Hopefully the majority of people in Canberra know that Jack Waterford is the editor of The Canberra Times. Some would even be aware that he picked up an Order of Australia medal in the recent Australia Day awards.
It is for that reason that I feel like sharing an anecdote with you about Mr. Waterford.
Jack Waterford lives in Braddon across the road from an elderly couple who, until a couple years ago, had the oldest solar hot water heater in Canberra (it had to be removed). I have been friends with this couple since my primary school days when I would often chat with them on my way home from school. Back then, Jack’s dog Molly was quite young and, much like her esteemed owner, had a taste for newspapers, as such she would often cross the road to pick up the elderly couple’s newspaper, and ensure that it received a thorough chewing. This would result in a call to The Canberra Times to inform them that the editor’s dog had chewed up their paper again…which always resulted in a replacement copy being delivered post-haste!
Apparently it was not regarded as a good idea amongst Canberra Times staff to inform Mr. Waterford of the incidents.
In my article about the start of Canberra’s Radio Ratings Period I incorrectly stated that 2CC are reusing the ads they plastered on the backs of ACTION Buses last year. It has since come to my attention that the ads they are using this year do not contain the face and name of Stan Zemanek.
I apologise to 2CC for this error and any inconvenience it may have caused.
I do have to wonder why another person (John Stanley or Mike Frame for example) was not added in place of Stan Zemanek.
A storm with a decent drop of rain passed over Canberra last night. John B1_B5 recorded 50mm of rain between 8pm and 1am, and here’s what it looked like at my place.
The drain in the front yard was struggling with the downpour, and whilst these photos don’t do a great job of showing it, there was plenty of water floating around.
I then decided to take some 15 second exposure shots which, thanks to the lightning, proved to be quite interesting.
And I also took one 60 second exposure shot from roughly the same angle as the second video
This is what the radar was showing shortly after these photos were taken
In light of my recent look at 666 ABC Canberra, I have decided to launch a review of all of the radio stations in Canberra that are in the ratings race, namely:
666 ABC Canberra (666 AM)
Radio National (846 AM)
2CA (1053 AM)
2CC (1206 AM)
JJJ (101.5 FM)
ABC Classic FM (102.3 FM)
NewsRadio (103.9 FM)
FM 104.7 Canberra (104.7 FM)
Mix 106.3 (106.3 FM)
Each station will be reviewed twice (my previous look at ABC Local Radio doesn’t count), each review will last for one hour and will focus solely on the station under review. Reviews will be conducted on weekdays at some stage between 6am and 6pm. One station will be reviewed per day. Reviews will start today Thursday February 22 and will run until Monday March 19. This does, unfortunately, place the last review out of the ratings period.
Review dates and times will be chosen by a random number generator. It will provide the order of the first round of reviews, followed by the second round of reviews. It will then choose an hour for each review in order. These dates and times will not be published due to the possibility (no matter how small) of stations putting on better than usual performances during their review period, after all Nielsen don’t publish the details of their sample groups do they?
Review periods will be recorded and subsequently reviewed that evening, with the results of the review to appear the following morning at 6am.
Each review will contain a textual run-down of the events of the hour and my impressions of them (where appropriate), the review will also contain a section for a review of the news bulletin(s) including length and quality, a review of the standard of talk programming (non-news bulletin) in the hour, a review of the standard of music played in the hour, and the amount of advertising content in the hour.
I will also provide a star rating out of five for the quality of:
News
Talk
Music
Overall
At the half-way point of the reviews I will produce a leader board for each of those categories.
At the end of the series I will produce another leader board, which will use the average scores.
Depending on how well this series goes, I may decide to run another series in the next ratings period, and possibly even run a series outside of ratings periods.
Naturally the review, as it is run by me, will be based on my opinion. What I don’t like, somebody else probably will…that being said, I, along with the rest of you, may still be surprised by the results. I’m looking forward to this, it should be quite a lot of fun.
