I have a perfect breakfast show. Am I right or am I right? No, I’m right – perfect breakfast show. Competing with a man with an entirely adequate breakfast show and he’s decided to compete with someone with a perfect breakfast show.
That’s perception, you might say. Well, it’s my perception. I could be wrong, but I’m not.
“How do you know that Paul Henry doesn’t have a perfect breakfast show?” you ask. “You don’t listen to it.”
Okay, I’ll tell you why: because I don’t listen to it.
If you’ve got a perfect breakfast show, you know you’ve got a perfect breakfast show, because you listen to it all the time, you listen to it on replay, and then you play it to your kids when you get home.
But this is a subjective thing, isn’t it? My impression?
No, oh no, you might like a different breakfast show to me, right, but there’s breakfast shows you like, breakfast shows you don’t like, and then there’s perfect breakfast shows. The breakfast shows you like might be different to the ones I like, but the perfect ones are the same.
And what are they?
Well, you can listen to them now, if you care to tune into Newstalk ZB between 6 and 8:30am on weekdays.
A lot of breakfast shows go till nine, but mine don’t, because they don’t need that extra half hour, because they’re perfect.
Paul goes till nine, I understand, because he needs that extra half hour to get it right. I don’t blame him. It’s not easy having a perfect breakfast show. I’m not saying he has a bad breakfast show. I don’t know. I don’t listen to it.
He probably won’t hear anything I say about this, anyway, and if he did, 1) He’d be outraged, which is a feeling he loves, and 2) Very fucking proud. Proud that his entirely adequate breakfast show is being discussed by someone with a perfect breakfast show.
Of course, I’m not talking about this because I chose to talk about it. I’m talking about it because ordinary, sensible kiwis expect me to tell them how to digest the news in one Mike’s Minute* or less, and my employer, NZME – wonderful company – has deemed this Henry furore to be very large news indeed.
*(Much like a regular minute, but much more expensive).
And I say: good on you. Good on you NZME, for shining a light on our competitors. Good on you, for refocusing the news away from what matters, and towards what matters to people. Good on you, for publishing an article selling therapeutic bee venom as though it were an actual story. Good on you, for installing that elevator that leads directly to my studio so I don’t have to mingle in other parts of the building.
Good on you, for giving Tony Veitch another go, and another go, and another go. Good on you, for putting all our data, statistics and evidence on NZ Herald Insights, so I don’t have to read it mixed up with my regular news. Good on you, for getting the news out so fast there’s no time to even proof read it once.
And good on you, New Zealand, for tuning in every morning, so we can cut through the nonsense, and get to the real nitty gritty, like Paul Henry’s titties.
I mean breakfast show.