And so the news has come to pass:

The popular light entertainment show, hosted by Daryl Somers, will be canned to make way for new shows on the channel in 2011. Hey Hey regular Red Symons was shocked to hear the news. "We've been axed before, though, so I'm used to the feeling," he said glumly.


Shall we do a quick survey of those who are surprised by this news?


Okay, great. What about you guys, then?



Righto, and you lot?

Okay the, so that's settled. 

The thing is, though, it pains me that something I had - believe it or not - long wished for, i.e. the revival of the highlight of my childhood television, finally became a reality only to be dashed upon the rocks of good taste, sense, and entertainment. 

Because Hey Hey was, once, truly great. It was worth staying in for on a Saturday night, or at least staying in to watch before going out.

Last year's two commemorative 'getting the band back together' shows felt beautifully reminiscent of the good old days - before, that is, it went down the toilet faster than a lead turd when The Jackson Jive stepped on stage.

The rhetoric was "they should have been gonged off instantly". No, the show, and any hope of its resuscitation, should have been gonged off. It should have been indication enough that the Hey Hey brand had long since turned to TV detritus and had no hope of revival.

Instead, Channel Nine - bastions of taste and wit - decided not only to renew the format, but in what must rank as one of the most perplexing television programming decisions since... ever, they put Hey Hey It's Saturday on Wednesday.

Yes, they then shunted it back to Saturday, but even then, there was a stench of death about the show that made for intensely uncomfortable viewing.

Take this, for instance:



There's something desperately sad - pathetic, even - about Daryl Somers' absolute inability to see that his beloved show has become a cadaverous irrelevancy. It's like watching your dad go senile.

Just this past week he was writing an open note to fans of the show to express his hopefulness that Hey Hey would return in 2011.

It made me think of his sad-eyed blankness after The Jackson Jive, his genuine confusion that anything the show had done was in poor taste and might jeopardise its future.

I'm sure he'll continue to go down fighting for his beloved Hey Hey, but I wish he'd realise what the rest of the show's long-term fans realised long ago: that the Hey Hey revival will go down as 2010's worst programming decision.