Afternoons with Alexander and Nicky Downer
February 26th, 2008 at 01:30pm
I forgot to check FIVEaa’s website this week until last night Stuart Bocking reminded me of the news I mentioned a few weeks ago, the former federal foreign minister and current member for Mayo Alexander Downer is hosting the afternoon show on Adelaide’s commercial talk radio station, FIVEaa.
I had wondered how FIVEaa were going to get around the problem of their afternoon host being in Canberra every Friday, and it looks like rather than illegally rebroadcasting parliamentary proceedings in the hope that Mr. Downer says something, they have taken the sensible option of involving his wife as the co-host and (on Fridays) only host.
After the furore last week about Alexander Downer missing question time so that he could have lunch with somebody whose plane was late, not missing parliament for the sake of a radio show is a good idea.
When I wrote the original article about Alexander Downer hosting FIVEaa afternoon show, I raised the prospect of a biased program being in breach of the Commercial Radio Australia codes of practice…well FiveAA have negated that. Have a look at the “coming up” section of the screenshot above (click it to enlarge the image if you can’t read it). Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan is joining their morning host today for a while.
I also raised the prospect that it would be interesting to see how capable Mr. Downer is of running an interesting program. I haven’t had a chance to listen to his show properly yet, and the snippets I heard last night were mainly of him being grilled by the electorate, but if his performance whilst being interviewed by Steve Price last week is anything to go by, he is one of the few politicians I have heard who seems to be more than capable of thinking on his feet and giving as good as he gets…and pulling an interesting distraction trick.
I will try and find some time to listen to his show tomorrow, but for now his show is on the air as this post appears, so if you’re interested, visit the FIVEaa website and click the Listen Live link.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: TV/Radio/Media
