I should reply…
December 11th, 2007 at 07:39am
On Sunday, Tuggers left a couple comments and I haven’t replied to them yet. I think the comments and the replies are of general interest so rather than simply replying, I will reproduce the comments here, and reply to them.
On “Yep, the nation’s water has been spiked” Tuggers left this comment:
Ok Samuel. The flu epidemic has passed, the election is over (Wasn’t it your first one? Very brave of you to consider standing then…) John Laws and Peter Fitzsimons have resigned from 2UE and the ACT Government is still plodding along. How about you make some more comment about Canberra thngs and even pick up the radio surveys notion again.
Tuggers, I suppose this has something to do with the lack of content on this blog recently. I’m the first to admit that I haven’t been producing anywhere near as much content as usual lately, it’s partially to do with a lack of time, and partially to do with a lack of motivation. A lot of the problem has to do with me wanting to write lengthy articles, not having enough time, and not bothering to write anything at all as a result.
The article you responded to was one I wrote on Friday, it was very short and was based around a news story I spotted and wanted to write about. I wrote a few similar articles on Friday, and the format appeared to work…I made my point in a short space of time and provided enough of the relevant news story to put my comments in context. It all happened because I spotted the news stories during the day and had a few spare minutes to make a comment…it works better than my other system of spotting something I want to write about, jotting down a couple notes and never finding time to write my article until a week later, by which time it is irrelevant, so it doesn’t get written.
I will probably continue with this shorter format as my spare time seems to have changed from being a small number large blocks to being a number of shorter blocks.
As for Canberra stories…I had about half a dozen topics last week, and I only remember one of them. My point on that topic has been mentioned by many others in many other places…but I might still write about it. I do agree that I need to write more about Canberra-centric issues though.
Yes, it was my first election…oh, there’s a second topic…must find the email that’s story is based on…
The radio reviews didn’t work very well. I just didn’t have the time to commit to it…and I think people know what I think of most formats anyway. It would probably be worthwhile running random reviews occasionally, but I don’t think I can commit to a proper series.
I have been considering comparing various international radio stations…it might be interesting to compare the breakfast shows of commercial talk stations in different countries. I think it is fair to say that I am more qualified to compare commercial talk radio than any other format.
Tuggers wrote the following in response to a cryptic email I wrote to 2UE’s Stuart Bocking.
Samuel. Since you email 2UE presenters in the middle of the night or on the weekend, there is a better than average chance many of your readers don’t know what you are talking about. How about prefacing your emails before stapling them to the blog?
This is another message that is just as confusing as the star jump business.
I should be more selective about the emails I copy on to the blog. Basically the way it works is that I will send them to the presenter and send a BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) version to the blog. A script runs every half hour to check for new messages. I have considered making the script add some text about the email being one of my contributions to talkback radio, but that wouldn’t help to put the emails in context. It would probably help if I either copied the more ambiguous emails separately with some explanatory text, or added in some explanatory text after the email appears online.
To explain that message, Sarah is the producer of 2UE’s Drive Show and for one promotional reason or another she was sent on a train trip across Australia. Part of the promotion was that presenters would cross to her on the train, so she asked Clive Robertson what time he would like to talk to her…he said 4am and she (for some unknown reason, maybe she thought he was joking) agreed. I next heard Sarah talking to Stuart Bocking at 9:30 that night, and noticed that she sounded bright and bubbly on both occasions.
As for the “star jump” stuff. The short version of that is that Glenn Wheeler abseiled down the 31 storey Stockland Building in Sydney to raise money for the starlight foundation. More details (including videos) are available on Glenn Wheeler’s highlights page and the MyTalk star jump page. For the record, I donated $50 to the cause.
Anyway thank you for your suggestions Tuggers. They’re constructive and useful, and I appreciate them.
Samuel
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