Good afternoon John,
One thing that drove me nuts on Tuesday night was that, according to my television guide, Channel Nine were going to run a decent movie at 9:30, so I tuned in, only to discover it had been replaced by some nonsense about Victoria Beckham.
I was rather annoyed as I haven't seen the movie before and was looking forward to it…and to make matters worse, the Beckham special rated well.
I suppose the point is, random late changes to the television schedule drive me nuts.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
July 19th, 2007 at 01:26pm
A couple days ago a person who I won’t name urged me to “say nice things”, well it is my pleasure to be able to say a few nice things about a few people from 2CC and 2UE.
Last night 2UE’s satellite feed decided to take some unscheduled leave, which left a number of network stations (2CC included) in the rather precarious position of having their emergency tape filling in for the regular programming. Unfortunately I am unable to say anything nice about 2CC’s looped six minute ad break emergency tape except for “it’s better than dead air”, however I can say something nice about some people.
Duncan McCrea (the person who has, on top of his numerous other duties, done a great job of filling Kris McKenzie’s position of fill-in presenter when Mike Frame is unavailable) was out having dinner somewhere last night, only to discover when he got back to a radio that the loopy emergency tape was not doing a great job of entertaining people, so he drove in to 2CC and took over…at first playing some music whilst he found out what was going on, and then once T-Bone arrived from the other side of town at Duncan’s request to be the producer, started taking calls and running an almost normal show.
By midnight, 2UE technician Alistair had fixed the satellite (and, if Clive Robertson is to be believed, travelled in to space to do so) and normal programming was able to resume.
I have previously written about how I think radio station staff should care enough about their station to attempt to correct apparent problems when things go wrong like they did last night, and I would like to thank Duncan McCrea and T-Bone for their great effort last night in rescuing the station, and also I would like to thank Alistair for his effort, which not only allowed Clive Robertson to be broadcast as per usual, but also allowed people like Duncan and T-Bone to get some sleep and not be stuck at their radio station all night.
On a somewhat unrelated theme, I have been intending to write something nice about 2CC’s slightly changed imaging for the last few weeks. 2CC have updated the music they use to return from ad breaks, and have produced it in such a manner that it no longer drowns out network programming…this is a vast improvement and is another thing I am thankful for.
Now, if they could just do something good with the emergency tape (a new version of the old “down memory lane” tape perhaps?). As I mentioned to a 2CC staff member a month or two back, a six minute emergency tape is not long enough to reasonably cover any sort of major station outage. Starting the tape with an ad break is probably a good idea, especially to cover those occasions when the ad break pulse doesn’t come down the line…or 2UE manage to kill the news…or it rains heavily, however following it with some sort of backup program is essential if you want people to keep listening during such issues. There are few things which make people turn off quicker than the same ad break being played over and over and over and over and over.
Anyway, I’m supposed to be saying nice things right now…so thank you to Duncan, T-Bone, Alistair and the people (or person) responsible for the updated imaging (I can guess who it was, but if somebody can confirm it I’ll be happy to give them proper credit).
Samuel
July 19th, 2007 at 11:51am
Hello again Clive and Abe,
I was most amused by the story in the news about the latest instalment of the Harry Potter series of books being "leaked" on the Internet, especially the bit about the publisher refusing to confirm whether or not the leaked book is a copy of the real book, after having said that they are taking the issue seriously.
The reason I find this amusing is because the publisher is insinuating that the 700 page book on the Internet might not be a copy of the real Harry Potter…why would anybody go to the trouble of writing a 700 page novel just to release online as the next Harry Potter book a few days before the real one is released? Do the publishers really expect people to believe that somebody would do this?
These books are already being distributed to book shops under an embargo…I think it is far more likely that somebody just decided to break the embargo.
Regards,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
July 19th, 2007 at 04:26am