It's the long feared beginning of the end for ABC!
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has axed its popular comedy show The Glass House.
Comedian Corinne Grant says she and co-hosts Wil Anderson and Dave Hughes have known about the decision for a number of weeks."Obviously we're devastated ... it's very upsetting, but it's not an overnight shock to us. We have known about it for a while now. But we don't understand the decision at all," Grant said.
She says when the ABC broke the news no "good" explanation was given.
Lesna Thomas from ABC TV Publicity today confirmed the show has not been renewed for 2007.
She says it has had five years on air and that the national broadcaster has decided to go in a new direction.
Grant says that is ridiculous.
"Only the ABC would cancel a show that is at the height of its ratings success and say it is time to move on. That would be like Pat Cash winning Wimbledon and going 'oh, it's time to move on'," she said.
"We just won an AFI award, we're nominated for another one, we just got nominated this year for the Most Popular Light Entertainment Program for the first time in the Logies - why would you cancel a show when it's at the height of its popularity?"
Grant says suggestions that the show may have been axed because of regular segments poking fun at Prime Minister John Howard or US President George W Bush are speculative.
"If that was the case, and certainly the ABC have not said that at all, but if that was the case that would be extremely concerning," she said.
"That would be a national broadcaster being dictated to by the incumbent government about its content. Which is the kind of thing you see in North Korea, not Australia."
Grant has also denied claims by Liberal NSW Senator Connie Fierravanti-Wells that she is guilty of a serious conflict of interest. The Senator says Grant is the face of the ACTU's workplace relations campaign.
"I am not fronting an ACTU campaign. That Senator is making that up. I am not the face of any ACTU campaign," said Grant.
Grant says a lack of funding may have been behind the ABC's decision.
"The ABC doesn't have a lot of money. Maybe it was the difference between our show and The 7:30 Report getting a new stapler."
The last episode of The Glass House will go to air on November 29.
Overnight Anderson, posting in his MySpace blog, urged fans to tune in.
"We are going to go out guns a'blazin, I promise."
After John Howard appointed KEITH Windschuttle, a leading protagonist in the history and culture wars, to the ABC board to further beef up its right-wing credentials, it was only a matter of time before Howard's goons started influencing the content shown on ABC.
Mr Windschuttle has been a fierce critic of the so-called "black armband" view of history and claimed in his 2002 The Fabrication of Aboriginal History that massacres of Tasmanian Aborigines had been exaggerated.
The eight-member board already includes right-wing columnist Janet Albrechtsen and conservative anthropologist Ron Brunton.
A businessman in the hotels industry, Peter Hurley, who is national senior vice-president of the Australian Hotels Association, has been appointed to the second board vacancy.
Content Sources:
ABC News - Glass House axed - 01 Nov 2006.
The Age - ABC gets a culture warrior - 16 Jun 2006.
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