Paul Henry In The Poo-Poo

Are we surprised?
Are we sad?
Are we just a little smug?
Paul Henry's OZ tv adventure is on ever shakier ground, with his Channel Ten Breakfast show attracting only a thousand viewers across the entire Great Southern Land on one day recently! It scored an average daily national audience of around 28,000 in recent weeks, with NO viewers at ALL in Perth on two occasions.
Sydney's Sunday Telegraph calls the show an unmitigated disaster, with producers and hosts desperate to leave. Tension between Henry and his co-hosts lead to the departure of presenter Andrew Rochford last month, and the show's executive producer. Henry himself makes no secret of problems on-set, but they don't seem to worry him: "It's so nice to get the entire Breakfast audience in one room at one time."
His abrasive flippant style hasn't changed since crossing The Ditch - on Bastille Day he couldn't resist telling his handful of viewers that he hated the French!
He seems happy to play the role of captain on the doomed Titanic, and doesn't seem to care less what people think. So is this simply a supreme confidence in his own abilities? A bullet-proof narcissism? Is he like the proverbial survivalist cockroach in a post-nuke scenario: when his show is destroyed and the people working on it gone, will he be the only one still standing, happily giggling puerily (as he does)? Or does he know something we don't?
In my headline, I used the word "poo-poo" deliberately. It's the sort of childish term Paul Henry oft employed in his days debasing NZ's tv screens. But the problems he faces on Australian breakfast tv require a far more adult approach to solve...