Thursday night on SBS 2 had been given a mission brief that proved problematic, especially when juxtaposed with the actual talent on board. Early criticisms from fans included the mix of sports being shown in what was supposed to be a football program, the distraction of ‘house band’ Cartoon, Okine’s leaden comedy and the poor production values (as shown in this thread on the WestSydneyFootball.com forum). The producers of ‘Thursday FC’ had created almost the exact reverse of what they probably wanted, insofar as the light entertainment aspect wasn’t good enough to keep the audience faithful if they were looking for good comedy and music, whilst football fans were finding the light entertainment aspects intrusive, annoying and distracting from what they wanted to see and hear. Each of the hosts had their issues, with Matt Okine serving as the focus of much antipathy, however neither Lucy Zelic nor David Zdrilic escaped censure.
‘Total Football’ on Foxtel was under far less pressure, thanks to the smaller audience coming from its Pay-TV origins, the clarity of its vision (being first and foremost a comedy show with football as its theme), and the track record of the main performers. Of course there is always going to be differences of opinion over what constitutes good comedy versus bad, but what can’t be denied is that Santo, Sam and Ed never tried to please more than those wanting a giggle and who enjoyed football.
On the other hand ‘Thursday FC’ had a bizarre mixture of serious football discussion, light entertainment and comedy routines that would elicit groans rather than gut-busting guffaws. Here is an example of what may be considered one of their better skits:
As I was fortunate enough to see three episodes of ‘Thursday FC’ in the studio I saw the rather muddled approach in person, and whilst the three hosts had a good energy between them all, the influence of Okine’s so-called comedic talents was too heavy-handed, at times bringing interesting interviews or discussions to a screaming dead halt with a bad pun or a non-sequitur line of questions. Lucy Zelic is nominally a raw talent yet to be fully brought up to the same capabilities as other presenters such as Mel McLaughlin or Debbie Spillane, so she too had her moments (though her football knowledge is very impressive). As for David Zdrilic, he was easily the most competent in front of the cameras but he was a proverbial fifth wheel when it came to the comedy sections.
The internal tension between the conflicting ideologies of ‘Thursday FC’ could not be resolved week after week. There was none of the polish and dare I say commercial TV vulgarity that flourishes in programming such as Channel Nine’s AFL and NRL ‘Footy Show’ variants. Those two flagship light entertainment sports shows have operated under the same low-level vaudeville constructs for years now and perhaps most importantly were always allowed the room to fail or offend because their demographic were never going to ask for anything too demanding.
On the other hand ‘Total Football’ kept kicking goals with football fans because it has never tried to combine serious analysis with jokes. Yes, Santo, Sam and Ed have all interviewed guests like Ange Postecoglou or Kevin Muscat but they were not contextualized in the same kind of discussion that say David Zdrilic or Lucy Zelic would try to have on ‘Thursday FC’. On SBS’s program the jumble of jokes and critical discussion became a jumbled blancmange that started to seriously annoy many of the target audience.
To their credit the producers of ‘Thursday FC’ started to make none-too-subtle changes to the show, with Okine’s contribution and the associated overt (so-called) humour being toned down. The change from the first episode I saw in studio to the second was obvious but that from first to third was as if it was almost utterly revamped. In the progress of the show’s short season Matt Okine secured a new role on Triple J radio as a breakfast announcer/DJ, which certainly curtailed his ability to be involved with ‘Thursday FC’. In fact by the third episode (and the program’s penultimate aired show) he had left, reducing the show to Zdrilic and Zelic as the two presenters. Yet even before it got to that point there was an overt decision made by the show’s producers to ease up on the lighter material and start to turn ‘Thursday FC’ into a more serious football program. The skits and sketches almost entirely disappeared, musical acts were only there as a closing device, and the mood of the program changed as guests were brought on to have meaningful discussions that weren’t cut short by an asinine Okine joke or pun.
As someone who at least could understand, if not entirely appreciate the light entertainment/comedy raison d’etre of ‘Thursday FC’ at the beginning I was rather happy to see the amendments made to its style and content. However there was a tension and a contradiction at the heart of the program as it changed from an SBS The World Game variant of ‘The Footy Show’ model into a more dogmatic analysis of the then current week’s football issues. How could ‘Thursday FC’ reinvent itself whilst retaining certain aspects of the older model (for example the studio audience involvement, the relatively raw talent of Lucy Zelic, musical or other acts)? It was muddling its way towards something that is already out there, such as ‘The World Game’ on the same network as well as Foxtel/Fox Sports’ ‘Sunday Shoot Out’. There was already a reasonably full broadcasting niche for this format and by moving into it effectively ‘Thursday FC’ was destroying it’s point of difference.
Having said that I strongly believe that as the show came close to its premature end there was some quality material shown and discussed. The last episode I saw as a member of the studio audience, and second last ever broadcast took a look at what it was like for the wives and girlfriends of professional footballers, reviewed the issues facing the A-League at that time (including some fairly dubious refereeing judgements) and looked at the upcoming friendlies schedule for the Socceroos. There had been other discussions on shows before and after that delved into the problems of Sydney FC, took the long handle to racist and anti-football attitude in the mainstream media, and as a result the mood of many football fans who watched ‘Thursday FC” improved.
Sad to say by then it was all too late. For some of the reasons outlined above and some that perhaps can never been fully explained, according to figures quoted in this article on TV Tonight ‘Thursday FC’ was struggling to get more than 13,000 viewers from its live and delayed broadcasts on SBS 2 and SBS 1. In a commercial environment where eyes on screen means eyes on advertisers and thus broadcaster revenue, there simply weren’t enough people watching the show to warrant its continued broadcast. Interestingly enough the SBS spokesperson noted that “Bringing the Friday night Hyundai A-League matches to Australians free-to-air has always been the primary goal for SBS…”, which indicates that the programmers and producers involved with The World Game never saw ‘Thursday FC’ as more than an adjunct to their approach in covering football. This is specifically contrary to how the Nine Network saw their AFL ‘Footy Show’, and perhaps the same can be said about the NRL equivalent. In the former case Nine are non-rights holders so to cash in on the popularity of Australian Rules they have developed a successful panel show with plenty of light entertainment. In the latter Nine uses their Rugby League version of ‘The Footy Show’ to reinforce the construct of their network being the home of all things Rugby League.
In all honesty ‘Thursday FC’ was set up for failure in part because of its very mission statement, in part because of its structure and presenters, and how they were changed (and arguably not quickly enough), and perhaps most importantly the parsimony of vision within the SBS producers and management. It’s rather strange that a channel that has such a proud history of supporting and broadcasting football, who would have its floor managers tell ‘Thursday FC’ studio audience members that they were ‘the home of football’, set up a relatively inexpensive and low profile experiment in football television then cut it off at the knees before it really had a chance. Throw in the change to their once premier football show ‘The World Game’, which is now a 30 minute Euro-snob love-in, and one has to ask what is SBS doing to deserve the custodial and historical honours of being the free-to-air home for football in Australian television?
The Manfred Schaefer Files 