Grant Denyer, resident Sunrise weather girl, has been known for some crazy stunts in his time. It’s all de rigeur for anyone filling the brief of a Brekky TV weather presenter. Get some local colour. Involve the community. Stick your arm up a horse’s bum.
In Denyer’s live cross from Barellan, NSW, we should have known what to expect when he tweeted this:
It seemed in theme with everything else. A city boy visits the country and busts all the myths – where eggs and milk come from, what it’s like to live in the country, etc. Not everyone does a pregnancy check on a horse live on national breakfast television. If you’re squeamish, you may only want to listen to this clip…
(Well played to whoever was responsible for putting “Slow Hand” down as the music bed during it.)
So many jokes. So many inappropriate jokes.
You can see that the hosts back in the studo were all a little unimpressed but on the whole took it in the spirit it was meant – a little bit of country fun. Certainly the townsfolk that had gathered thought it was a laugh riot. It was also the 8am weather cross, a time when most mums have left to drop of the kids to school and most dads have left for work. So, it was interesting tonight to see the following two tweets from Denyer regarding the incident:
I guess you can’t win ’em all. One of the perils of having your wife as your producer is that the familiarity can mean the normal “you shouldn’t do that” filter isn’t in place. That said, if something had gone wrong and Grant been injured, the bosses would have found it to be hilarious and he’d be encouraged to do similar again. It’s a fine line.
Will the ban from crazy stunts last long? Unlikely. When you live on the edge entertainment-wise sometimes some things you do are going to upset your boss(es). Until ratings decline enough that they demand crazier than ever! I just hope the spirit of one-up-man-ship that usually exists between Sunrise and The Today Show doesn’t dictate that Steve Jacobs has to take it to the next level, Police Academy style. Shudder.
The funny thing is the only section of Sunrise I’ll ever watch is the weather, because of Grant Denyer’s “stunts”. He makes it interesting and exciting, and I am interested to see how this situation turns out. He’s a funny guy, and I don’t think anyone (read: many people) would have been offended by this. We all know how horses (and several other four-legged large animals) are tested for pregnancy, and while not conventional morning television, I don’t think it’s appropriate to reprimand/discipline Grant for this.
I remember watching this stuff on ABC shows as a kid, you’d see the farmer testing if a horse was pregnant, milking cows, all sorts of below-the-waist stuff! Why could I, as a five year old, watch this, but the adults now see it as “unsafe for TV”?
Agree. Morning TV shows are so annoyingly conservative. They’re about 15 years behind every thing else on TV in terms of what’s “acceptable”.