HENRY FLOPS IN OZ

According to former TVNZ news chief  Anthony Flannery, Paul Henry is one of the world's greatest broadcasters  But Australian television viewers don't think so.

Let's delight in someone else's misfortune and who better than the vile Paul Henry.

Henry  did us all a favour when he  decided to leave New Zealand to  blight Australian television. Our gain was Australia's loss. He's been co-hosting Channel 10's Breakfast show.

He was  hired to boost the struggling show's dismal ratings but  has failed spectacularly. It  can be only a matter of time before it is announced that he  is leaving Breakfast 'to pursue other career interests'.

The ratings have been  averaging less than 40,000 and have  even fallen as low as 24,000. In contrast  Seven’s Sunrise reaches over 400,000 on average, and Nine’s Today not far behind in the high 300,000's.

It's now debatable whether Tens'  Breakfast is  even economically sustainable . This is especially true give the  fact that  Ten Media Holdings after-tax profits dropped a might  70 per cent in the last six months to $14.8 million.

It seems  that Henry's sneering right wing bigotry  has simply turned viewers off.

Such is Henry's unpopularity that Breakfast's own production  has renamed the show 'Dog's',  short for 'Dog's Breakfast'.

It was Anthony Flannery, Ten's Head of News, was responsible for hiring Henry.

Flannery used to be Head of News and Current Affairs at TVNZ and was big fan of Henry's . He once  described him  as " one of the most outstanding broadcasters in world television.' which just goes to show how inept Flannery is.

One of Flannery parting gifts for TVNZ was to hire conservative Christian Petra Bagust to front TVNZ's Breakfast.

The dull Bagust   has proven to be another Flannery flop, with Breakfast's audience figures dropping ever downwards.  In TVNZ's  target demographic aged 25-54, Breakfast's market share for April fell  from 45 per cent to 36 percent.

Bagust is yet another one of those television  hosts whose knowledge of her  subject seems to be gleamed from a  quick 'Google'. On occasions she has appeared  to be simply out of her depth. When the hard questions are screaming to be asked, Bagust often ducks for cover.

TVNZ has looked at sidelining Bagust but  she has a watertight contract that has  another 18 months to run. Since she is earning more money than the Prime Minister, she ain't going to give up this particular cash cow without a struggle.