A few hours behind schedule but we’re pleased to announce The Fuglies have come back in 2007 to give viewers a chance to unload on everything on Australian television that they’re not happy with.

You can submit your nominations in the 2007 TV Fugly Awards at http://www.fugly.com.au/vote.

Who will you vote for to get Australian TV’s worst honours? All the TV Fugly Award winners are chosen by ordinary television viewers who are happy they don’t have to buy a copy of TV Week to express their opinion on the state of Aussie television. Make your vote count and don’t let the people who annoy you the most walk away without the award they deserve!

What’s different from last year?
2 Step Voting Process
instead of having a drawn out month long process, this year we’ve chosen to go with a with a 2 step, 17 day voting period.

The entirely open text box voting was just to difficult for The Fuglies Couch Dwelllers to continue the craziness of collating, sorting and counting open text responses for the whole voting period.

So what we’ve done is allow people to nominate whoever they want for the first 8 days. Then we’ll tally up the votes and release the top 10 nominees that can be voted on to decide the winner in each category.

Eddie McGuire is back!
Now that Eddie is back on the telly he is back in the running and eligible for nominations.

We always felt that The Fuglies were some type of hommage to Eddie so now that it just feels right he can be included again in our silly little awards. Happy times.

Categories
Most categories have stayed as they’ve always been. We’ve still got all the big categories which let Aussie TV viewers get things off their chest in categories that nobody in the television industry wants to win.

We have however dropped the category Most Sensational Current Affairs Program . It just felt really tired that we were beating up the same two shows in such a limp way especially when their journalism misdemeanors are so well covered throughout the year via comedians and regular media analysis.

We are pleased to say we have some spiffy/shiny/sexy new categories:
- Newsreader/TV Journalist with the Most Gravitas
- Naomi Robson’s worst incident of the year
- Worst Advertisement on TV
- Show that was messed around the most by a television network in the last 12 months
- New “Sports” to broadcast on TV

The full list of 2007 TV Fugly Awards categories….

The bad categories….
1. Worst TV Show
2. Worst Male TV Personality
3. Worst Female TV Personality
4. Most Biased Sporting Commentator
5. ‘The Eddie’ for Most Over Exposed TV Personality

The good categories….
6. Spunkiest Male TV Personality
7. Most Spankable Female TV Personality
8. Most Under Acknowledged TV Show
9. Most Under Acknowledged TV Personality

Annual token categories….
10. Newsreader/TV Journalist with the Most Gravitas
11. Naomi Robson’s worst incident of the year
12. Worst Advertisement on TV
13. Show that was messed around the most by a television network in the last 12 months
14. New “Sports” to broadcast on TV

Vote now, vote fugly, vote well http://www.fugly.com.au/vote.

Update: We’ve pushed this back on hour to Midday. Sorry.

Until then, we’re moving servers, doing a live re-design and testing the voting systems. Which is why we are very sorry for any missing or incomplete parts of our web site that cause inconvenience during the changes.

Thanks,
The Fuglies Couch Dwellers

A big thank you to the following people plus another 290 anonymous contributors who answered our call for ideas with suggestions about things they liked and disliked about the Logies, The Fuglies and Aussie TV to help make the TV Fugly Awards a less half-arsed effort in 2007.

If we could pay you, we would. Unfortunately, printing the certificates plus postage to ensure the winners know they have won as well as the one tonne of coffee that is consumed during the vote counting isn’t cheap you know. Though your time taken to offer some ideas really means a lot.

Tops people we would love to employ if we could and a very much responsible for The Fuglies in 2007….

Daniel from Kinglake West.
Jay from NSW.
Travis from Perth.
J from Sydney.
Matt from Adelaide.
Samantha from Perth.
Louise from Willoughby.
Damien from Sydney.
H from Sydney.
Leanne from ACT.
Vicki from Perth.
Stephen from Melbourne.
Toad from Brisbane.
Guy from Alstonville.
Martin from Randwick.
Courtney from Brisbane.
Andy from Sydney.
Quentin from Brisbane.
Dylan from VIC.
Andrew from Melbourne.
Robert from Gold Coast.
Ella from NSW.
Con from Tasmania.
Anna from Tasmania.
Stephen from Marian.
David from Sale.

Insanely mad props,
The Fuglies Couch Dwellers

There is a film coming out soon in the USA called The TV Set.

It’s tagline is: A place where dreams are canceled.

I love it already.

The film is basically about a writer (played by David Duchovny) as he has to compromise everything to get a TV pilot through the US Network TV processes of casting, production and finally airing. Sure it’s pretty similar to the second season of Ricky Gervais’ Extras and I don’t know when or if it is being released in Australia but via the trailer below it looks so good.

Fave quote by a TV exec from the trailer: But frankly, original scares me a little.

If we could just sit down Australian commercial television executives in front of this movie and force them to watch it, do you think they would get it?

I say, no.

Thought we should remind everyone that during last year’s TV Fugly Awards voting in the category for the Most Over Exposed TV Personality - ‘The Eddie’ Kevin Rudd scored a substantial number of votes. That was before he was even Opposition Leader.

Which is why it didn’t really surprise anyone here on the Fugly lounge when news broke over the weekend that Kevin Rudd and Channel 7’s Sunrise program had planned to hold a mock Anzac Day service in from Long Tan in Vietnam a few hours before dawn so that it would be broadcast during when the highest share of viewing audience would be watching. Ouch! That doesn’t look good for either Kevin or the Sunrise “Family”.

At least it does again show that The Fuglies voters are an enlightened crowd who are right on the money with their insights and judgement with all things TV. They clearly have their ears to the ground and eyes on the screen.