G’day Andrew,
Well tonight’s the night…the start of Bulldogs Victory 2010 a week late…or if not, hopefully we can kick at least one goal tonight. Last week was humiliating but was all made better by the other Bulldogs winning the NAB Cup Grand Final.
Have a great night, and thanks for your great work filling in for Alan during the week.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
Add comment March 19th, 2010 at 07:20pm
As has been reported in a number of places, Jim Ball is moving to 2GB, having quit 2UE rather suddenly last week. He is expected to start on Monday and will be networked to Macquarie’s new Melbourne station 3MTR as of mid-May if all goes to plan. Jock’s Journal are claiming that Jim will be on air from 12am to 3am, and Andrew Moore’s Wake Up Sydney (which has been curiously referred to as Wake Up Australia on-air) will be extended by half an hour, starting at 3am instead of 3:30 and will finish at its normal time of 5am. This runs counter to what I am hearing, that Andrew’s show will not change length, but may be networked to Melbourne along with Jim’s show.
Taking Jim’s place on 2UE according to my information will be Mike Jeffreys, former 2CC Breakfast host. He will be on-air from Midnight to 5:30am daily, and ironically will be heard on 2CC for longer than his old breakfast show each day. I have no idea if he’ll take Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life with him as his theme music (although I hope he does) and I also don’t know if any of his old regular correspondents will resurface on his new show, although again, I hope that they do. Trudy Thiele and Donna Stanley were highlights of the week for me and would be good to hear them again.
This does all pose a very serious problem for me though as I now have three different stations to potentially listen to at this time of the night. 2GB’s webstream for Jim Ball, 2CC taking Mike Jeffreys’ show and KXNT with Alan Stock and Rush Limbaugh. There is such a thing as too much choice after all.
Samuel
2 comments March 18th, 2010 at 05:02pm
Kevin Rudd, commenting on the similarities between his problems in making parliament do as he says, and Obama’s predicament in passing his agenda in the US:
“But he has health reform on his agenda on Washington. We have health and hospitals reform on our agenda here in Australia. He has a thing called a troublesome Senate.
“I have a troublesome Senate as well.”
Kevin Rudd was commenting on how he understands the reason for Obama’s delayed visit and how “Australia would fit in with the President’s timetable”. So does Kevin really think that bowing to Obama (that would make a change from Obama’s habit of bowing to everyone…maybe we can have a bow-off) and insulting his own Senate will make the Senate more likely to agree with him, or is his plan to somehow make Obama the new Australian Senate?
Samuel
1 comment March 13th, 2010 at 03:25pm
Barack Obama’s Indonesia/Australia trip has been delayed by three days so that he can take longer to fail to negotiate the passage of his health care reform agenda. In Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ trademark blundering style, the media were given the run-around, initially told that the President had no intention of changing the date, before announcing it on Twitter instead.
This pushes Obama’s Canberra visit back from Tuesday the 23rd of March until (presumably…Gibbs hasn’t released an updated itinerary yet) Friday the 26th.
The president was expected to leave Thursday for the six-day tour that included Guam and Australia. He has pushed it back until next Sunday.
The White House made the announcement on Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ Twitter.
[..]
On Wednesday, Gibbs hinted that the president wasn’t planning on delaying his travel to negotiate the sticking points among House Democrats in accepting the Senate health insurance reform bill.“If we have any changes in the schedule, we’ll certainly let you know, but the president believes it is an extremely important trip with — it’s an important region of the world and these are important partners,” he said.
Gibbs added that “if it takes a couple of days extra” to get the bill passed, the president would be fine with missing the March 18 deadline he set for lawmakers “even if he’s already gone.”
This makes me wonder what we’re going to do with our own politicians. Parliament finishes its current session on Thursday the 18th and we were going to have a special session on Monday the 22nd, presumably to justify the cost of keeping them all here over the weekend so that they could be addressed by Obama on the Tuesday. Surely we won’t keep them here for a whole week of nothing, so I suppose this means that we’re sending them back home on Thursday the 18th and flying them back for the visit on Friday the 26th.
If that’s the case, then so be it. As much as I may dislike the man, I won’t begrudge him his visit…it does after all present me with an opportunity to protest against him. Seriously though, I understand the need for foreign leaders to visit, but given the cost to their country as well as our country, I do have to wonder why we can’t replace many of these visits with teleconferences…and that’s for all world leaders, not just the ones I dislike.
Anyway, as strange as it may sound coming from me, I am actually looking forward to Obama’s visit. I will be very interested to see how our domestic politicians react to his visit when it happens as, pleasantries aside, their reactions and comments will say a lot about their own policy agendas. Tony Abbott’s reaction will be particularly interesting as I’m hoping that Obama will be asked for his views on Abbott’s parental leave policy…being a massive tax increase on business and a redistributionist policy that Mao could be proud of, it should get Obama’s full support…one can only hope that such a thing would bring Abbott to his senses, even if it’s too late to regain any credibility on that issue.
That to one side (as it’s a topic which needs it’s own blog post), I do hope that Obama visits Canberra on the Friday as this will give me the opportunity to watch his plane leave in the afternoon. I didn’t see Air Force One when George W. Bush visited and seeing it in person would actually be the highlight of the trip for me. I’ll probably protest and be glad to see Obama leave…but I’ll be happy that I’ll have seen the plane. The trip is worth it if I can see the plane.
Samuel
Add comment March 13th, 2010 at 02:34am
I’m not a big fan of air travel. I’m not what you would call a “nervous flyer” but I’m not really at ease on aeroplanes either. I just don’t like the idea of having that much distance between myself and the ground, and the air pressure changes annoy me along with the bits of turbulence…flying through cloud bothers me because it removes my ability to check that we’re still a reasonable distance off the ground, and then, well this will sound nuts, but there are no signposts at 40,000 feet, and so the lack of noticeable direction bothers me.
Anyway, with that in mind, you can probably understand how something like this disturbs me in more ways than I dare to count.
An investigation is underway after a child was heard giving instructions to a pilot from the air-traffic control tower at one of America’s busiest airports.
In a recording that has been confirmed as genuine by the Federal Aviation Administration, the child makes five transmissions from John F Kennedy International Airport — with the pilots in each case all responding enthusiastically to him.
The child is clearly under supervision and being fed lines, but even so, should not be in that position. Whilst the fact that a child was in a position to give orders to pilots is a concern unto itself, the fact that the child speaks, like most children, in a not-entirely-clear voice, is a bigger concern to me due to the increased likelihood of a misunderstanding.
This disturbs me too much to think about, so I’ll turn my attention to something more palatable: the TV news set in the video.
Admittedly at this size it doesn’t come up all that brilliantly, but it’s an interesting set due to the way that it’s designed to have many different angles which all look vastly different, unlike many news sets which are designed to look like you’re stuck in one corner of a room.
I’ve highlighted the important bits here. The Red box shows the female anchor who is presenting to the camera in front of her. The view has changed changed from the camera in front of her to this overview camera, and in a moment it will zoom in on the green box where a reporter is standing in front of another camera and is about to present to it. In the yellow box, a male anchor is standing by for his next appearance.
Given the shape of the set, it wouldn’t surprise me if off-screen there is another part of the set which is used as a backdrop for some other locally-produced program. It’s not uncommon for sets to be used for multiple shows, but it is fascinating to see a single set used for the one program but with a completely different “look” depending on the angle, and especially fascinating to see the overview of the set.
Or maybe I’m just easily distracted in an effort to not be disturbed by the news story.
Samuel
Add comment March 4th, 2010 at 02:29am
Well, considering that my last post before disappearing for quite a while was one about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, I could claim that I was kidnapped by the UN and somehow managed to survive their attempts to brainwash me in to believing that:
1) There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
2) Global warming will doom us all
3) The IPCC is not one of the most flawed organisations ever to grace the planet
4) Wasting Spending all that money on UN paychecks programs is really worthwhile.
Thankfully such torture was not used on me…although if it had been, I might be able to explain this sudden urge to support Ban Ki-moon’s campaign to become the first President of his namesake satellite.
So where have I actually been, well for the most part I’ve been working. Work, sleep, eat and procrastinate pretty much sums up the last few weeks, although I did have a day off for Lord Monckton’s Canberra lecture (I didn’t fact-check the CT article did I? Another one for the pile of stuff I really should get around to doing I suppose) in the middle of one of the weeks where I was working more hours than usual.
I’ve also discovered that, since the concussion from my robbery and assault last year, I have needed more sleep than I used to require. It used to be the case that I could still be mostly functional on almost no sleep in a four day period…alas those days appear to be gone and I now struggle if I’m awake for a 24 hour block. The upshot of this is that I am awake less by necessity, and something on my list of commitments therefore had to fall by the wayside. That something, especially when I was working more hours for a few weeks, was this blog.
I’m not satisfied with that though and thoroughly intend on continuing this blog, just probably not as actively as I used to.
As for that announcement which I was going to make…well it ties in with this really. I’m leaving 1WAY FM and this coming Sunday night will be my final shift. I have a few reasons, but the most important one is the fact that I just can’t continue to work on Sunday night, struggle to get to sleep when I get home, and then work again in my “day job” on Monday morning. It does help a bit that my “day job” shifts have been altered so that I no longer work a full day on Mondays, but it doesn’t solve the problem of me working on auto-pilot zombie trance mode and needing to go back to bed after work.
I’ve enjoyed volunteering at 1WAY FM, but I just can’t continue with it…not when it is eventually going to result in me falling asleep at my desk and spilling coffee on equipment. This decision was not easy, as I quite enjoy what I do at 1WAY FM, but it is the right decision.
Where I’ll next pop up in radio land I have absolutely no idea and, at this very moment, I’m not really looking. I do need a bit of a break, although as usual I have some ideas (rarely do I ever run out of ideas) and it will be interesting to see which ones make their way in to reality.
Samuel
2 comments March 2nd, 2010 at 06:12am
SBS are crying poor, and blaming Channel Nine for their woes.
SBS’s director of television and online content Matt Campbell has painted a grim picture of the broadcaster’s operating situation, blasting the Nine Network’s deal to secure the popular Top Gear programme and saying that the coffers are near-empty.
[..]
A $4 million increase in funding from the Federal Government would be insufficient to cover the decline in advertising revenue, leaving the corporation “in the s**t”, he told the conference. Depicting the situation as “dire”, he said that “we have no money for online; we have no money for SBS TWO”.
Well SBS, welcome to commercial reality, welcome to the real world. Whose fault is it that you didn’t build any exclusivity in to your Top Gear contract? Yes, that’s right…yours.
Putting that to one side, you are a commercial operation, and your advertising revenue reflects your ratings. You are airing hour after hour after hour of programming which almost nobody wants to watch…we have a World Movies Channel on pay television which does pretty well for itself covering much of the same ground as you…the difference is that the people who want to see it, pay to see it.
So here’s a novel idea, rather than asking for more money from the government, why not do what PBS do (yes, PBS, the people from whom you buy the Jim Leher show) and ask for donations? This has a number of benefits, the biggest of which being that people will feel more involved in the station and will be more likely to provide you with feedback as to what they actually want to watch. You can then, in turn, use that information to sell more targeted advertising.
I, for one, would be willing to pay for a 112 Emergency marathon. I’m probably the only person in the country with an interest in that, but you would make money out of it…and best of all for us out here in taxpayer land, you wouldn’t be draining our taxes just so that you can show us stuff that we quite simply don’t want to see.
To the same extent, I’d like to see the ABC become commercial and sever ties with the government, although I suspect that with their higher ratings and a massive radio network which is actually broadcast in English, they might have a better chance than SBS of being commercially viable with their current programming.
SBS, in the real world, you have to adapt to changes. If people aren’t watching, and you’re having trouble attracting advertisers because of it, adding additional channels of the same junk won’t fix the problem…you need to adapt to suit what the people want to see. Or you could just hand in your broadcast licence so that we can sell if off to somebody who can actually broadcast something of interest…perhaps an Australian FOX News clone (Sky News, despite being run by similar people, does not count for a number of reasons which I’ll outline in a future post) to balance out the ABC’s impending 24/7 news channel?
Samuel
Add comment March 1st, 2010 at 03:17pm
Update: I’m being told by somebody else now that 2CA are not covering the AFL. I can’t think of a good reason for either party to lie to me, so I’m more than a tad confused by the whole thing. I’ll update this again if and when more details come to hand. End Update
I can’t remember if I wrote anything about 3AW dropping Rex Hunt from their AFL commentary team. I remember writing that I would not be listening to 3AW if they went ahead with it, but I can’t find any proof that I ever wrote anything after they announced that they would actually be dropping Rex.
At the same time, 3AW and Triple M swapped commentators. Rex will be calling football for Triple M on Saturday afternoons, and Brian Taylor will be going to 3AW (eep, they can keep him). Taylor will be joined by Tim Lane, further cementing my decision to steer clear of 3AW this year.
I was pleased to see Rex sign with Triple M…but I’m even more pleased to see him sign with Crocmedia who, along with 3AW, have the commercial radio relay rights for the AFL. Crocmedia, who will be basing their operation in the studios of 3BA Ballarat, have signed both Rex Hunt and Sandy Roberts.
One of things which disappointed me when Seven regained the TV rights was that they didn’t bring Sandy Roberts back to the commentary box despite Sandy being their prominent sport presenter on Seven News Melbourne and presenter of various highlights programs. This sense of frustration has been increased of late due to the fact that I have enjoyed Sandy’s commentary on the overnight AFL replays on 7Two.
Needless to say, I was therefore absolutely delighted when I found out that Sandy Roberts had signed with Crocmedia along with Rex Hunt. Sandy will call Friday night and Saturday afternoon matches, while Rex will lead the commentary on Sunday afternoons.
Alas, I’m informed that Crocmedia will not be able to stream their coverage online, however they do have a growing network of relay stations which will be taking their coverage. The great news for those of us here in Canberra is that 1053 2CA will be taking the Crocmedia coverage, although I’m not sure at this stage which matches they will be covering. I’m hopeful that they will cover it as much as they did back when they relayed 3AW a few years ago…Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Sunday afternoon. I’ll let you know when I find out more.
(A side note to Capital Radio management: this information was not obtained at the Ray Hadley OB on Friday, which can be confirmed by a quick look back through my Facebook status updates. You will see that I first learned of this mid-last week. I won’t reveal how I came by this information though.)
Image courtesy of Crocmedia
Samuel
Add comment March 1st, 2010 at 03:00pm
Will you accept a note? No? OK then, so be it…
Yes I’ve been absent…I’ll explain later when I’m not so tired. I just have a couple things which I want to publish quickly before I have a nap, and then I’ll be able to spend a bit more time later explaining both my absence and that announcement that I was supposed to make a few weeks ago.
I hope you’re all well!
Samuel
1 comment March 1st, 2010 at 02:41pm
This is a bit untimely for me as I was deflecting the ridiculous “there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq” argument a couple of days ago, but anyway, guess what they found in Iraq in the last day or so…yes, that’s right, another weapon of mass destruction.
I haven’t held on to the previous stories about WMDs being dug up in Iraq (nor have The Daily Mail based on the commentary in their article), but I’ll hold on to this one because I’m sure that I’ll have to deal with the silly argument over and over again.
Thanks to KXNT’s Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd for bringing the story to my attention.
Samuel
2 comments February 7th, 2010 at 05:37am
Do you know what I think the most annoying aspect of being human is? No? Well I’ll tell you…the need to sleep.
I came to a few realisations last night which have been a long time coming, and I’m rather glad about it because it means that my goals and direction in at least the short to medium term, are now much clearer and more realistic. Alas I can’t explain it here right now because certain formal processes need to be initiated first but I intend on making an announcement on Monday or Tuesday.
Alas between that and my need to sleep, I didn’t actually get any of my three planned tasks (including the promised blog post) done last night…and for the record I’m now existing on about 15 hours of sleep since 8am Tuesday.
I’m working all day today, so I’ll see how I go tonight…assuming that I don’t just crash out after work, that is.
Samuel
1 comment February 5th, 2010 at 09:32am
Due to popular demand, two new lectures have been added to Lord Monckton’s Australian tour.
Perth – February 9
Venue: Wesfarmers Lecture Theatre, Business School, University of Western Australia
Address: Hackett Drive (off Stirling Highway at Matilda Bay) Crawley Perth WA
Parking: Car Parks 6 & 9, Hackett Drive
Time: 6pm – 8pm [Doors open at 5pm for 6pm start]
Cost: $20 per person. No bookings. Cash payment on entry. [Please bring a $20 note]
Note: Charge is for admission only. No provision of food/drinks.
Sydney – February 12
Master of Ceremonies: Alan Jones
Venue: Hilton Hotel
Address: 488 George Street, Sydney, Australia 2000
Time: 12:30 – 2:30pm
Cost: $20 per person. No bookings. Cash payment on entry. [Please bring a $20 note]
Note: Charge is for admission only. No provision of food/drinks.
As I understand it (and event organisers, please correct me if I’m wrong), all of Lord Monckton’s other lectures have now sold out.
Based on the television footage that I have seen so far, it would appear that Lord Monckton’s presentation was, as expected, almost the same at each venue. To that end, I’m excited to say that a DVD of his Brisbane lecture is apparently in production so there is no need for everyone who missed out, to miss out. I’m going to seek some more details about the DVD and get back to you about it.
Samuel
Add comment February 4th, 2010 at 06:30pm
Not in a million years would I have ever guessed that The Canberra Times, noble kitty litter liner that it is, could contain deliberate lies and misrepresentations, but it’s true, it does.
The CT has sadly gained money from me today so that I could see the extent of their utter misrepresentation of Lord Monckton’s lecture at the National Press Club yesterday. To set the record straight is going to take me more than the few minutes that I can spare right now, so I’ll do it tonight instead.
I suppose I could write a letter to the editor as well, but I don’t really see the point as:
1. Most of the people who read today’s article will not read tomorrow’s letters about it
2. I do not intend on further propping up the bottom line of The Fyshwick Guardian, err, The Canberra Little Red Broadsheet by buying a copy of their squalid rag tomorrow just to check if they publish my letter.
More to follow tonight when I have enough time to actually sit down and write details.
Samuel
3 comments February 4th, 2010 at 03:14pm
I have been up for all but about three of the last 34 hours, so I’ll make this brief and deal with the details later.
Lord Monckton was rather rushed and didn’t have time for an interview but was kind enough to stop for a few seconds for a photo. I’ll be sleeping when the local ABC TV News bulletin goes to air tonight, but I expect to see bits of Lord Monckton’s excellent lecture on there and am recording to see which snippet they decide to run with. Lord Monckton is also, according to Andrew Bolt’s blog, on The 7:30 Report tonight with Kerry O’Brien…it will be interesting to see if Lord Monckton is able to finish many of his sentences in that stage-managed environment.
More later, but for now I need sleep.
Samuel
Add comment February 3rd, 2010 at 06:15pm
Lord Monckton appeared on 666 ABC Canberra’s breakfast show with Ross Solly after 8:30 this morning and I thought Lord Monckton ran rings around Ross. Ross was mostly fair in the interview but it was pretty clear who had a better grasp of the facts. I did feel sorry for Ross a couple times when he struggled to get words in at points where I thought Lord Monckton’s answers were already sufficient, but that was balanced by my annoyance at Ross’ obsession with who Lord Monckton is meeting, which I feel cost the audience some participation time.
The interview is up on the new 666 ABC Canberra website or can be downloaded directly by clicking here. I’m not going to embed the audio in this page as I intend on being fair to the ABC.
I didn’t hear it yesterday as I was engrossed in work at the time, but Lord Monckton apparently appeared on 2CC’s Mike Welsh Drive Show. If and when that audio appears on their website (and when I notice it, considering that I’ll be out for much of the afternoon) I’ll post a link to that interview as well.
Samuel
1 comment February 3rd, 2010 at 12:14pm