Archive for December 24th, 2006

Samuel’s Musicians Of The Week

This week I’m giving the award to anyone who sings a Christmas carol in the next 72 hours…thankfully I don’t have to send trophies to the winners of Samuel’s Musician(s) Of The Week!

Anyway, the feature song this week is a variation on a well known traditional Christmas carol, I can’t track down the composer of this variation.

Christmas is coming,
The goose is getting fat,
Please put a penny
In the old man’s hat.
If you haven’t got a penny,
A ha’penny will do,
If you haven’t got a ha’penny,
Then God bless you.

Christmas is coming,
lights are on the tree,
Hang up your stocking for Santa Claus to see.
If you you haven’t got a stocking,
a little sock will do;
If you haven’t got a little sock,
God bless you!

Christmas is coming,
the season of good cheer,
Let’s all sing a carol for the brand-new year!
If you haven’t got a carol,
a jolly song will do;
If you haven’t got a jolly song,
God… bless… you…!

Merry Christmas Everybody, this award will return to normal next weekend.

Samuel

December 24th, 2006 at 05:43pm

Christmas On The Airwaves

With Christmas just around the corner, and me running late with some Christmas wishes, I had a Christmas calling splurge, and have wished four radio presenters a Merry Christmas in the space of five hours. And for your benefit, and to help spread the Christmas cheer, I’ve recorded them for your enjoyment.

5.40MB MP3 Download

First up is my call to John Kerr on 2UE and stations across the nation at about 2:15 this morning, I had an exhausting list of people I needed to send Christmas wishes to, and John and I discussed the Terrigal Lunch photos (They will appear on here after Christmas), plus we briefly discuss a phone conversation I had with John’s former producer Leonie Ryan who is now a newsreader at 2LM Lismore.

Then we have my call to Stuart Bocking filling in for George Moore and Paul B. Kidd on 2UE at about 6:10am. I wish Stuart a Merry Christmas, he does the same to me, and we discuss Christmas lunches and our plans.

Then it’s the 2CC Bunnings Gardening Show with Mike Frame and Vicki Berry at 7:05am (Sorry Vicki, I accidently spelled your name with a “Y” when I first wrote this article). Mike and Vicki discuss the recent rain, I wish them a Merry Christmas and ask Vicki what plants she thinks make good Christmas presents. Vicki’s thing can help enhance the use of your garden, has two words of six letters and eight letters respectively, and as I discover has no “W’s for waterlilly”.

Tonight (to continue my audio deluge) I will be posting my inaugural Christmas message.

Update 9am: The puzzle was “Garden Lighting”, congratulations to Yvonne who was the first caller to get it. I got it half an hour beforehand, Mike got it about half an hour before me.

Vicky had a second puzzle up her sleeve, something to enhance your garden
_ I N _
_ H I _ _
No G’s or B’s.

Congratulations to Betty who won the Bliss Garden Giftware set of wind chimes (yep, that was the puzzle), and to Peggy Sheppard of Waramanga who wasn’t home to receive the call, but got an amusing message from Mike and Vicky on her answering machine, announcing that she had won the 2CC Bunnings Gardening Show’s major Christmas prize of a “Jack and Jill seat” from Stonehenge in Pialligo. Hopefully she doesn’t skip the message when she hears it starting with a drumroll, on the assumption that it was from weird telemarketers!

End Update

Samuel

December 24th, 2006 at 07:55am

Festively Missing Newsreaders

It looks like 2CC and 2CA’s weekend newsreaders are missing in a suspected case of festively-induced absences.

Yesterday, weekday morning newsreader Jane Turner was reading the news, and as such her pre-recorded weather forecasts have been playing overnight as per standard procedure, it is unusual to have the weekday morning newsreader reading the Saturday news.

This morning we have had two scheduled local bulletins turn into 2UE feed bulletins. Laura Tunstall and the team at 2UE are doing a great job, but I have to wonder how long it will be until a newsreader takes over at 2CC. As unusual as it is for the weekday morning newsreader to read Saturday news, it is even more unusual for 2CC to not have a local newsreader (either scheduled or fill-in) by the 6:30 bulletin.

I can only hope they have one by 7am, as Jane’s weather is now a tad long in the tooth as it refers to last night as “tonight” and it is now daylight outside.

That being said, all is forgiven as it is the festive season and radio stations do strange things around the festive season!

Update shortly after 7am: Welcome to 2CC’s newest weather reporter, Mike Frame! Still waiting for a newsreader. End Update

Update 7:30: Still a 2UE feed…I’m starting to wonder if this was an unusual Christmas Eve way of handling the news. End Update

Update 9:05am: Regardless of what happened (and I think it was a newsreader not turning up) 2CC have clearly decided to just use the 2UE feed and have Mike Frame do the weather. It will be interesting to see how Mike goes at fitting the weather in the allocated timeslots for the automation this afternoon and tonight. End Update

Update 12:10pm: I nearly fell over when I heard Francis Keany presenting the weather after a 2UE-feed news bulletin. I was looking forward to hearing Mike’s voice reading the pre-recorded weather for the next 18 hours, but alas he has just disappeared on holidays after a sterling effort as the fill-in weatherman, and Francis will be the first local voice on Christmas day at 12:04:40 after the 2CC weather intro. I’ll run through a list of lineup changes on Boxing Day once I get my head around them.End Update

Samuel

9 comments December 24th, 2006 at 06:43am

Super 66

Good morning again John,

Many weeks ago you asked how the "Super 66" lottery draw works, as you were confused as to how you could get he same number drawn out twice.

A few years ago, before all the televised lotteries were shortened, we used to see the Super 66 draw on television in Canberra. Basically you have a barrel with six compartments, each compartment has ten balls numbered zero through ten nine. From memory, you can't choose your own numbers in Super 66, it is a bit like a variation on New South Wales' "Lucky Lotteries" where you just get a ticket number and hope your number comes up, except that they only draw one set of numbers in Super 66, and prizes are assigned based on how many of those numbers you have.

New South Wales Lotteries did the exact same thing (but with seven numbers) when they had "Lucky Seven" on Friday nights before the football.

Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra

December 24th, 2006 at 04:00am

Bloody Ishmael

John,

Please excuse me for a moment, but I have a message for Ishmael, I've wanted to say it too him all year, and this morning he has tipped me right over the edge…Ishmael, go and stuff your head up a turkey.

I just love the way he can deflate his own arguments…Isn't it wonderful that he wants people to ring up, but only the people who don't normally ring up (invent them Ishmael if you want them, I'm sorry that a group of people are awake on Saturday and Sunday morning and want to have a chat), he wants people to not talk about their personal life, he wants you to be fairer (but admits you've never been nasty or unfair to him…or many others).

Ishmael, we don't need serious newstalk every second of every day…I repeat, go and stuff your head up a turkey you goose!

And I was having such a good morning until that moron got on. I shall return to my good morning and jolly Christmas spirit now that I've got that off my chest.

Have a good morning John, and Merry Christmas (again),

Samuel

Update 1:27am January 10, 2007: Since publishing this email, Ishmael has contacted me and we have had some discussions. I have come to the conclusion that whilst I disagree with a lot of Ishmael’s opinions, he isn’t the stark raving mad lunatic I portrayed him as, and actually seems like a fairly reasonable individual.

My description of Ishmael as a “serial pest caller” was harsh and unwarranted, especially seeing as there are plenty of callers who actually do fit that category, and it is unfair to compare Ishmael to them when Ishmael actually calls to make a point rather than a nuisance.

I still think the choice of timing of Ishmael’s exchange with John Kerr was poor, but I do now see where he is coming from.

Whilst Ishmael understands that I won’t be taking down any of what I wrote, I would like to publicly apologise to Ishmael for being a bit too harsh in my comments. End Update

December 24th, 2006 at 03:30am

Scheduling Whoops!

For those of you who are wondering where the Musicians Of The Week award went, it should never have appeared in the first place. I accidentally forgot to tick the “Edit Timestamp” box when I was posting it, and as such my scheduled time for it to appear was not taken into account. As I then went away from the computer for a while I didn’t notice the error and it stayed at the top of the page for about an hour. This isn’t the first time I’ve made that error, but it is the first time I’ve let it run for that long.

I apoligise for any confusion or any inconvenience my error caused, please rest assured that the Musicians Of The Week award will re-appear in its usual timeslot later today.

Samuel

December 24th, 2006 at 02:46am


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