The heat is on as tacky takes on classy in the battle for TV's night of nights.
After 30 years, Melbourne will no longer host the annual Logie awards ceremony, leaving the self-confessed "tacky" Gold Coast heading the list of potential venues.
Having contributed $1 million each year to host the event, the Victorian government said the Logies offered little in the way of returns and it was ready to pass on the baton.
"There is no, or very little, value in having the Logies in Melbourne in terms of return to our economy and in terms of jobs," the Victorian Major Events and Tourism Minister John Eren said on ABC on Monday.
The emerging frontrunner is the glitzy Gold Coast whose mayor Tom Tate says critics who see the move as tacky are missing the point.
"I could turn around and say that it's fitting because it's a tacky industry coming to a tacky city, it goes hand-in-hand," Tate said on Monday.
For the past three years, TV and radio personality Dave Hughes has hosted the Logies and called for it to stay in its traditional home,
"Melbourne's a classy city and it should stay because it's a classy event. Keep the classy event in the classy city," Hughes told AAP.
As the Gold Coast turns tacky to its advantage, Queensland's Tourism Minister Kate Jones accused the Victorian Government of taking the event for granted.
"I mean, Victoria's got sour grapes today because they've lost the Logies and other states like NSW and Queensland are in the mix," she told reporters in Brisbane.
Sydney, meanwhile, might seem like an obvious choice to take over the event with the ARIA Awards, the AACTAs and several other awards ceremonies at home in the harbour city. However, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has other ideas and is offering up other areas of the city and the state for consideration.
"I think it would be wonderful to have parts of NSW fight for the Logies, whether it's regional NSW or Western Sydney," she told reporters in Sydney on Monday.
The state's regional areas Tamworth, Dubbo and Albury have been pitched to take turns hosting the event over the next three years by NSW Minister for Tourism Adam Marshall.
While the event has been held in Sydney on a handful of occasions, Melbourne has been its traditional home since the first ceremony in 1959 and one TV celebrity, Karl Stefanovic, has plans to boycott the event in light of the move.
"This is a joke of giant proportions," Stefanovic said on Nine's Today show, claiming the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews had lost the plot.
"For $1 million the advertising Victoria gets is second to none ... This is disgusting and I will be boycotting the Logies until they're back in Melbourne at Crown Casino."
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