It is 2.30pm on a Monday and I am watching a video of two people aggressively snogging. They are a man and a woman in a car, shrouded by nightfall; all is quiet save for the sound of mouth on mouth, each lip smack echoing into the void at a volume that could be classed as torture. There are closeups of skin and saliva. There is lipstick, somehow, on the steering wheel. Minutes go by and still, they are making out with a dangerous tenacity, undeterred by anything as prosaic as breathing. It is a disgusting little tableau. It is the visual equivalent of the word “moist”.
This is my introduction to Pedestrian Television, the new digital TV channel launched late last month by the Australian youth media juggernaut Pedestrian and its parent company, Nine. Excuse the truisms, but the death knell for free-to-air has been clanging for easily a decade, while streaming – including watching commercial stations on demand – continues to hold out. The arrival of Pedestrian Television on 9Now might feel opportune: can it capture a generation increasingly disillusioned with terrestrial TV? Can it translate its sprawling network of publications – among them the Australian editions of Vice and Refinery29 – into loyal viewers?
