STUDIO Bert is small. In fact, it's almost warm and cosy - an amazing thing for a television studio to be, since they're often such cold, clinical environments. Like operating theatres, with imposing machines called cameras poking around, trying desperately to suck the reality out of all in their path. Studio Bert is so named by the Working Dog members who form The Panel because it's the one at Channel 10 in Melbourne that is home to Bert Newton and his Good Morning Australia show. The fact that it's Bert's place is bound to have something to do with the decision to pick it as a venue. After all, the people now saying good evening Australia each Wednesday in the same space are Bert lovers. They love his work, his legend ... his Logies hostings, particularly. And now, they love his studio, which sits just a designer frock's length from fashionable Chapel Street, within stumbling distance of the Working Dog office. This isn't to say that Rob Sitch, Tom Gleisner, Santo Cilauro, Jane Kennedy, Michael Hirsch and the other Dogs are bone lazy. It's part of the time management that this most prolific of comic groups is into at the moment. Right now, the people who brought you Frontline and The Castle are offering The Panel, which probably bears more resemblance to The Late Show, which confirmed their comic status years ago. Actually, the only real similarities with that show are that The Panel is live and some of the same people turn up.
In Studio Bert, about 30 or 40 people are squeezed into seats, enjoying the dinner party conversation. Outside the studio, a much larger audience has begun to gather. The Panel started slowly, in a blaze of non-publicity, then got touched up severely by a number of reviewers, who decided it was a clumsy indulgence. But it has found its pace and attitude ... and some decent ratings, especially with the 16-39 demographic. Complaints of "not enough women" still exist, although the men on board are hardly the most "blokey" bunch you're likely to meet. It ain't The Footy Show. Sitch says that when they approached Ten, they told the network they might have some appeal to the 16-39 age group.
"More by default, because we don't have a lot of appeal for people over 50," says Sitch; Perhaps it's viewers over 50 who offered the criticism that Tom Gleisner recalls as: "They're just at a desk, they're just talking, it's an outrage.'' "Some people took it a bit too seriously," says Gleisner, who drew the short straw and gets to say "hello", "welcome back" and "bloody hell, we're late for a commercial break" as host, before throwing a week's worth of meat on the desk to see who can devour it in the most enfertaining way. "Some people tend to take television in general too seriously," he says. "If every show was like it [The Panel], I'd agree it wouldn't be good, but most shows aren't like that. They're heavily pre-produced. I think there's room on television for something as loose and underprepared as The Panel." As loose as the show is, there's been constant tinkering since its birth, with a reduction in the number who sit behind the desk (it was far too Last Supper early on), greater use of film footage, and a different guest panellist each week. Sitch, Gleisner, Cilauro, and Glenn Robbins, who brings a nicely different comic dynamic to that group, have been the regulars. All involved, though, are determined that it maintains its simplicity. It's a live altemative to the production numbers going on elsewhere. 'The day we start tricking The Panel up and putting gimmicks in is the day it'll be the death of it," says Gleisner.
SITCH goes further: "I'd do it in my garage. I almost want the show to get worse. I want it to just be genuinely what we want it to be, which is just plain disposable mucking around. And nothing more. Otherwise you can fall into a trap where ... the tail must wag the dog. You start going, 'What are we gonna do this week?' If five reasonably funny people sitting around yakking about whatever happened during the week, if that doesn't work, then I'll move to cable. Then community television, I reckon." The show has a number of rules. Rule one is if there's a current issue The Panel members would be talking about in the office, it gets a guemsey on the show. Rule two is that if it doesn't happen at the desk, it doesn't happen. So no gymnasts or big musical acts for this show ... although Sitch is secretly busting to break out of that notion for the final show. Rules three and four have slipped your reporter's mind. Something about rules being stupid.
"There are so many traps you can fall into," says Sitch. "Like people interviewing people. No-one analyses why people have to be asked the tough questions. People go,'Yeah, he's prepared to ask the tough questions' and you go, right, that's if someone's coming on to sell a point. But if you'rejust having a conversation ... Like, when you have a dinner party or you just go for a drink, with my friends I don't go, 'Now listen, here's a tough question'. "Someone said,'Are you gonna ask Kylie [Minogue, a recent guest] about Michael Hutchence?' For a start, I'm not interested. Second, why? We're just having a chat with her, why would I spoil her night by going,Wow open up your private photo album and let's just spill your guts out on national television'?" Speaking of guests and thk revolving Panel chair, Rob Sitch has a dream. A bit like Bob Hawke's one about poverty and kids. "Down the track" says Sitch, "by 2010, I'd like to think that every Australian has had the opportunity to come and sit on The Panel and blow wind out. To me it should never be seen as a very precious seat to covet,"
Sydney Morning Herald, The Guide June 1-7, 1998