This time around though, I think it’s a crying shame. I have almost no time for the comments section of RiotACT, however when it comes to the stories themselves, I think RiotACT has performed an incredibly valuable service to the ACT, especially under John’s guidance over the last year or so.
If there is one thing for which I have to give John credit, it is being the source of pressure which led to the AFP’s media unit getting press releases online more than once per week. Whilst I have access to the press releases through their direct distribution to media outlets, I do appreciate the fact that AFP stuff is now online in a timely manner.
On a less positive note, I’m reminded of what I said to a friend on the phone the day John returned to RiotACT…”it won’t last, there is no way it will be profitable”. I’m sorry that I was correct. As much as I disagree with John on a number of issues, the fact that he built RiotACT in to a respected local news outlet, respected not just by the public, but by the rest of the media as well, is a testament to John’s hard work and dedication. Alas John has succumbed to the financial needs which press on all of us, and is off to fulfil those needs.
It looks like RiotACT’s future is going to be similar to its past. Not for profit, volunteer driven, and leeching off the ABC with the occasional bit of self-inspired brilliance. Sad really. The loss of a decent independent news service.
This does make me wonder one thing though. If RiotACT can’t be profitable, how does Rupert Murdoch expect a pay-for-access lockdown of his online news services to be profitable? Rupert might have more readers, but when more than half the articles on his sites are recycled news agency articles which are freely available elsewhere (heck, Google hosts copies of Associated Press content), a pay-for-access version of his news services would have to be really really special to turn a buck.
The following is stuck on the screen during a Prime TV ad break during Today Tonight.
disappear or kids disappear. Making me disappear and I
Not that I have really been paying much attention to Today Tonight, I have had it on the TV, muted with subtitles while I do other things, and have noticed that some stories have had pockets of live captioning. The stories are all pre-recorded, but there are bits of the stories which weren’t pre-captioned and have been noticeably live-captioned. Very strange, very annoying.
Rush Limbaugh has a link to a story on Sweetness and Light placed at the top of his website, and then asks his listeners to visit his website and click on the link.
It’s a good thing that Rush had a printout of the story to read to his audience, because the website didn’t last long once everyone started trying to visit it. It’s only just starting to recover now, fifteen minutes later.
Update: OK, so maybe “recover” was the wrong word. I can occasionally get the page title to load…nothing else though. End Update
Further Update: Half an hour later, Rush notes that Sweetness and Light is being “bombarded” and gets the key images of the story republished on his own site. End Update
[..] the matter is unlikely to wind up in court. Mitchell told Green Guide that Laws left an apology on his answering machine the afternoon of the incident.
‘‘He said, ‘Please pass my apologies to Neil, I might have overreacted’, which was a very decent thing to do. And I left a message on his machine saying, ‘Thanks for the message, appreciate it’. It’s all over, as far as I’m concerned.’’
Who would have thought that the answering machine would become the modern-day equivalent of the legal secretary?
In Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide, bits of the CBD are being taken over by the collective breakfast teams of numerous radio stations, both commercial and government owned. Community Radio is not involved in the event.
Sydney’s event, in Martin Place, has lost three of its biggest names, with 2GB’s Alan Jones off sick (although Alan was never going to be there, it was going to be Jason Morrison on-site crossing to Alan in the studio. Jason will now be hosting the show from Martin Place as he continues to fill-in for Alan) and the two unmentionables from 2DAY FM who are “in recess”.
The full list of stations and places running their breakfast shows from a central location for today’s publicity stunt are as follows:
Sydney – Martin Place
2SM, MMM, 2DAY FM, Vega, 2GB, 2CH, Sky Sports Radio (known, until recently, as 2KY), 2UE, Nova, SBS, ABC Local Radio, The Edge (digital-only station).
Melbourne – Federation Square
3MP, Magic, Fox, SEN, 3AW, Nova, Vega, MMM, SBS, The Edge, ABC Local Radio, Sport 927.
Brisbane – Reddacliff Place
4BC, 4KQ, MMM, B105, Nova, 4BH, ABC Local Radio, RadioTAB.
Adelaide – Victoria Square
FIVEaa, SAFM, Cruise, ABC Local Radio, MMM, Nova.
Perth – Forrest Place
Mix, 92.9 (Austereo station), Nova, 6PR, 96fm, 6IX, ABC Local Radio.
If I didn’t have many other things to do, and if Alan Jones was going to be there, I’d probably make my way up to Sydney. As it happens though, I’m sure there will be enough people turning up to see their favourite radio presenters without me being there as well.
Channel Nine’s new youth-oriented digital station “Go!” just appeared on my television’s station list. At the moment it’s just a static screen with a music bed and a looped voiceover reading the on-screen text in a faked “I’m a young person with a slight British accent” voice.
Hopefully the station’s content is better than this.
A defamation case taken out against Macquarie Radio by Islamic Friendship Association spokesman Keysar Trad has been dismissed, with the Supreme court judge finding he has racist views.
Two years ago it was ruled 2GB radio broadcaster Jason Morrison had defamed Mr Trad when he labelled him “gutless” and “disgraceful and dangerous” following a speech Mr Trad made over the 2005 Cronulla riots.
A Supreme Court jury found in Mr Trad’s favour.
But the jury’s decision has been effectively quashed by today’s judgement from Justice Peter McClellan.
Justice McClellan ruled that the case should be dismissed, after lawyers for 2GB argued that information claimed to be defamatory was in fact true.
[..]
“I’m satisfied that the plaintiff does hold views which can properly be described as racist.
“I’m also satisfied that he encourages others to hold those views. In particular he holds views derogatory of Jewish people.
“The views which he holds would not be acceptable to most right-thinking Australians,” Justice McClellan’s judgment said.
[..]
Mr Morrison said it is a relief the matter has finally been resolved.
“I was very pleasantly surprised. These things are tough,” he said.
“This has been hanging over me and this radio station for four years and it’s not a particularly nice assertion that’s been made, so I was very relieved at the judge’s decision.”
Reporter: How ironic do you find it that a judge has now said in black and white that he’s [Keysar Trad] racist?
Jason Morrison: Oh, look, that for me wasn’t what it was about. I was responding to an attack on this radio station, on its broadcasters, on a quiet campaign that was out there trying to imply that we were responsible for things, and I responded to the attack. I mean some things you’ve gotta stand up for, some things you can’t just let be said, and you can’t just sort of assume that people will go and find out for themselves what the truth of the whole matter is. So you can push and push and push as much as you like and this time we just fired back.
Reporter: What sort of future do you think Mr. Trad has for him now in terms of his credibility, in terms of speaking with the media and as a representation of his…as a representative of his community?
Jason Morrison: Well I think that’s actually an issue for the press frankly. You make the judgement. You make the judgement if you think, based on that [the justice’s] judgement, that he should be continuing to be a spokesman for the community as he’s often portrayed. That’s your decision, not mine.
Reporter: From 2GB’s point of view, do you think 2GB will be using him as a spokesperson?
Jason Morrison: I don’t answer for 2GB but I answer for me, and I won’t be.
What I find most extraordinary about this though, is that the justice appears to have given Keysar Trad more of a serve than Jason ever did.
From here I hope that the appeal which Trad’s lawyers seem keen on doesn’t eventuate, and that this ridiculously unfair episode which Jason has had the misfortune of having to deal with, can be closed.
A quite extraordinarily bizarre exchange between 3AW Morning Show host Neil Mitchell and retired 2UE Morning Show host John Laws, this morning on Neil’s show.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/NeilMitchellVJohnLaws20090730.mp3] Download MP3 Audio courtesy of Crikey and copyright 3AW/Fairfax Radio Network.
Lawsie had a great career, but I seriously think he has gone a bit peculiar in his retirement, and I’m forced to wonder what possessed him to ring Neil…is he paying Media Monitors to alert him to mentions of himself? Or has “The Princess” merely grown weary of him talking to her instead of the country (as he said he would when he retired) and so he felt the need to call the most listened to show in Victoria?
I feel for Neil Mitchell who quite understandably had absolutely no idea what that was all about, or what John’s point was. I’m not convinced that John had any idea what his point was either. Perhaps that was the point…perhaps John was fulfilling a bet that he could still have his say, regardless of how trivial, on the radio and get the media interested in it. Today Tonight certainly were interested in it.
Congratulations John…now please go back to your retirement until you can be sensible. We both know that you’re a lot smarter than what you let on in that stupid exchange…you’re not doing yourself any favours.
And if you’re going to sue Neil, include me in your lawsuit would you? You have about as much chance of winning a lawsuit against me as you do against him.
First filed 3:02am
About half an hour ago I had the great pleasure of discussing government healthcare with Rush Limbaugh. It took half an hour of hitting “redial” and hearing two “this is not a free call” announcement per call to get through, but it was well worth it.
I took the decision yesterday that I had to call Rush regardless of how long it took to get through, after hearing him talking about the Obama administration’s proposed healthcare payment bundling for doctors…the similar bulk billing scheme has been such a massive success (sarcasm, if you hadn’t noticed) in Australia that I needed to draw the comparisons.
Many, many thanks to Rush’s staff for making me the first caller of the day.
I’ll grab the audio for you later, after it gets podcasted.
Update 5:42am: OK, here we go with audio. First though, one of the interesting things about being on a show with an estimated minimum audience of 14.75 million people (Talkers Magazine, based on Arbitron ratings data) is that people react. I’ve had some reaction on Facebook which has been great (I’ve never had a program director comment on one of my calls to talk radio before) and I’ve also been interested by some of the other reactions. “usazombie” on Twitter summed up my call thusly:
guy from au called rush Limbaugh and said things suck in au too
Well, sorta…close enough. The deranged people over at Media Matters who dedicate multiple people to scrutinising and commenting on every single second of the Limbaugh show in some bizarre effort to discredit him, declared me to be an “Aussie gentleman“…I was hoping for worse.
Rush took a call from an Aussie gentleman who said that Obama’s health care payment proposal sounds similar to the system they have in Australia, which is a mess. Wherever in the world socialism and liberalism has been tried, it hasn’t worked, said Rush, who asked if the caller can say with any knowledge whether Australian doctors are refusing to treat Medicaid patients. The caller said they’re not refusing treatment, they’re just opting out of the payment system. Rush said he has a friend in Australia right now who sent him this story about aborigines crashing a Wilderness Society party, which Rush said is just hilarious. The caller said it’s not just the aborigines who are upset with the Wilderness Society, a lot of people hate them because they’re shutting down the economy. Obama is doing the same thing here, said Rush. The caller wrapped things up by expressing his hope that the U.S. government follows Australia’s lead and doesn’t impose cap-and-trade. Rush said Harry Reid is trying to get it passed as part of the health care bill. It’s one of those things where they propose an amendment on Friday afternoon and have no debate. They’re going to try and get this done without anyone knowing about it because they know it’s in trouble.
One more break and Rush was back with a correction — it’s not cap-and-trade that they’re trying to sneak into the health care bill, it’s card check.
As deranged as Media Matters may be, they do provide a useful service just in case I need to check back over what day and time it was that Rush said something or referred to a story, long after the archives have disappeared from Rush’s site. At least they aren’t wasting their efforts entirely.
Anyhoo, without further ado, here’s my call to Rush. I’ve included the full segment as I think it leads in to the call quite nicely. If you want to skip ahead to the call, it starts at one minute and twenty seconds.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/SamuelOnRushLimbaugh20090729.mp3] Download MP3 Audio courtesy of, and copyright to, The Rush Limbaugh Show and Premiere Radio Networks
Further to the recent story about changes to the 2GB evening lineup, word reaches me that Prue Macsween is about to get her own show on 2GB, weekdays between 7pm and 8pm.
Apparently Prue has bought the timeslot, and will on-sell it to the clients of her media agency. This would explain Prue’s appearance on the presenters list on 2GB’s website a few years ago. MediaSpy are running the story as speculation, saying that she will be running a “small business show”. They’re calling it speculation…I have reason to believe that my source knows that the story is fact.
This also means that Luke Bona’s 7pm-8pm show which was recently halved to make room for an Alan Jones and Ray Hadley highlights show (see linked story above) will now get the axe.
Now, moving on to speculation, based on the Pyrmont bunker rumour mill. Brian Wilshire’s show to be extended to 1am, making it a 9pm-1am show. Andrew Moore’s show to start at 3am instead of 3:30am, making it a 3am-5am show, and the David Oldfield show to be dumped…presumably to be replaced by more highlights shows, as mooted in newspapers earlier in the year (I think it was the Daily Telegraph which came up with that one, can’t be sure though).
The first episode of the revamped 9pm, once-per-week version of The Bill has aired in the UK. Here’s the first two minutes or so of the first episode.
I watched the new opening titles on their own before I saw this video, and I wasn’t keen on the new titles or theme music at all, but after seeing it in context, I think it works well, on the proviso that they keep the new formula of putting a scene before the titles.
As for the background music…not really sure. It seems to work in the background, but it’s one of those elements that you have to keep once you put it there, otherwise it sounds like something is missing. I think the background music will work as long as it stays in the background as it has, and doesn’t take over like it does in some episode of Rush.
Without a doubt though, I will miss the old (current here in Australia) theme.
According to calculations on MediaSpy, Australia should see the new episodes in late October or early November.
The story of what will happen to people at 2UE. This week’s version, according to The Daily Telegraph, is that Steve Price and John Stanley will face the axe, Mike Carlton will move to a different timeslot, and Ben Fordham will replace Mike Carlton on breakfast.
2UE boss Graham Mott’s response? “I’m not going to respond to speculation.”
Probably not a bad response…if he responded to speculation, he’s never get the Tele and the Herald off his back…or other stations pretending to be the Tele and Herald for that matter.
When it comes to breakfast, I think they’re facing the same problem Seven News faced when Brian Henderson was anchoring Nine News…you just can’t beat ’em. Alan Jones is the Brian Henderson of breakfast radio. 2UE need to wait until Jones retires before making a move…although if they want to drop Carlton and his massive salary in the meantime to cut costs, they will get no argument from me. I’m not much of a Ben Fordham fan, but I’d much rather hear him than Mike Carlton any day.
There is one thing about all of this which I just don’t get though…why hasn’t the Tele or Herald asked 2UE’s Sunday night psychic Sharyn about this yet? Credible or not, her responses would make a great story.
The internet’s down…well that would explain why the main Windows Media webstream is down. The RealPlayer one is working fine though. Just thought you’d like to know.
Boy oh boy did I have a shocker of a night on Saturday night. That knock-on try I emailed you about was the highlight as my beloved doggies got thrashed in both the AFL and NRL. It’s a good thing The Bill was on to give me some respite!
I hope Archie gets better soon.
Best wishes,
Samuel Gordon-Stewart
Canberra
And as soon as I hit “send”, the Real Player stream dies. I’m gonna hold on to this one for the next time I’m told not to mention on-air that the Internet had gone down at radio stations I’m working at, because “it makes them sound really small”. If anything, I think it adds to the listeners’ experience and makes the whole thing just that bit more entertaining.
