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This is January, 2001...
In Australia the diet coke cans are huge, and the beer pots are smaller than I recall, but drinking pints in New York will do that to you.
It's a polite place, very clean and unthreatening. It could be comfortable, except for a detached feeling. In New York I have the crowd, the dirt, the subway, the CNN. I watched my father's TV, all five channels, 50% local content, mostly fad.
The same people are in the limelight. The new girl on the news is not the new girl anymore, but her eyes are still blue.
There is personalness to TV in Australia. There are not many celebrities, and they seldom induct new ones. One gets intimate with the good, the bad and the ugly - you know who you are Burt Newton.
Just like Coke, Australia's attention goes to the watered down, sheltered, and person-next-door version of the American ego-crat that I am embarrassed to say started the whole concept. Australians just copy it shamelessly to an audience robbed of it's innovation.
©Copyright 2001, Jayson Hawley