The Hickey conspiracy

For the past year One News has resembled the neck of a 15-year-old lothario. It has a Hickey at the top, in the middle, and near the base too.

One's Hickey is, of course, Jim Hickey, and he's slightly less purple than the ones you see on schoolboys'/girls' necks. Although the May 11th edition of One News led me to believe that perhaps they do have something in common. And that similarity is that their constant appearances are frowned upon by their parents.

Allow me to explain. The parents in Jim's case are Simon Dallow and Wendy Petrie, the lead anchors who fail to share Jim's outgoing nature and his love of hijinks (remember the days when Jim would throw things across the news set when the credits were rolling? I miss those times). I hold a completely unfounded belief that Wendy and Simon harbour degrees of resentment toward Jim. After all, they can't show off their personalities like he can, or use the term 'goneburger'. They can't even show off their choice in pants!

For these reasons I've always made up a scenario in my head where Simon and Wendy are frosty towards Jim.
But this particular evening's broadcast of One News showed me that my unsubstantiated perceptions of newsroom cattiness were perhaps not that crazy. Leading the show was of course Jim, giving us a little weather tease and then throwing to the opening music of One News.

But then, leading the news was a story on wild weather in the Western Bay of Plenty. Two doses of weather in two minutes?! The report featured eyewitness comments plus handicam footage of the twister and hail carnage. Among them was a lady wearing a 'Get Over It!' T-Shirt saying it was "hard out eh", and a man who commentated over his camera work with, "that's #@!*ing unreal" and "it's fully twisting around". Hail and twisters are rare in Papamoa, and it would seem eloquence and fashion sense is too.

Once the report was over Simon and Wendy quickly introduced a weather expert for some analysis. Who could that possibly be? Mr Hickey again! The News hour was well underway and Jim was practically running the show. I was picturing Wendy and Simon off camera absolutely filthy at their lack of input to the broadcast thus far.

When Jim finished his analysis things got back to normal and it was straight into the Simon and Wendy show. They spoke in their stone serious tones about Baingate 09, falling house prices, something about Pakistan being unsafe, but then, all of a sudden it was back to Jim again! The time had come for his halftime weather report already, after having seen him only about seven minutes ago.
 
But something went wrong. Right from the get go Jim looked a little flustered. He came clean straight away and admitted he couldn't access the graphics he needed, so quickly threw back to Wendy.

And then the moment that may have confirmed my suspicions of Simon and Wendy's Hickey hatred; Wendy Petrie was laughing. And I swear this laughter had a hint of evil to it, an element of schadenfreude at Hickey's graphics mix up. Not solid evidence, I'll agree, but there was more to come. When it was time for the evening's official weather segment toward the end of the show, Wendy introduced it by saying with a wicked smile, "time for the weather now, and have you sorted those graphics yet Jim?"

It was all fuel to my otherwise totally unsupported belief that Simon and Wendy want to reduce Hickey's appearances throughout their news hour. Now I wonder who was behind the weather graphics failure. It couldn't be... could it?