Archive for November, 2008

Something worth watching on television on a Thursday

I was just looking at the television guide for this evening to see if there is anything worth watching because, quite frankly, the usual Thursday night lineup isn’t very inspiring. I’ve lost interest in the two shows which I used to find interesting on a Thursday (namely Inspector Rex on SBS, of which I can only watch the repeats so many times before I start reciting them, and Law And Order SVU which really needs to be put out of its misery) and as such wasn’t exactly expecting to find anything useful.

To my rescue comes Steve Liebmann with new episodes of his excellent documentary series Crime Investigation Australia which tonight looks in to the Claremont murders of the mid-1990s. The programme starts at 8:30 on Channel Nine and concludes at 9:45, which is theoretically (assuming that Channel Ten can keep to their publicly released schedule) 15 minutes in to Law And Order SVU, so I suppose that I could watch Steve Liebmann’s show and timeshift SVU in the hope that the producers of SVU manage to provide me with something slightly more interesting than most of their recent episodes. I suspect that the ability to skip the ad breaks in that show might help my cause.

Anyhoo, the blurb in the TV guide about Steve’s show tonight is as follows:

This chilling episode details the long and difficult investigation which began with the disappearance of 18-year-old secretary Sarah Spiers from a nightclub in the up-market Perth suburb of Claremont on Australia Day, 1996. The new information has been kept secret by police until now for fear its release could jeopardise the investigation.

Sounds like it will be very worthwhile viewing.

Update 8:36PM: Nine also seem to have a lackadaisical approach to timekeeping. C’mon guys, I don’t want to watch any more minutes of the end of Getaway. End Update

Samuel

2 comments November 27th, 2008 at 08:05pm

Spell Check Might Have A Point

According to Firefox’s Australian dictionary, “unticking” is a misspelling which should be corrected to “anticking”, whilst “untciking” is “unthinking”.

It might have a valid point.

Samuel

2 comments November 24th, 2008 at 03:36pm

2UE Summer Breakfast

It looks like 2UE’s Summer Breakfast schedule is going to be a combination of the traditional fill-in and the weekend guys.

For two weeks from December 8 (or was that December 15? Fairly sure it’s December 8 Update: Now confirmed as the 8th End Update ) George and Paul will be filling-in for Mike and Sandy. Then for two weeks from December 22 it’s John Stanley, and for another two weeks from January 5 it’s George and Paul again.

It looks like we’re also heading back to the modified summer schedule where breakfast finishes at 10am, is followed by a four hour “morning” show, and four hours of Drive.

As for the weekends, with the exception of Glenn Wheeler filling in for John Kerr on New Day Australia, the whole thing is still a mystery.

Samuel

4 comments November 24th, 2008 at 11:35am

Operation RAID In Full Effect

I noticed last night that Operation RAID, referred to by the ACT Police as “Australia’s largest traffic operation” is in full effect. I had the pleasure of being pulled over twice last night and passing through another RBT site without being pulled over.

The first time that I was pulled over was at a static RBT site on Northbourne Avenue between the Barton Highway and Antill Street, a clever spot on what is otherwise a straight road, as it’s about the only place along there that they wouldn’t be spotted from a distance. It looked like they were enjoying themselves, although it was rather amusing when the police officer doing the licence checks didn’t notice that I was wearing glasses and asked if I was wearing contact lenses…stopping himself halfway through his sentence when he looked at me again.

The officer conducting the breath tests had a bit of a chat with me while he waited for his breath testing machine to reset, and then after a little while longer decided to send me on my way without testing me because it was going to take another twenty minutes for the machine to reset. Apparently the driver they tested before me had been drinking, and it takes a while for the machine to return to providing accurate readings afterwards.

I passed another RBT site on the Tuggeranong Parkway near the Sulwood Drive intersection a bit later on, but got past them without being pulled over. When I ventured near Northbourne Avenue again, they were gone, so it’s possible that it was the same people on the Tuggeranong Parkway.

On my way home, I was pulled over on Antill Street by a patrol car that seems to be lurking, awaiting people to drive past so that they could be screened for alcohol. A quick licence check and breath test and I as on my way again.

In semi-related news from a weekend press release, I would like to offer my best wishes to the female police officer who was injured in an accident on Hindmarsh Drive yesterday whilst on her way to an emergency call. I hope that she has a speedy recovery.

Samuel

November 24th, 2008 at 09:06am

Calamity?

That might be one way to describe the latter half of last week and the weekend. Two friendships which appear to have disintegrated, another friend who I fear may be on the edge of self-harm, a job under threat, and one dead kangaroo.

Of the two friendships which appear to have disintegrated, one doesn’t bother me too much simply because I never really thought it was a particularly strong or close friendship anyway, but the other one, which was a very strong and fairly close friendship (from my perspective anyway) hurts. I’ve probably spent the better part of the last day or so trying to work out exactly what happened, and whilst I’m no closer to working out the reasons, I can see that there have been subtle hints left for me for some time now, and I just missed them. I think the friend was too polite to just drop me there and then, and has been trying to get rid of me gradually, and has now been a bit more blunt about it.

As much as I would like to know the reasons behind the collapse, I’m not going to bother asking. In some ways I think it would be better if I just stop thinking about it, although I will admit that it is very difficult.

As for the “job under threat” and the friend possibly on the edge of self-harm, the less I say about any of that publicly at this stage, the better. These are things which need to be worked out away from public scrutiny.

And the dead kangaroo, I can’t help but feel very sorry for the poor thing. All that it wanted to do was cross the road, I couldn’t stop in time, and now it’s dead. What’s worse is that it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gone for one of my “I need to unwind” drives. It wasn’t a very mature kangaroo, but it was one of the more sensible ones, it was actually trying to get out of the way…I pity it due to the sheer amount of terror that it must have been feeling in it’s last few moments of life. I suppose I can take some comfort from the fact that it died virtually instantly once hit, and that it didn’t suffer, something which is fairly obvious from the fact that once I got out and checked on it, it was dead, with a large amount of blood covering the road from its head wound.

I know that roos get hit by cars all the time, but I can’t help but feel sorry for this particular roo. I suppose I’m lucky insofar as my car only suffered very minor damage (a small dent and a bit of missing paint as far as I can tell). Regardless, it’s got to be amongst the most typical, but worst ways, to cap off what has already been a spectacularly awful few days.

Samuel

2 comments November 24th, 2008 at 03:13am

Aircheck Sunday: 1WAY FM Breakfast

This week we’re heading back to October the sixth, Labour Day in Canberra, when I filled in for James Scott on the 1WAY FM breakfast show, and this is probably a good example of “if it can go wrong…”.

Overall I was happy with this, as I had a fair bit of fun despite the various technical issues. It was clear that the day was not going to go so well when I couldn’t get in to the building, and then at 7am the news played at half speed (a bulletin which I aborted, and produced my own news headlines instead), effectively causing me to rearrange my half-written running sheet for the morning.

There were a couple points where, if I had remembered to load a sting or two before going to air, the show would have been a bit tighter…one or two occasions where saying nothing would have been better than rambling, oh, and the 8am news intro didn’t play…at least the bulletin did. I was skeptical of whether or not that bulletin would work after the 7am failure so I made sure that hour timed out so that we could use the satellite feed if the computer system went mad again.

As I said, overall I’m happy with it, and I think I’ve learnt a few things from it.

[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/AircheckSunday/1WAYFMBreakfast20081006.mp3]
Download MP3

Copyright notice: Copyright on this audio is jointly held by Samuel Gordon-Stewart and 1WAY FM. It is made available for personal use, and “fair use” as defined by copyright legislation only. This audio may not be redistributed without the prior written permission of either copyright holder.

Samuel

November 23rd, 2008 at 06:30pm

Site Maintenance

Updated: Maintenance postponed.

Original post from November 21, 5:39am:

I have scheduled some site maintenance between midnight and 6am tomorrow morning. The site should be fully operational for most of this period, however you may notice intermittent issues with various bits of the site during this time.

Samuel

November 22nd, 2008 at 10:10pm

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: The Rudd Government’s Performance

Kevin Rudd’s Labor government have been in power for a year, which leads me to pose the question:

After a year of the Kevin Rudd Labor government, how do you rate their performance?

Total Votes: 26
Started: November 22, 2008

Any reasoning to go with your answer is welcome in the comments.

Samuel

1 comment November 22nd, 2008 at 02:37pm

Samuel’s Blog Weekly Poll: Results

It’s probably about time that I close the old poll which has been running since August:

In text messages and instant messaging you use:

Total Votes: 67
Started: August 18, 2008

A new poll will be posted tomorrow morning.

Results of previous polls can be seen at https://samuelgordonstewart.com/weekly-poll-results

Samuel

November 21st, 2008 at 03:00pm

Lurking No More

Glenn Wheeler is now officially out of lurking mode, he is assisting on-air with 2UE’s outside broadcast today.

This is much to my delight, and much to the disgust of a regular commentator on this blog with whom I conversed via telephone this morning.

Welcome back Glenn. I, for one, am very pleased to have you back.

Samuel

November 21st, 2008 at 01:36pm

Friday Funnies: A Couple Game Show Parodies

If we ever have political correctness invading quiz shows, it could look a bit like this:

And one wonders how much of this sort of banter between game show hosts and difficultly dull contestants ends up on the cutting room floor?

And I should save this one for next week, but seeing as Frank sent it in (even if he does admit to taking it from the first site to rank in Google for “duck jokes”):

A man is driving a pick-up truck down the road with a bunch of ducks standing in the back. A police officer pulls over the driver and informs him that he is speeding and then asks him where he thinks he’s going with all those ducks. The driver says that he just doesn’t know what to do anymore. The officer says, “Look, there’s a zoo not far from there and that’s where you should be taking them. That will take care of your problem.” The man thanks the officer and drives off with his ducks.

The next day the officer again sees the pick-up truck once again speeding down the road. This time, though, all the ducks in the back are standing there with sunglasses. The officer pulls over the driver over and says, “I thought I told you to take them to the zoo!” “I did that,” said the driver, “but now they want to go to the beach!”

If you have a joke or a funny video that you’d like to see here on a Friday, send an email to samuel@samuelgordonstewart.com and it might just appear in the coming weeks.

Samuel

November 21st, 2008 at 10:21am

The Firstborn Personality

On Sunday night on Open House with Sheridan Voysey, Sheridan interviewed psychologist Dr. Kevin Leman, the author of The Birth Order Book and The Firstborn Advantage and they chatted about a rather interesting trait known as the “firstborn personality” which is generally, but not always, associated with the eldest child in a family. The traits generally include:
Well organised
Highly analytical
Perfectionist
List writer
Taking on tasks that “nobody else can do properly”
Perfectionist
Bossy
Not a fan of surprises

The longer the interview went on, the more it sounded like he was deliberately trying to describe me. Of course, it’s not just the eldest child that can have a particular personality trait, other children in the birth order have their own specific personality.

The interview was quite compelling and I’m pleased to say that it has been placed online at The Open House Blogsite. It runs for 25 minutes, and in my opinion is well worth it. You can listen to Kevin Leman talk about first borns on Sheridan Voysey’s Open House program: www.theopenhouse.net.au, click on “Listen Again”, find the downloads for the 16th of November (they’re currently at the top of the list, but they won’t be for long) and follow the prompts.

And if you like what you hear, then you’ll probably enjoy the rest of Sheridan’s Open House show. Sunday nights from 8pm eastern time on 1WAY FM Canberra, FM103.2 Sydney and other stations across the nation.

Samuel

Samuel is the panel operator for Open House at 1WAY FM. No other agreement exists between Samuel, Open House and/or any other Open House network stations.

November 21st, 2008 at 08:10am

More of 2UE’s Summer Schedule Confirmed

And Glenn Wheeler’s back! He’s been lurking in the shadows at their outside broadcasts lately, and now he’s going back to where it all started for him on UE when he jumped from 2GB, weekend middawns.

As previously reported, Jim Ball is taking all of December and half of January off from New Day Australia. Contrary to previous belief, he won’t be on leave for that entire period, rather he will be filling in for John Stanley on Drive for the first two weeks of December.

The move with Jim is interesting because 2UE’s recent history indicates that Stuart Bocking is the default fill-in for Drive, but considering that Jim has previously filled in on drive over at 2GB and he has had a fairly good effect on the station’s overnight ratings, one does have to wonder if 2UE are testing a few things over summer to see how they work. 2UE’s ratings have been fairly stagnant this year with a slight downward trend, whilst 2GB have have a moderate increase in ratings, and if I have to make a prediction, Stuart Bocking will inherit the morning show either mid next-year, or at the start of 2010.

At this stage there is still no word on who will fill in for Mike and Sandy on Breakfast, although I have to agree with the speculation that it’s a job which should go to George and Paul. There is a part of my head that is screaming “logic dictates that it will be John Stanley and whoever they find hiding in a cupboard again” though.

Weekends are still anyone’s guess, and I’ve got a feeling that Don Burke’s role will be increased, possibly to 6am-midday, with Kearns and Robertson potentially changing to midday-6pm through summer.

That said, it’s all speculation except for that which has been confirmed, and even that is subject to late change. I would hate to be trying to organise summer imaging on a network station though…you’d have to ignore the weekends, unless you really want to plug weekend middawn heavily, because we all know that Harvey Norman place their main bulk of ads between 2am and 4am when they’re likely to wake people with a bloke yelling about vacuum cleaners and plasma televisions.

Samuel

November 21st, 2008 at 05:04am

Morrison to Nine?

Also from the Media Spy forums comes speculation that 2GB’s Jason Morrison (sorry Jason, is it News Director, Current Affairs Director or Program Director) is under Channel Nine’s poaching microscope.

Morrison’s most recent stint in a television newsroom was at Channel Ten where he was News Director in 2005. Rumour has it that Nine are interested in offering Jason their News Director job.

In my opinion, Jason is under-utilised on-air at 2GB, so I’ll be interested to see what happens with this rumour.

Samuel

November 21st, 2008 at 04:04am

Capital Radio Webstreams

I considered “A Dream Coming True?” and “About Bloody Time” as titles for this post…in the end I decided against them, but they deserve a run anyway.

Word reaches us from the MediaSpy forums that the Capital Radio Network will have functioning webstreams as of December 21.

The quote from an unknown source claims that this will be for “the whole capital network”, so with any luck that will include Eagle FM Goulburn and Snow FM Jindabyne which I think are good examples of the CHR (Current Hit Radio) format done the way it should be done.

That said, I’d be happy enough with just the Canberra stations as a stream of the Mike Jeffreys Breakfast Show would be very useful for the last few hours of my night shifts…I’d probably be too busy to listen to Welshy live, but I suppose I could timeshift him. A 2CA stream also sounds quite appealing.

And suddenly my fear of having to deal with withdrawal symptoms if I ever leave town is tentatively dissipated.

Samuel

1 comment November 21st, 2008 at 03:57am

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