But what if we want to eat our veges but just not in the way that MediaWorks is serving them?

That is the crux of this conversation. Not just "what to do with 7pm?", but "how to do current affairs in the age of twitter?"

the TV industry equivalent of a delicious cheese sauce

HA! yes!! I reckon that's probably satire. Look over at the US.

It's The Daily Show and Colbert Report that have audiences that are MORE educated on current affairs than viewers of the 24-hour news channels.

Comedy/satire is the one way to speak truth in an entertaining way. (in a way that rates)

As the lowly autocue operator in a darkened corner of the TV3 studio, I scrolled through the screen of words as John Campbell read them live to air. The paragraph ended. The pre-recorded story began… And John dramatically slammed his head down onto his desk.

He had just introduced a story about cats.

The smile he had managed to plaster on his face for the camera was gone. Spinning round in his chair John addressed an entirely different audience: the faithful floor manager, the cheeky camera operators and me; the wide-eyed student hoping one day for a real job in the media.

John wasn’t proud of that story. This wasn’t the programme he had wanted to make. It was trivial, ratings–pandering candy floss. He knew it, and he wanted us to know it.

This must have been about seven years ago.

John has battled the higher-ups to make his show not just about the things we want to see, but about the things we need to see. But in truth, his enemy is not those cruel-hearted industry execs who can’t see past the bottom dollar, he’s battling human nature and our waning attention spans.

So, what if all I want is candy floss? What if I don’t want to eat my veggies?

The masses calling for us to #SaveCampbellLive are all too often people like me who say “It’s a worthwhile and important programme so they should keep it” followed by the admission that “I don’t actually watch it myself”.

In effect, “Vegetables should be available to people. Just don’t ask me to eat them.”