State of Origin or just 2 hours of Promotions?
Queensland won the first State of Origin last night with an 18-10 score, delivering an exciting first game for the series. There was outstanding action from the likes of Billy Slater and Brent Tate and of course there was an all-in brawl (a fan favourite) that saw Michael Jennings sin-binned for 10 minutes. And while I thoroughly enjoyed the game (I’m an NRL fan) I very quickly tired of Channel 9’s shameless advertising and promoting through the game. They crammed in ad breaks everywhere they could, at one point even leading viewers to miss a few seconds of the action. The entire country (and most likely the world) now knows that Channel 9 is the obviously very proud owner of The Block, The Voice and Tricky Business. We get it. We got it five minutes into the coverage. Ray Warren and the gang had to repeatedly talk about the shows and didn’t sound at all impressed about it. I have respected Channel 9 for a long time because they have a mature approach to their work, but the suffocating promotion for these shows is over-bearing and exhausting. There is such a thing as over exposure and it can lead to audience figures dropping. Also on the subject of Origin, Delta Goodrem’s performance was not good. She sang her new hit Sitting on Top of the World which she premiered at the Logie Awards. That performance was also shaky, which I assumed were just nerves as it’s been awhile since Delta was back on the home turf. But last night’s performance proved there’s no point writing a song with high notes you can reach in a recording studio, but not on stage. I hope for her sake she had a cold last night, but I really don’t think that was the case. On the upside, I was glad to see an opening act with a little bit of credibility. Although I do think one of these years that it really has to be a group like AC/DC or Cold Chisel rather than pop stars.
State of Origin II is on the 13th June at 8pm
Tickets are still available for ANZ Stadium
