Adam Boland: Purveyor of Bland?
Until two weeks ago, I believed that Sunrise showrunner Adam Boland was a genius. These days I can’t help but suspect that he may be a one trick pony. And that pony is an unhealthy beige.
Boland is responsible for the current incarnation of Sunrise, morphing it from a breakfast news program into a lifestyle program. The program wasn’t dumbed down per se, however content discussed on the series has become a lot more trivial. The move was a massive success, with Sunrise outrating the long-running Today program on Channel 9. The success of Sunrise turned around the fortunes of an ailing Channel 7.
With this success, Boland was offered the opportunity to expand his TV portfolio. Last year saw the launch of The Morning Show. And in 2008, The Night Cap.
For those lucky souls unaware of The Night Cap, the series is a twice-weekly live panel show that airs on 7HD. Hosted by Matt White with regular panellists Jessica Rowe, Paul Murray, Monique Wright, and Zach Douglas, The Night Cap provides bland insights on news and lifestyle-related stories.
I’ve tried giving The Night Cap a go twice now. It’s tough getting past the first ten minutes. I’ll admit to failure on this. I simply couldn’t do it. With uneducated insights, amusing banter that fails to amuse anyone other than the on air ‘talent’, and the insipid and skeletal Jessica Rowe, The Night Cap is a failure on practically every level. While the intentions of the show were good, the execution of the series has simply been a failure. It’d be interesting to see audience retention levels from week to week as I can’t imagine many viewers would be returning to sample the show a second time.
Under Bolands guidance, The Night Cap is taking the same lifestyle and news driven banter that has made Sunrise successful and tried applying it to late night. With the Sunrise format wearing a little thin (the very slightly more meaty Today has seen a rise in viewership in recent months), the launch of this third show with the same flavour has shown Adam Boland to effectively be a one-trick pony.
Can Boland actually generate success in working with a different format, or is he unable to expand beyond the rather beige format that has yielded so much success for him in the past? I’d like to think that Boland has more in him than this, with The Night Cap simply being a mis-step in taking the Sunrise flavour too far. But man, what a mis-step.
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Toby
Wow – couldn’t disagree with you more. I hate Sunrise but I love the Nightcap. I’m a big Paul Murray fan and now they’ve got rid of Zach, I think it’s great TV.
James Knight
Are you talking about the same Adam Boland who produced Tv Turns 50, the Tsunami Concert and Follow the Flame? If so, I work with him. He’s hardly a one trick pony.
Dan Barrett
Hi James, Adam Boland is a guy whose name crops up A LOT in conversations I have with people, as well as on the TV Rev radio show.
Professionally, he’s a guy I admire a lot. While it’s not exactly my cup of tea (which is fine, I doubt I’m the audience they have in mind), Sunrise and The Morning Show are well-produced and slick programs that cater well to their viewership. Boland has tapped into the current zeitgeist quite successfully.
The problem from my perspective is that he’s taken that Sunrise flavour just that step too far. The Night Cap is just too light on substance for a late evening timeslot. As I’ve said in this blog post, I’d like to think that The Night Cap is simply a mis-step, but I’m also concerned as I haven’t seen him produce anything else on a consistent basis that isn’t this brand of feather-light news/culture discussion.
There was talk last year about Boland wanting to tackly the early evening news and rejuvenate it. At the time I was excited at the prospect because I wanted to see what Boland would do with it. After seeing The Night Cap though, I’m probably more reserved with my fascination. Would it truly have been something different, or would it be another re-branding of the exact same flavour?
TV Turns 50, The Tsunami Concert, and Follow The Flame weren’t on-going regular series, so I’m not really including them in his body of work. I’m talking about series that have legs and can continue past being a once-off/event production.
I honestly believe that Boland has the potential to make a significant contribution to the Australian TV landscape. I just want to see him do something different.