Look who's talking, too  (cover heading - chatter box)

Cultivated by the ABC and SBS, talk television has lit a fuse with the commercial networks. Robin Oliver reports on the packaging of opinions.

With their topical hand grenades at the ready, talking head in demand, prized by the networks not only for the audiences they deliver, but for providing content that does not break the bank. From Geoffrey Robertson's Hypotheticals to The Great Debates, from The Panel to Good News Week, The Footy Show and even the revived Beauty and the Beast, other people’s opinions are being listened to.

Talk also provides a steady stream of free nights out for the curious beast, the studio audience. The news that Robertson was firing up another Hypotheticals on which to grill 15 victims was lapped up by the roving fans of live debate – including me. This would not only be free, it promised a night if real theatre and a degree of intelligence to which TV gasbags do not always aspire.

The expatriate Robertson, Queen’s Counsel, one of Her Majesty’s judges, author, head of Doughty Street (the largest legal chambers in Britain) and renowned advocate on the world’s legal stage, was going to do a bit of play acting.

So It was on a chilly night in late August that an audience of 400 arrived at Seven’s studios in Mobbs lane, Epping. Seven was ready. Ten cameras, one on a remote-controlled crane, were put through final checks. Robertson strode in clasping his hands in familiar style. He was smiling, but this was the smile on the face of the tiger. His victims were wary.

The reward was two hours and 35 minutes of charged exchanges as Robertson and his guests, all closely involved with the Sydney Olympics, from IOC vice-president Keven Gosper to Olympic Village Mayor Graham Richardson, triple Olympic medallist Daniel Kowalski, head of security Paul McKinnon and doping control manager Nicki Vance, traded opinions into the night.

Robertson’s elaborate scenario ran well over time and the ending has been so severe that the studio audience will be disappointed with the result. Robertson was signalled with time checks at 90 minutes and then at the two-hour mark, but he was still not ready to close. A significant slice of the broadcast program still lay ahead.

"I had hoped I would do it in two hours, but I didn’t know any of those people," Robertson said afterwards. "I wasn’t able to predict, for example, that Nici [Andronicus, a triathlete] wouldn’t sleep with her couch; that the priest [Father Jim Boland, the olympic village’s priest] would break the secret of the confessional.

The Robertson treatment had a particularly surprising effect on Gosper, who says is "famous for sitting on more fences than a jackaroo".

"It was quite fascinating how, once he had got over his initial defensiveness, he made what was clearly a psychological break by giving his own opinion that suited the IOC," Robertson said. "He developed a very real stature."

"Talk show television is unpredictable. Robertson works without a script and relies on a few headlines jotted in a notebook. He glanced at them twice during his Olympic marathon. Preparation had been intense; four days spent in an Epping motel absorbing a weighty pile of reference material.

Robertson met the panel for the first time just before going into the studio, spending a few moments with each of them, putting faces to names, but reveling nothing in his plans.

"As the show opens, I get a better sense of who they are … and open up one or two theme, just to see how they react. I didn’t put anybody under any sort of pressure until we got to Nici Andronicus and her coach."

Andronicus was soon on the spot, first being inveilged into an offer of sex with her coach in return for a place in the olympic team, than lucrative offer to wear a tattoo advertising "Tammy’s Tampons" during the closing ceremony.

" I spend a lot of time cross-examining witnesses or at least attempting to relate to people in witness boxes," Robertson says. "I was able to get a sense of that, although Nici didn’t actually take the hard decision to sleep with the coach, she might advertise the tampons.

"I didn’t think Gill Rolton [equestrian gold medalist] would do that, so I played accordingly."

Most unorthodox of the crop of TV talk shows is the Melbourne produced The Panel, which Ten uses to advantage to attract viewers in the key 16-25 age group.

The Panel’s viewing figures have dropped since sizzling beginnings last year, but it still sits comfortably with a Sydney audience of about 380,000 viewers, second on its timeslot.

David Mott, Ten’s national program director, says The Panel and Good News Week have been among his network’s best acquisitions. Mott is interested that The Panel has at east one visiting supporter in Robertson who regards it as a great program for not getting anywhere.

Robertson sees considerable validity in that. His view is that a lot of television is glib, giving the idea there are instant solutions to everything, which there are not.

"There may not be resolution," Mott says, "but there is an opportunity to discuss issues in a way that hasn’t been done before."

Mott admits that Ten’s Good News Week took time finding its commercial feet, but the rewards are now evident.

"You’ve got to believe in these things from the start," he says, "With The Panel, we didn’t go to the pilot. We just knew that the team was there. They have worked as a team for years. There is genuine comfort within the group. It’s not as though you are trying to manufacture it. That sometimes doesn’t work."

Political commentator Paul Lyneham. Lured by Nine from the ABC, is widening his scope as a general network rouseabout with 60 Minutes essays on such diverse topics as East Timor and the possums in his roof. His newest role is chairman of Nine’s highly successful series of The Super Debates.

"Talk is certainly very popular, partly because it’s very cheap," Lyneham says. "It has a veracity that plastic sitcoms and light entertainment often do not have. It’s more real. It’s often more irreverent. It’s fresher, spontaneous,  nd I think a lot of it makes [viewers] feel they are on the inside of things, sitting with the interesting and amusing chatting classes.

"It’s a nice sort of ‘community hall’ thing. You don’t have to be a brilliant comedian – although on occassions we have people who are each of those things. It is a penetrating sort of parlour game that people of all ages can enjoy."

Editing is essential, but the length of a session is in the hands of the debaters, all of whom, Lyneham says, are given to saying "naughty things" and disregarding time limits. To get a commercial hour – 46 minutes – you can sometimes go to 90 minutes.

"It’s not driven by me as chairman," Lyneham says. "It’s driven by this bunch of freewheeling people. Once you get on, you’re on – and we don’t stop until we stop."

Ted Robinson, executive producer of Good News Week, can claim to be father to the current wave of talk. He introduced televised debates to the ABC, then moved on to produce the original Good News Week.

Robinson was responsible for the introducing the poet Margaret Scott, now a Good News Week favourite. She came on to her first debate looking like an amiable dormouse who had dozed off with an enormous grin on her face.

"That was a marvellous night," Robinson says. "When Margaret was introduced there was a sort of collective depressive groan from the audience because they thought this poor person was going to be eaten by the lions. But she had the marvellous advantage of coming from behind and winning everybody over."

Robinson says moving Good News Week to commercial television was a cultural shock.

"You think you know what commercial television is all about, but when you actually come to grips with the beast, it’s a much more subtle and complex animal than you ever might have thought.

"The first thing you have to realise is that you are not making one program that lasts an hour. You are making five very short programs, each of which has to have a beginning, a middle and an end."

Good News Week is constructed around "the spine", being Paul McDermott’s scripted pieces, McDermott is the only performer in the know before the program starts, though the teams are told what sort of games they will be asked to play.

"We can always edit out the dud responses," says Robinson, "but if you over-prepare people you lose out on spontaneity."

Robertson never telegraphed his "hypothetical" to Andronicus about sleeping with her couch, but if he had, would she have choked?

"It was near the knuckle, some of it," Andronicus says, "I did feel I was exposing myself and perhaps putting myself up for potential criticism. [but] athletes in Australia are public property and your actions are always judged by everybody.