This round seems to have been sparked by 2GB doing the almost unthinkable, dumping their consistently top-rating night time host Brian Wilshire, and replacing him with Steve Price, whom Macquarie Radio (owners of 2GB) still have under a five-year contract from his time at the helm of their now-abandoned foray in to the Melbourne market, MTR 1377.
This alters 2GB’s lineup a bit more than a simple replacement would. Steve Price is taking over the 8pm-midnight timeslot, which means he is replacing the Alan Jones & Ray Hadley highlights hour which was airing at 8pm, The Super Show with Peter Switzer which was airing at 9pm, and some of Brian Wilshire’s timeslot which most recently started at 10pm. Overnights will return to starting at the old start time of midnight, although it is entirely unclear who will be hosting that as the original story was that Brian Wilshire was to be given that timeslot, however he is going away for three months to write a book, so it’s entirely possible that Michael McLaren will return to the overnight show when he returns from annual leave in a week or two.
That said, I was told late last year that 2GB had plans to replace Brian Wilshire with former 2UE afternoon presenter Michael Smith. It hasn’t happened and I have seen no further evidence of it, but anything is possible at this point in time.
Regardless of what happens to the overnight show, Steve Price has announced that Andrew Bolt, who co-hosted the 8am hour of the breakfast show on MTR 1377, will be joining Steve during the 8pm hour of the 2GB show. Andrew is also on a long-term contract with Macquarie Radio thanks to the MTR venture.
It has been reported in Melbourne’s Herald Sun that the other big MTR contract, that of Steve Vizard, has been paid out as a lump sum.
Meanwhile at 2UE, it seems that despite recent improvements in 2UE’s night-time ratings on the back of Mike Jeffreys hosting the show, they have decided that they need to shuffle their presenters if they are to make in-roads from the absence of the Brian Wilshire ratings powerhouse. Honestly, I don’t understand this logic, as any change brings an element of risk. Mike Jeffreys is a well-performing established brand in the timeslot, and I would have thought that having him maintain his existing audience, while capturing a few people who have been put off by Brian Wilshire’s departure, in conjunction with Mike’s existing audience growth, would have been a sufficient strategy…but nothing that makes sense to me ever seems to make sense to The Powers That Be at 2UE.
2UE are moving morning presenter David Oldfield, who has held on to a fairly stable audience, to the night timeslot of 8pm-midnight. The strategy, presumably, is that David is familiar to 2GB’s audience, having rated quite well when he was hosting 2GB’s overnight show a couple years back, and that he is more likely to attract the Brian Wilshire audience than Mike Jeffreys is. 2UE also had planned to move Mike Jeffreys back to his former timeslot of midnight to dawn, replacing Tim Shaw, however this is now up in the air as Mike Jeffreys has decided to take two weeks off to “decide his future”.
David Oldfield’s morning slot is to be taken over by Stuart Bocking “until further notice”, whatever that might mean. Stuart has recently hosted nights for a number of years, before moving to afternoons to replace Michael Smith last year, and most recently weekend afternoons after The Two Murrays replaced him in the afternoon and Tim Webster took on a weekday evening role in the revived Sports Today program. There is no word on who will replace Stuart on the weekend until the “further notice” happens, but my money is on Clinton Maynard, who did the job for a couple weeks when Tim Webster was transitioning to Sports Today.
Confused yet? To clarify, here’s what the weekday lineups looked like a couple weeks ago:
12:00am-01:00am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Brian Wilshire.
01:00am-03:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Michael McLaren.
03:30am-05:00am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Andrew Moore/Luke Bona.
05:00am-05:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw. 2GB Alan Jones highlights.
05:30am-09:00am: 2UE Jason Morrison. 2GB Alan Jones.
09:00am-12:00pm: 2UE David Oldfield. 2GB Ray Hadley.
12:00pm-03:00pm: 2UE The Two Murrays. 2GB Chris Smith.
03:00pm-06:00pm: 2UE Paul Murray. 2GB Ben Fordham.
06:00pm-08:00pm: 2UE Sports Today. 2GB Money News w/ Ross Greenwood.
08:00pm-09:00pm: 2UE Mike Jeffreys. 2GB Alan Jones/Ray Hadley highlights.
09:00pm-10:00pm: 2UE Mike Jeffreys. 2GB Supperannuation w/ Peter Switzer.
10:00pm-12:00am: 2UE Mike Jeffreys. 2GB Brian Wilshire.
And the new lineups, with changes in bold.
12:00am-03:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw (but for how long?). 2GB Unknown.
03:30am-05:00am: 2UE Tim Shaw (but for how long?). 2GB Andrew Moore/Luke Bona.
05:00am-05:30am: 2UE Tim Shaw (but for how long?). 2GB Alan Jones highlights.
05:30am-09:00am: 2UE Jason Morrison. 2GB Alan Jones.
09:00am-12:00pm: 2UE Stuart Bocking (until further notice). 2GB Ray Hadley.
12:00pm-03:00pm: 2UE The Two Murrays. 2GB Chris Smith.
03:00pm-06:00pm: 2UE Paul Murray. 2GB Ben Fordham.
06:00pm-08:00pm: 2UE Sports Today. 2GB Money News w/ Ross Greenwood.
08:00pm-12:00am: 2UE David Oldfield. 2GB Steve Price.
It is probably worth noting that Peter Switzer has not been dumped by 2GB. He will stay on, providing finance reports during the Steve Price show, and will continue to fill-in for Ross Greenwood from time-to-time.
One does have to wonder what the network affiliates make of all of this. 2UE lost almost all of their morning show affiliates to Ray Hadley during the time that Steve Price, and later Steve Liebmann, hosted the show. I believe, but can’t confirm, that they only have two left, which is far cry from the 70 or so they had when John Laws hosted the morning show. One of the remaining stations is 2WEB in Bourke, and I could be certain that David mentioned another at the start of each show, but its name escapes me right now, and Google is not helping. Affiliates of David Oldfield have been lumped with yet another change of host and style as Stuart Bocking is a very different host to David.
I don’t think 2UE have any afternoon show affiliates left. Michael Smith had a couple (probably the same ones as David Oldfield), but the afternoon show isn’t even listed on Fairfax Radio Syndication’s website any more. Afternoon affiliates have either joined Chris Smith on 2GB or gone to local programming.
Then there’s the evening and overnight shows, which have seen even more changes of late. Affiliates of these shows seems to be sticking with it and in fact I see that 2ST Nowra is half way through updating their website for the overnight changes as I write this. It would seem that these affiliates are happy to take whatever 2UE give them as Mike Jeffreys mentioned that 2GB have been trying to poach affiliates for the new Steve Price show, but so far nobody has been in the least bit interested, which I find interesting as Macquarie Radio tend to undercut Fairfax on program fees by offering the shows with the proviso that the affiliates have to air some network advertising. I suppose when you’re already receiving Fairfax news overnight as part of the fee for the overnight programming, and your general break format is already configured in your automation, there is more to consider than merely which shows costs less or which host is better.
The one which really intrigues me is what 2AY will do now. 2AY have been taking the Alan Jones and Ray Hadley highlights hour from 2GB at 8pm. That show doesn’t exist any more. Will they replay the Alan Jones Hour at 8pm (surely not, seeing as they already air it at midday), air an hour of Steve Price (back when Steve Price was on 2UE Mornings, 2AY used to air an hour of his show on delay at midday), or just expand their nightly music show?
These are certainly interesting times in Sydney radio and beyond.
There are a few movements in the radio industry in regional New South Wales which are of interest to me given my former association with some of the people involved, so hopefully the news will be of some interest to you as well. If not, please indulge me for a few minutes.
Over at 1521AM 2QN and 102.5FM Classic Rock in Deniliquin, local news presenter and senior announcer Graham Munson presented his final news bulletin for the stations this afternoon. Graham is on the move, but he is not saying where he is going just yet, only that he has been offered a job elsewhere, and is not at liberty to make an announcement about it yet. Graham had filled this and other roles at 2QN and Classic Rock since 2006 and I had the pleasure of both filling in for, and working alongside Graham on a number of occasions. At the end of Graham’s final 2QN news bulletin he mentioned that it had “been a pleasure to present the news for you and to do programs as well”. He signed off by wishing all of his listeners all the best for the future.
Graham is a very dedicated and professional man, and I fondly remember a couple occasions where I was filling in for him and he popped in to the studios to hand me a story he had been working on while he was on holidays. He is very nurturing of young talent, and I’m sure that he will be a great asset to whichever station it is that has hired him.
Filling Graham’s shoes will be Rob Harrington, who most recently was the local news journalist and presenter of the news-based Country Lunch Hour on 2LF in Young. Rob previously filled in for Graham a number of times at 2QN and I got to work with him for a week in 2009 when I filled in on 2QN’s breakfast show and Rob was in the newsroom. Rob starts on Monday.
Rob departed 2LF on Friday last week and has, as yet, not been replaced. His duties have been assumed by 2LF breakfast host Neil Langford. It is not currently known if this is a permanent arrangement, but I can say this: I have not seen the job advertised anywhere.
This afternoon I recorded Graham’s final couple of news bulletins. For your listening pleasure, and as a record of a fairly big change in the media landscape in Deniliquin and Echuca, here are the 2QN local news bulletins from 4:30pm and 5:30pm this afternoon.
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Over the last couple of Sunday Bits posts, I have noted that former Las Vegas talk radio institution Heidi Harris was on the move, having left her long-time station KDWN. It was unclear at the time whether Heidi was staying in Vegas or going elsewhere, but now that the answer has been unveiled, it is actually quite a big story.
Heidi (pictured) will be taking over the morning drive (6am-9am) show on two stations in California. KRLA 870 Los Angeles and KTIE 590 Inland Empire. Both stations are part of Salem Communications’ conservative talk network, and both stations are being rebranded as “The Answer” in conjunction with the move (yes, now my clunky attempts at fitting the word “answer” in to earlier sentences makes some sense).
This is big news for two, and maybe three reasons. For Heidi, who has been regarded as one of America’s most influential talk radio hosts by her peers for many years, this is a massive promotion, jumping from market number 32 in terms of population size (Las Vegas, 1,650,500) to market number 2 (Los Angeles 10,682,900) and is sure to solidify her reputation among her peers as a force to be reckoned with.
For Salem, this is an important extension of their recent rebranding of New York station WNYM-AM from “AM 970 The Apple” to “AM 970 The Answer”. The rebranding, along with the streamlining of WNYM’s formerly-convoluted schedule of syndicated Salem hosts interspersed among local shows, resulting in more programming being aired live, has allowed Salem to position the station as being not just another talk station in a highly competitive market, but rather as a station which takes a positive attitude of trying to see how issues get resolved rather than just whinge about them for three hours at a time (not that I’m saying that’s what talk radio does, but it does have that reputation at times).
It’s a position which is more in line with Salem Communications’ philosophy (Salem, primarily, is a Christian broadcaster and although its general conservative talk stations are distinct from its Christian talk stations, the general talk stations do carry a “moral code” of sorts) and although it hasn’t helped overall ratings at the New York station as yet (they’ve actually gone down a smidge), it has apparently helped to better engage the existing audience and improve the station’s performance among certain key demographics. It’s not surprising that ratings haven’t changed all that much in New York, but it does seem like a bright move from group Program Director Phil Boyce (pictured) to expand the new branding to other markets, as it’s a point of difference which is likely to do well outside of New York, especially California with its somewhat peculiar overly positive attitude. It could do quite well in Los Angeles in particular where rival station KFI has endured a heap of bad press of late for the negative views express by some of its hosts.
The move could make a third bit of big news. The timeslot which Heidi is taking over is currently occupied by Glenn Beck’s (pictured) syndicated Premiere Radio Networks show. When WNYM was rebranded, it resulted in the timeslots of many syndicated shows changing so as to allow more shows to air live, but no such announcement has been made about the programming lineups on KRLA and KTIE yet, so it’s not known if Glenn Beck’s show will be shuffled back to a later timeslot on delay, or if his show will be dropped completely. If it’s the latter, then that will be massive news, as this would mean that The Glenn Beck Show would no longer be cleared in either of the two biggest markets in the country, New York City (it was dropped from WOR some time back) or Los Angeles.
If the stations keep Beck and put his show on delay, then it’s likely that they will do what WNYM is doing, and cut multiple three-hour syndicated shows down to two hours so that local programming can fit around live & short delay network programming.
All the industry speculation aside, there is one thing I can say with absolute certainty, and that is that Heidi Harris deserves to be congratulated on her move. Good luck Heidi, and have fun talking sense in to those Californians.
Samuel
(image credits: Heidi Harris and Phil Boyce h/t Talkers Magazine. Glenn Beck h/t GlennBeck.com)
Newsbusters’ Noel Sheppard has an interesting piece today about Jim Downey, one of the writers for Saturday Night Live, a long-running television comedy program which is somewhat noticeable for its left-wing bias, although I will credit the fact that it does take aim at people on the left every now and then as well, just not with the same vigour as it attacks figures on the right.
Noel was braver than I could ever be, and read an entire column in the New York Times. In said column, right near the end of it, Jim Downey made the following comment while discussing his plans to parody Sean Hannity:
I think I’m right in saying that he’s the dumbest person who’s ever been paid to speak on television.
Really? Sean Hannity dumb?? The Sean Hannity who manages to speak in full sentences for at least four hours each and every day throughout his radio and television shows, while constantly asking pertinent and probing questions about the issues of the day, and making insightful observations?
I’m sorry Mr. Downey, but you are wrong. There is no other way to put it. You might disagree with Sean, and many people do which is fine, but he is certainly not dumb. If you want to look at somebody who is dumb, how about the amazingly incoherent Al Sharpton.
“Resist we much”? The Dow went down by 630%??
After watching that and feeling my brain melt with every passing word, I feel obliged to provide you with some sanity. So, by way of comparison, here is the very intelligent and insightful Sean Hannity interviewing the also very intelligent and insightful Mark Levin on Sean’s TV show.
Now, isn’t that better? Makes you wonder what, if anything, was going through Jim Downey’s head when he made that stupid comment doesn’t it?
And a good morning on this quite lovely Canberra morning. It is starting to get a bit colder now, but I have to admit to quite liking the way April and May unfold in Canberra. The leaves change colour, the nights become a bit more nippy, and for those of us who are fortunate enough to be awake in the mid-dawn hours, there are some interesting and patchy fogs which adorn the roads.
On this lovely morning I, taking advantage of the windscreen-mounted position of my phone, took this photo of a couple hot air balloons wafting over Commonwealth Avenue.
In this edition:
* Bye bye Bob!
* Canberra is a good place for an international airport
* To Japan’s credit, unfounded fear-mongering does not derail nuclear power
* Mike Huckabee will not be VP
* New brain research leading to better reading skills in school kids
* Is Metricon Stadium breaking AFL rules?
* Heidi Harris to announce her new station on Monday
Bye bye Bob!
As you have probably heard by now, Bob Brown is retiring from politics. The current leader of the Greens in federal parliament will quit his post as leader of the party, and also as a Senator. He will be handing the reigns over to current deputy leader Christine Milne.
In some ways it is nice to see Bob go. One less strange person in parliament pushing an abhorrent wheelbarrow of nutty ideas can only be a good thing, except for one small problem. I see the Greens as being left-wing extremists wrapped up in fuzzy feel-good environmental stuff designed to make them look nicer. They use the guise of being worried about the environment to enable them to push all kinds of socialist and Marxist ideas. Bob Brown, to me at least, is more moderate than the likes of Christine Milne or (I get a shudder down my spine from merely mentioning this name) Sarah Hanson-Young.
Bob Brown is patient, and doesn’t seem to mind how long it takes for him to get his way, and in many ways I think this is what has helped the Greens to reach a point of having some influence in politics. The fact that, under Bob Brown, the Greens have very rarely aggressively pushed their underlying ideas, and have instead made sure that their message is carefully wrapped in pleasantries, is one of the main reasons they have managed to attract voters. They have attracted the people who are uninterested in politics and “like the environment and stuff”; the rusted-on Labor voters who couldn’t support various Labor people but knew that a vote for the Greens would result in Labor government; as well as the true lefties who have quite happily understood the underlying message of the Greens, and have agreed to follow Bob’s lead and not make too much noise, because they know that the majority of Australians want no piece of a socialist country.
Sure, the Greens have been right there every time the Socialist Alliance has held one of its weekly protests about everything, but they don’t go out of their way to publicise it.
This will change under Christine Milne. Anybody who has watched her whenever one of the non-ABC TV stations has given her a platform will know just how forthright (or would that be forthleft in her case?) she is in her support of anything and everything that Karl Marx would have supported. Equally, Sarah Hanson-Young does her bit to whip up the socialist fringe of the country.
This isn’t to say that Bob Brown didn’t have his moments. His repeated attempts to have the “hate media” (read: anyone in the media with whom he disagreed) silenced were a good example. Bob clearly has an angry streak under the surface, and I suspect that 2UE’s Mike Jeffreys may be correct in his analysis that Bob Brown is a very angry man under the surface, but uses that anger to carefully craft a very controlled outward appearance in the hope of getting his own way eventually. Think about it. It really didn’t matter whether Bob was talking about his love of trees, the carbon dioxide tax, or about the latest story in the “hate media”, his delivery was always the same. A continuous monotone hypnotic boredom-fest. I suspect that he was trying to brainwash people through sheer boredom.
It seems to me that under Christine Milne, the Greens will solidify their core socialist voters by being more strident in their advocacy of Marxist views, but will scare off most people in the process. In the short term, this will create waves, but in the long term it should destroy the party.
All that said, if in three weeks time the Greens decide that the Bob Brown approach is better for them, all they need to do is recruit former Obama propagandist press secretary Robert Gibbs, who had the same entirely uninteresting delivery as Bob Brown, with the added ability to never answer a question which he didn’t want to answer, something which dear old Bob never did quite manage to accomplish.
***
Canberra is a good place for an international airport
In other domestic news of late, the subject of Sydney’s second airport is back on the agenda, with Canberra being touted as an option. I like Canberra as an option, but if it happens, I don’t want it to be considered as “Sydney’s second airport”. Canberra Airport should take international flights, especially given Canberra’s status as the capital city of the country. In fact, part of the reason Sydney airport is so busy is because it’s the connection point for many people who are travelling to Canberra from outside the country.
I would also like to see a residential development occur at Tralee. Canberra Airport’s Stephen Byron is opposed to this because it would be under a flight path, but I don’t see this as an impediment. The airport is already there, and therefore anybody who buys or builds at Tralee would be well-aware that aeroplanes may fly over their house, and should therefore be unable to complain about it.
I see both things as being extremely beneficial to Canberra and surrounds, and while I expect to only ever see one come to fruition, it would be nice to have both.
***
To Japan’s credit, unfounded fear-mongering does not derail nuclear power
You may recall all of the fear-mongering after last year’s Japanese earthquake about the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe, and all of the anti-nuclear activists trying to use it as an excuse to end nuclear power generation around the world. As we know, despite the claims that the death toll would be high and the people who would be afflicted with radiation-related illnesses would number in the many thousands, the fact is nobody, repeat, nobody has died, and a mere 10 people have radiation-related illness.
The Japanese government decided Friday that two nuclear reactors in western Japan are safe to restart, in a major step toward bringing idled plants back online for the first time since last year’s devastating nuclear accident — though local opposition could still prevent a restart.
The decision effectively gives the government thumbs up to a gradual return of nuclear power, after nearly all the country’s 54 reactors — which provided roughly 30 percent of Japan’s electricity — shut down because of damages or for routine maintenance and stayed offline amid concerns about their safety.
The Japanese government still needs to convince locals that it’s a good idea, but given how small the fallout has been from the Fukushima plant, especially given the magnitude of the natural disaster which occurred (the earthquake and tsunami), a simple statement of the facts should be enough convince any sensible thinking person that the nuclear power plants are a good and safe option.
***
Mike Huckabee will not be VP
In the wake of Rick Santorum’s unfortunate decision to abandon his run for the Republican Presidential nomination during the week, almost making it certain that Mitt Romney will be the nominee, there was some peculiar speculation that Romney will choose Mike Huckabee as his candidate for Vice President.
Let me tell you right now, that will not happen.
Mike Huckabee, while certainly a plausible person as a candidate, is out of the race for this election cycle. He recently (in the last few weeks), launched a new syndicated talk radio show in conjunction with US radio giant Cumulus Media. The show, which airs at the same time as Rush Limbaugh (the single most listened to talk radio host in the country) has replaced the Limbaugh show on a decent number of Cumulus stations, which is a massive gamble for Cumulus, and is airing on over 180 stations.
Neither Huckabee or Cumulus will be abandoning this show any time soon. Cumulus has way too much riding on this to be suddenly left without a decent show in the midday eastern timeslot, especially seeing as letting Rush go from many of their stations has allowed competitors to air Rush, giving them potentially crushing competition if Huckabee were to walk or flop.
I would rule out Rick Santorum as a VP pick at this stage, but I’m not willing to make a prediction as to who will be Mitt’s running mate if Mitt does get the nomination. What I will say is that it will have to be a solid conservative, because Mitt is not enough of a conservative to enthuse the Republican party’s base.
I just hope some lessons have been learnt from the 2008 campaign. America can not afford another four years of Obama, and another dumb lurch away from the right and to the centre, politically speaking, is the sort of bad idea that could once again see the GOP botch a campaign and give Obama a perfect opportunity to win, despite his terrible polling numbers.
***
New brain research leading to better reading skills in school kids
An interesting story out of Michigan.
New brain research has led educators in New Buffalo to try a different method of teaching kids to read. Instead of teaching just the letters of the alphabet, they are teaching kids to read the sounds in words. It’s having remarkable results. Reporter Ryan Klund from ABC57 News in South Bend, Indiana, has the story:
If you sit in Ms. Selir’s kindergarten classroom you’ll see something, maybe, you’ve never seen before. Every kindergartener is reading a book and pronouncing words that other five and six-year-olds, usually, would never read.
[..]
“It used to be we just thought it was the 26 letters of the alphabet and that’s it,” said Laura Selir. “But there are 44 sounds the kindergarteners all learn.”
“We now know every child can read if taught the right way,” said Erika Milovich, the Instruction Literary Specialist at New Buffalo Schools.
Milovich helped implement the program in ever grade at the school and said that the results speak for themselves.
On state testing this year New Buffalo improved K-5 reading and writing scores, moving into the top three schools in Berrien County. It was the first time New Buffalo made that mark.
(h/t ABC57 News, and also thanks to Casey Hendrickson who alerted me to this story when he mentioned it on his radio show on 95.3 Michiana’s News Channel on Friday)
It’s only being taught in a handful of schools at the moment, but hopefully that number will rise soon as the results are very promising.
***
Is Metricon Stadium breaking AFL rules?
Last night while watching the AFL, I noticed something strange about the way Metricon Stadium on the Gold Coast is putting the vision of the match on the big screens. They appear to be taking the full TV feed rather than a modified version and, consequently, the countdown clock on Seven’s graphics is visible at all times on the big screen.
For those of you not familiar with the way AFL timing works, each quarter runs for 20 minutes of playing time, and events such as the ball going out or someone scoring temporarily disrupt the “playing time”. At the ground, a clock counts up from zero in each quarter and does not stop for these interruptions to playing time, meaning that the players and the crowd can not see how much time is left in the quarter, but instead can see how much real time has elapsed. Most quarters take between 25 and 30 minutes of real time, but can take more or less time.
It is not against the rules for a team runner to pass on a message to players about how long is left in the quarter, and it is common practice for the coaching staff to keep an unofficial record of how much time remains, but it is against the rules for the amount of time remaining in a quarter to be visible.
At many grounds, where a broadcast feed is used on the big screens, the spot on the screen where the time would be shown in normally covered up, however at Metricon Stadium it is not.
I wonder if the AFL have noticed this, and what will be done to fix it?
***
Heidi Harris to announce her new station on Monday
If she’s going to another radio station, anyway.
You may recall that a couple weeks ago I mentioned that Alan Stock had taken over Heidi Harris’ morning drive program on KDWN-AM in Las Vegas, and that there was a rumour going around that Alan’s former station (Heidi’s too, for that matter) KXNT had signed her but not made it public. Well, Heidi has announced that, on Monday, she will be able to make an announcement.
Regardless of where Heidi goes, she has a strong following and will most probably do very well. I wish her all the best, and look forward to her announcement on Monday US time.
I had a to clean up a lot of coffee after hearing Rex Hunt announce this during the AFL Live call of Melbourne V Brisbane this afternoon.
Melbourne’s game plan has been as useful as a flywire screen on a submarine
That, plus the return of Rex Hunt’s Fat Lady Singing (whom I have not heard since Rex’s 3AW days in 2009), and Rex’s great rapport with Sandy Roberts, made that an absolutely fantastic afternoon of radio listening for what was otherwise a fairly ordinary AFL match.
Rex, Sandy, and the AFL Live team at Crocmedia, you have made my day! Thank you.
A big congratulations to Jason Morrison and Heidi Tiltins who today had their first child. Charles Edward Morrison (Morrison, Tiltins or both? I’m not entirely sure Edit: confirmed as a Morrison) was born today weighing 3.62kg. Jason’s radio station 2UE is reporting that Heidi and Charles are doing well, but Jason’s a bit worse for wear.
I was expecting that this would happen today when Jason didn’t turn up on the radio this morning, especially given that he has been talking about it all week.
Congratulations Jason and Heidi, may Charles bring you lots of joy for many many years to come. I suppose the next challenge is going to be introducing the dogs to their new mini-master. Good luck with that one! I’m really happy for you both…it couldn’t happen to a nicer couple.
Based on some feedback, I have decided that in order to make these Sunday Bits posts a bit easier to navigate, they will now contain a list of contents, and headers at the start of each section. I hope this makes it easier for you to read the bits that interest you, and skip the ones that don’t, rather than simply skipped the entire post due to a small section which doesn’t interest you.
In this edition:
* A prediction for tomorrow’s Labor leadership showdown
* The first radio ratings of 2012
* 2UE dumps their only weekday ratings winner of 2012
* Why telecommunication monopolies are bad
* A review (well, almost) of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
* Mount Majura in the fog
A prediction for tomorrow’s Labor leadership showdown
Tomorrow morning at about 11am we will know, one way or another, who will lead the Australian Labor Party for at least the next few days, and who will probably be sworn in as Prime Minister when Governor-General Quentin Bryce returns to the country on Thursday or Friday.
My prediction is that Julia Gillard will win, but not because she is a better leader. I expect her to win on the basis that the agreement with the independents and the Greens was made with her, and not with the Labor Party. Julia Gillard was very clever when she made sure that the agreement was made with herself and not the Party as it helps to secure her position as leader, a position which she would have known would, at some stage, come under threat due to the tenuous nature of minority government.
Electing anyone other than Julia Gillard as Labor leader potentially puts the agreement with the cross-benches under threat, and could potentially lead to a new general election. At this time, based on current opinion polling, Labor do not want to risk an election which is likely to see them annihilated.
For the record, I doubt that the Greens will ever back out of their effective coalition with Labor, as they really need Labor more than Labor need them, but the independents are another story as they might see disassociating themselves with the current disorganised mess as a way to secure their seats.
On the off chance that Kevin Rudd or some other as-yet unnamed contender takes over the Labor leadership, they have the advantage of having the Governor-General out of the country until at least Thursday, giving them time to negotiate to keep the independents and the Greens on-side…because it would be terribly embarrassing and destructive to themself and the Labor party to take over as Prime Minister and then immediately have an election called due to a no-confidence motion succeeding in the parliament.
Also, while it is true that a state governor could swear in a new Prime Minister in the absence of the Governor-General, I doubt that it will happen as a new Labor leader won’t mind waiting a few days to shore up the numbers.
On the whole, it wasn’t a great survey for commercial talk radio. In Sydney, while 2GB remains on top of the ratings by four whole percentage points, they did lose ground, losing 0.8 percentage points. 2UE went up by 0.3, mostly on the back of weekend ratings, but lost ground on most weekday shifts and remain a fair way down the ratings pile.
The biggest winner was Triple J which went up 2.7% to 7.4%. The biggest loser was 2DAY FM which went down 1.6% to 8.3%.
Last place belongs to ABC NewsRadio on 2.2%.
In Melbourne, 3AW remains on top but, like 2GB, took a bit of a hit. MTR lost ground in every timeslot, although it is worth noting that some of the survey period took place while MTR were taking extra programming from 2GB, so the next survey will give a better indication of how the local news cutbacks have affected MTR. Interesting, for the first time in a very long time (many years I believe), 3AW’s Neil Mitchell did not win his timeslot. He lost 3.5 percentage points in the morning timeslot, dropping from 15.7% to 12.2%, meaning that the local ABC station’s Jon Faine is now winning mornings on 13.7%.
The leaderboard in Melbourne:
3AW: 12.8%
ABC 702: 12.3%
Fox FM: 9.6%
Nova: 8.5%
Gold FM: 7.4%
The biggest winner was Nova which went up 1.5% to 8.5%. The biggest loser was shared between Fox FM and Melbourne’s 91.5FM which both went down 1.3%, Fox to 9.6% and 91.5FM to 2.9%.
Last place went to MTR1377 and ABC NewsRadio, both on 1.4%.
In Brisbane, 4BC bucked the trend for commercial talk stations, going up by 0.9 percentage points.
The biggest winner was 97.3 which turned a narrow lead in to a massive one by gaining 2.4% to sit on 14.1%. The biggest loser was Triple M which lost 1.7% to drop from 4th to 5th, drop out of double digits, and sit on 9.4%.
In last place, yet again, ABC NewsRadio on 1.5%.
In Adelaide, FiveAA lost ground but remained in second place. Of particular concern for FiveAA has to be their afternoon drive shift which lost a whopping 6.3% to drop from 1st place to 5th place.
The biggest winner was Triple J which gained 2.7% to sit on 8.3%. The biggest loser was Mix 102.3 which lost 2.3% to sit on 13.6%, retaining first place due to FiveAA also losing ground.
In Perth, 6PR lost ground as well, losing 1.2% overall and losing ground in every timeslot. Howard Sattler suffered the biggest loss, losing 3.4%.
The biggest winner was 96FM which went up by 2.4% to 11.8%. The biggest loser was 6PR which went down by 1.2% to 8.1%.
Last place went to ABC NewsRadio on 1.2%.
The one consistent thing across all of the surveyed cities is that NewsRadio is in last place. How thankful the NewsRadio staff must be that it is not a commercial operation, and doesn’t need to make money, because if it was, heads would roll and changes would be made. For the rest of us, who pay for NewsRadio through our taxes, what a shame it is that we are paying for a service that almost nobody listens to, when in other countries all-news formats have been made commercially viable…even without the advertising, NewsRadio could reach a much larger audience simply by making some changes that have been proven to work elsewhere, but as long as the tax dollars keep rolling in, there is no incentive to do so, as thus, they won’t.
***
2UE dumps their only weekday ratings winner of 2012
Back to Sydney we go, and 2UE’s perennial game of shuffles is on again. Sport’s Today, which was dumped at the beginning of last year, is back, albeit with two extra hosts. It reclaims its old 6pm-8pm timeslot, bumping Murray Olds and Murray Wilton who have shared the 6pm-9pm timeslot over the last year to mixed success.
The Two Murrays, combined with Mike Jeffreys until midnight (as the publicly available data goes from 7pm-midnight) lost 2%, the station’s largest loss. It seems quite bizarre then that The Two Murrays are being placed in to the weekday afternoon slot, formerly hosted by Michael Smith and recently hosted by Stuart Bocking since Smith’s axing, when Stuart Bocking delivered the station’s largest weekday gain of 0.6%. Even stranger, Stuart has been dropped from the schedule completely. He remains on the payroll though, as is expected to be retained as a fill-in host, but I think it’s safe to say that Stuart deserves better given his recent performance.
Sports Today starts tomorrow. It’s likely that Mike Jeffreys’ night program will start at the earlier time of 8pm. The Two Murrays start in their new timeslot in a week, so Stuart Bocking probably still has the coming week in the timeslot.
Meanwhile it is rumoured that David Oldfield might also succumb to the game of shuffles, to be replaced by a duo of Prue MacSween and Tracey Spicer. David Oldfield has failed to make a dent on rival Ray Hadley’s ratings, and I highly doubt that anyone can make significant inroads there, so I understand the move to an extent.
I don’t have access to demographic breakdowns of Ray Hadley’s ratings, so this is all somewhat informed conjecture based on the callers to Ray’s show, but I have always thought that Ray’s ratings primarily come from a male audience, and an older female audience. 2UE have clearly attempted to attract a younger audience, and I suspect that they have a shot at attracting a decent-sized 30 to 6o-year-old female audience with a duo of Prue MacSween and Tracey Spicer. This is a demographic which, to my ear at least, is dominated by FM music stations and possibly ABC 702, and as such lacks any strong commercial talk presence. Talk radio generally has a more engaged audience due to the nature of the programming, and thus if 2UE can successfully build a reasonably sized female audience in that timeslot, then they could attract a new set of advertisers. Alas, I fail to see how The Two Murrays could retain that type of audience, and think Stuart Bocking would be much better at retaining a female audience, as women seem to absolutely love him.
***
Why telecommunication monopolies are bad
On Thursday, Telstra suffered a rather nasty outage on their network, apparently caused by an issue between themselves and Dodo, which took down their entire Australian data network for the better part of an hour. This caused issue beyond Telstra as many other internet service providers use Telstra’s network for various bits of their connections, however as other providers also hook in to networks other than Telstra’s network, many were able to route around Telstra and minimise the disruption for their own customers.
Some providers, my ISP Internode included, had almost no disruption as Telstra are not their primary network provider.
It’s a bad thing when a large player has an issue, but imagine what would happen in the case of a monopoly. The monopoly goes down, and this takes everyone down.
Now, aren’t you glad that in the not-too-distant future, everyone is going to be relying on the infrastructure of the National Broadband Network?
Ahh yes, the government-owned NBN Monopoly…is it any wonder that some worry about the possibility of the government having a “kill switch” for the internet once the NBN is in place? Even without a kill switch, the NBN will make us all reliant on a single network, which is precisely what the distributed nature of the internet was designed to prevent. It’s certainly not what I call “progress”.
***
A review (well, almost) of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
On Friday I went along to Dendy in Civic to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, a movie which is set during the cold war years and involves a sacked British spy being asked to investigate the possibility that there is a Russian spy embedded at or near the top of MI6.
The movie is quite dense, and requires a lot of attention. Turn away or lose concentration for a minute, and you will miss vital information. This is a bit of a problem as the movie also makes you think, and there’s not a lot of time between informative bits of the movie in which to think.
It’s a very enjoyable movie, partially because it doesn’t waste time explaining things which are patently obvious, and is therefore aimed at an audience which enjoys working things out for themselves.
Without giving away any detail of the ending, I will say that it leaves you somewhat satisfied, but still wanting more, and also leaves you thinking and putting together some of the dots that the movie doesn’t fully explain.
I enjoyed it, but want to see it again on DVD (yes, I am one of those people who has not upgrade to Blu Ray yet) so that I can pause and rewind the movie occasionally to check things.
The movie is rated MA, but I can’t work out why. “Strong Violence” is the reason according to the consumer advice, but the violence in the movie is really extremely intermittent and no worse than a shooting or two, and a beating. Even with the sex scenes, I see no good reason for this to be rated higher than M.
Four and a half stars from me. I would have given it five stars if the movie had taken just a bit more time to explain the ending. Then again, maybe it did, and I missed those plot points while I was thinking.
***
Mount Majura in the fog
Finally, a photo to leave you with on a mostly cloudy day in Canberra. It’s not from today, but was a nice sight earlier in the week anyway. Mount Majura, with the airport radar obscured by fog.
I was watching a bit of ABC News 24 a little while ago (yes, I know, me watching ABC News 24…it’s a very rare occurrence indeed…I was going to watch Becker on Eleven at midnight, but Southern Cross replace it with some el-cheapo clone of Quizmania so I decided to watch the top of the hour news instead) and while I was generally quite impressed with their coverage of the Labor leadership kerfuffle and a few other things about the way in which they are putting together news packages, there was one thing which I thought was really very odd.
A package about the leadership kerfuffle aired as the lead story on the midnight eastern news bulletin. At the beginning of it was a bit on how Kevin Rudd’s house is apparently the headquarters for his leadership challenge, complete with footage of someone who either was, or looked like, Bruce Hawker, walking through a gate. There was also footage of Kevin Rudd’s daughter and her partner walking towards Kevin Rudd’s front gate and having to almost battle their way through a pack of journalists who were asking her questions which she had no intention of answering. That’s fair enough, she did after all put herself in the public sphere on this issue by making a public statement on the issue on Twitter.
The odd bit came just after her and her partner walked through the gate. A voice can be heard to say “Oh my God, what a s***fight” (although they did not obscure it as I have). From watching it, it is entirely unclear whether this voice which was heard was that of Kevin’s daughter’s partner, or that of a journalist or other media person. There is no super to provide attribution to the voice, and no visible mouth emitting the words.
It was odd, but it’s News 24. Like any news service, stuff does occasionally slip through which perhaps shouldn’t, and given that it’s late at night I would not have been surprised if this had just “slipped through”…and I wouldn’t have minded.
But it didn’t just “slip through”. At 12:18 eastern, Lateline was replayed on ABC News 24, and at the start of Lateline was this same package, this same footage, and not surprisingly, the same mysterious voice uttering the same words.
This really made me wonder whose words they were, because if they were the words of Kevin’s daughter’s partner, then I can completely understand leaving them in, although I probably wouldn’t have done so myself under the same circumstances as, although it makes it clear that the pair were not enjoying the media attention, we already got that information from the way they reacted as they walked through the press pack. But if they were the words of a media type, then they add no value to the story whatsoever and should not have stayed in as the pair were already well through the gate by the time the words were uttered, and even if they hadn’t been well through the gate, the words could have been obscured.
The Lateline website (linked above) provides a transcript of that section of the package.
TOM IGGULDEN, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Kevin Rudd’s Brisbane home is campaign headquarters for his leadership tilt. It’s a family affair – even his expectant daughter came.
REPORTER: (to Jessica Rudd) Do you think he’s got a really good chance against Gillard?
REPORTER II: What do you think of Gillard?
JESSICA RUDD, KEVIN RUDD’S DAUGHTER: Sorry…
REPORTER III: How’s the pregnancy going?
REPORTER IV: Oh my God, what a s***fight.
(Again, I’ve obscured the word, they did not)
So it was a media person. Then why was it left in? What possible value could it have had? I could understand an oversight in the original airing of the package on Lateline, but this is the ABC we are talking about here, an organisation with more behind-the-scenes people and more bureaucratic signing-off-on-stuff procedures than most media outlets could even begin to imagine…if it was an oversight, it should, and I dare say would, have been picked up by someone and edited out before the package went to air again, and before the transcript appeared on the website.
But then, the transcript is on the website. The transcript would have been derived from the same text which produced the closed captions for the package. The very presence of those words in the transcript indicates that somebody decided that the words should be present in the package. That, I find odd. The fact that, after seeing that they were the words of a media person and not of Kevin Rudd’s daughter’s partner, somebody didn’t question it and have it removed before it aired again or before it went up on the Lateline website, is poor judgement. Admittedly, it may have been difficult to remove it from the replay of Lateline in markets which do not take it live, and dropping it from the video on the website would have been an awful lot of extra effort which may not have been worthwhile, but removing it from the transcript and from future airings of the package in subsequent news bulletins, would have been quite simple and prudent.
The reason this bothers me is that, like Mark Riley’s puns in Seven News’ political packages, the words add nothing useful to the story, but distract from it instead. The rest of the package, and indeed the rest of the coverage of the leadership kerfuffle was quite exemplary. I was particularly pleased by the fact that the reporter, Tom Iggulden, made sure that the staged cheering when Julia Gillard walked in to an office was reported as just that, staged cheering. He did this by showing footage of the supporters rehearsing their cheering for the media act…and this is the type of reporting that I have been waiting for as I have had a problem with the long-standing tradition of journalists watching people rehearse a “reaction” and then reporting it as “spontaneous”. Tom Iggulden deserves to be congratulated for this.
I won’t harp on about it any longer though, as I’m sure that every political journalist in the country has had a very long day and has a bunch of very long days ahead, and on the whole they do tend to be doing quite a good job of covering the leadership kerfuffle, which is itself a distraction in the middle of something important, as the job of governing the country is being neglected while the governing party try to work out how to govern themselves…and while I would argue that the country is probably better off for not having Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd meddling in the affairs of the nation for a while, it is also true that the country suffers when the incompetence of a government shines a light of uncertainty on everything that it is supposed to be managing, especially when the people who are vying for power are espousing policy positions which they have never espoused before, leaving us all wondering where they actually stand on anything.
I was just checking the radio schedule for tonight’s start to the AFL preseason competition and noticed something which I was hoping would come out of the new radio broadcast rights. Crocmedia, who produce “AFL Live” for regional stations, headed up by Rex Hunt and Sandy Roberts, are listed as being streamed tonight.
This is fantastic news, especially for those of us who really enjoy listening to Rex Hunt call matches and were disappointed to find out that he was leaving Triple M at the end of last year to move exclusively to Crocmedia.
I can’t confirm that Rex will be calling the three matches tonight between Richmond, North Melbourne, and Hawthorn, but seeing as tonight’s games are in Melbourne and are the only ones which Crocmedia are covering this weekend, I’d say that it’s a pretty safe bet…hopefully.
Either way, Saturday and Sunday afternoons with Rex Hunt this year are going to be awesome.
(Crocmedia and other AFL radio broadcasters are only permitted to stream their coverage via afl.com.au and not via individual stations’ webstreams)
UpdateCrocmedia do not appear to be covering tonight’s matches after all. Oh well, later in the preseason or when the main season starts I guess…it’s probably a bit hard to convince all of the small regional stations to cover relatively unprofitable preseason matches. End Update
We do often hear the term “bungle” used in relation to government programs, usually with a caveat that “the opposition claims that…”, but I think I heard something new today.
2GB’s 5pm news bulletin contained a line declaring that the NSW Government had stuffed up the new contracts for the disabled student transport scheme.
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NATALIE PETERS: Macquarie National News at Five. A few showers tomorrow, tops of twenty-two degrees. Good afternoon, I’m Natalie Peters.
The state government will spend an extra one million dollars this week alone to ensure all students with a disability have transport to and from school.
It’s offering some bus drivers revised contracts for term one, after a stuff up before Christmas meant a number of the contracts weren’t finalised before the return of school this week, leaving more than seven hundred students stranded.
Labor claims it alerted the Minister to the problem last Monday, but Premier Barry O’Farrell says while pen may have been put to paper then, it wouldn’t have been received straight away.
BARRY O’FARRELL: What Mr. Picoli said at yesterday’s press conference was he became aware on Wednesday. Thursday, the Department of Education put out a media release, and I got an email update from Adrian on Sunday that said that, not only had further operators pulled out over the weekend, but seven hundred and forty families were unlikely to have transport yesterday morning.
It is true, and it seems that the government have even acknowledged it…but still, hearing a newsreader say that a government had stuffed up came as a bit of a shock. It was, however, a very welcome shock and I was very glad to hear a newsreader who was not afraid to be direct about telling the truth. Keep up the good work Natalie.
(h/t Audio: Radio 2GB. Images: Natalie Peters’ Twitter profile page, and Barry O’Farrell’s NSW Government profile page)
I would just like to take a moment to congratulate for KXNT Las Vegas program director Jack Landreth on his new gig as the program director at the top rated news/talk station in Kansas City, Missouri, KMBZ.
I discovered KXNT during Jack’s time as PD, around the time that he led the station to the top of the Las Vegas radio ratings. And by top, I don’t just mean top of the news/talk ratings, I mean #1 station overall. It was the first time in 30 years that an AM station had won the ratings in Las Vegas. KXNT also demolished the other news/talk station in the market during Jack’s time at the helm and, despite some extra competition when KDWN decided to put a delayed version of Glenn Beck up against Rush Limbaugh’s live show on KXNT, the station continued to dominate other stations in the genre, with their local programming consistently performing well and regularly breaking local stories.
It was a good time in KXNT’s history. Unfortunately the station has lost a lot of ground since Jack’s departure and is now ranked 22nd in the Vegas ratings. It still leads the news/talk ratings, but not by the huge margin that it once did.
Jack’s new station, KMBZ, leads the news/talk stations in the market with more than double the ratings of its nearest rival, but has shed a significant number of listeners in recent months. Congratulations and good luck Jack. I’m sure that Kansas City will benefit greatly from your work.
A long-term friend of this blog, Frankster, has uncovered a gem for those of us who were Stan Zemanek fans back when Stan was still with us.
Stan’s show used to attract all sorts of peculiar callers, and Stan used to package some of them up in to “caller replays”. When this was all going on, Frankster recorded as many of these segments as he could, and he recently found the tape containing them all. He is now posting them on his site franskter.zanyspace.com as an ongoing series. The first five are online (1) and (2-5), and there’s 123 to go.
If you want a good laugh, or just want to relive some great memories, these are definitely for you.
A QUIRK of the anti-siphoning laws and the new AFL broadcasting agreement will mean Eddie McGuire is likely to be heard calling a handful of games on Channel 7 this year.
While none of those games will be shown in Melbourne, the fact that non-Victorian AFL teams must be shown on free-to-air in their respective states means the Seven stations in those cities will take the Fox Footy feed on a few occasions.
McGuire, the face of Fox Footy as well as retaining a key role at Channel 9 with Millionaire Hot Seat, could feature in some games shown on Seven in Perth and Adelaide, as well as on 7mate in Sydney and Brisbane.
(h/t PerthNow.com.au)
This will only happen outside Victoria, but basically it means that any time that Seven have to air a match containing a “local” team for which they don’t have the direct broadcast rights, they will have to source the game from Fox, and every time they do that, there is a chance that Eddie McGuire will turn up in commentary.
Seven and Ten had to source games from Fox like this in the previous broadcast agreement as well. Ten usually opted for taking the full Fox coverage including having the Fox commentators host it, whereas Seven opted for having a couple people sit in a studio in Melbourne or Perth host the coverage and only take the actual game from Fox. It’s good to see that this provision was retained in the new agreement (even if it means that, for someone like me who supports a “non local” team, I have less chance of seeing my team on free-to-air television), although I have to wonder if Seven would have fought this provision had they known that Fox were going to sign Eddie.
Just quickly on the subject of strange things happening at Seven. While I’m sure that Seven will be glad that their decision to take a risk on airing the Men’s Final of the Australian Open live in to Perth paid off last night with the match going on for long enough to ensure that they had strong tennis ratings all night, their Perth newsroom must have been a tad put out by it all. Seven decided that, in order to accommodate the live tennis, Seven News in Perth would have to wait until the Tennis was over, which they tentatively schedule for 7:30pm Perth time (10:30pm eastern)…instead, due to the really long match, it didn’t start until 11pm Perth time (2am eastern). It gives a whole new meaning to “more at eleven”…and I think it’s a first too. The six o’clock news, tonight at eleven, only on Seven!
A quick note that Greta Van Susteren (whose first name I keep mistyping as “Great”, which may very well be accurate) will be interviewing Rush Limbaugh on her FOX News show for the full hour, starting in about 15 minutes from now. The show will then be repeated three hours later at 5pm Canberra time (1am US Eastern/10pm US Pacific).
It is days like this that the cost of my Mobile Foxtel subscription is justified.
Heidi (pictured) will be taking over the morning drive (6am-9am) show on two stations in California. KRLA 870 Los Angeles and KTIE 590 Inland Empire. Both stations are part of Salem Communications’ conservative talk network, and both stations are being rebranded as “The Answer” in conjunction with the move (yes, now my clunky attempts at fitting the word “answer” in to earlier sentences makes some sense).
It’s a position which is more in line with Salem Communications’ philosophy (Salem, primarily, is a Christian broadcaster and although its general conservative talk stations are distinct from its Christian talk stations, the general talk stations do carry a “moral code” of sorts) and although it hasn’t helped overall ratings at the New York station as yet (they’ve actually gone down a smidge), it has apparently helped to better engage the existing audience and improve the station’s performance among certain key demographics. It’s not surprising that ratings haven’t changed all that much in New York, but it does seem like a bright move from group Program Director Phil Boyce (pictured) to expand the new branding to other markets, as it’s a point of difference which is likely to do well outside of New York, especially California with its somewhat peculiar overly positive attitude. It could do quite well in Los Angeles in particular where rival station KFI has endured a heap of bad press of late for the negative views express by some of its hosts.
The move could make a third bit of big news. The timeslot which Heidi is taking over is currently occupied by Glenn Beck’s (pictured) syndicated Premiere Radio Networks show. When WNYM was rebranded, it resulted in the timeslots of many syndicated shows changing so as to allow more shows to air live, but no such announcement has been made about the programming lineups on KRLA and KTIE yet, so it’s not known if Glenn Beck’s show will be shuffled back to a later timeslot on delay, or if his show will be dropped completely. If it’s the latter, then that will be massive news, as this would mean that The Glenn Beck Show would no longer be cleared in either of the two biggest markets in the country, New York City (it was dropped from WOR some time back) or Los Angeles.
