Quick question…how long until Fairfax Syndication implodes completely. The satellite issues are still going on, we’ve been having no end of trouble in Deni (missing pulses, audio glitches, mistimed pulses, news cut off, random wrong programs, Neil Mitchell coming through on both channels instead of just one causing automated recording of pre-feed and rural news to fail…which in turn requires us to download the stuff from Digital Courier and insert it manually, oh and a heap of dead air).
I can almost understand Neil Mitchell coming through on both channels…it could be an acceptable error, but to send Tim Webster (a show which we don’t even take) on the auxiliary channel in place of the 3pm pre-feed news??? It could just be me, but Tim Webster giving away a prize to some woman who has to be fed answers to competition questions is not exactly what I consider to be news.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/2qn3pmNewsMay21.mp3] Download MP3
And with all the errors that Fairfax are making at the moment, it must make the listeners of the network stations think that the people working at the stations are incompetent twats…I mean what else would a listener, who has no idea about how it all works, think when a fifteen minute old Neil Mitchell rant goes to air instead of the news on an FM station, followed by an ad and the weather? They’d think we’re complete numbskulls.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/ClassicRock10amNews20May2009.mp3] Download MP3
Around this time last night they managed to send Stuart Bocking in place of 3AW’s Nightline. As much as I like stations to take Stuart, he shouldn’t be force-fed to stations who are taking other programs with completely different break schedules. As I write this they’re managing to send Nightline on both channels rather than just the main channel.
It amazes me that people pay Fairfax Syndication sometimes…surely it can’t be that hard to get things right.
Update late Friday night: Issues seem to be fixed now (at last). Whilst AW programming was still coming through on both channels today, it was only coming through on the primary channel tonight. I dropped in to the 2QN studios to listen to the AFL off the satellite after a Deni Business Chamber event…and drat, Murphy kicked a behind instead of a goal after the siren, so the doggies didn’t win. It was a good game though. End Update
I’m glad that I stayed back late at the station today because while I was sitting down doing some audio editing I heard a song start playing on the air which I recognised at once as “the Mike Jeffreys cowboy music”, which was also used for a little while for the “Friday yee-hah”.
Blood, sweat and tears’ “When I Die”
By the way, I’m considering breaking with my standard “three month policy” for Aircheck Sunday of only putting airchecks online once they’re three months or more old, and putting a 2QN Breakfast aircheck online for Aircheck Sunday this weekend…if I do, it’ll be breakfast from Wednesday which I have already spent an inordinate amount of time uploading for the reference of certain people.
And on the subject of 2QN breakfast, it has been a fun week so far, and I’m looking forward to another busy morning tomorrow. I must say a big thank you to 2GB’s Jason Morrison, a thoroughly decent bloke, as he has agreed to come on the show tomorrow morning to have a bit of a chinwag about the issues (serious or otherwise) of the week. Jason has been very supportive of me while I have tried to build a career in the radio industry, and I doubt that I can express how much I appreciate his support and advice, and his willingness to volunteer his time tomorrow morning.
Anyhoo, back to dinner for me. I should try to get some sleep at some stage I suppose.
My stay in Deniliquin has been extended by a week. I will be on news duties for 2QN and Classic Rock next week, and will continue to do breakfast on 2QN this week.
I received a request for a song this morning on 2QN and, seeing as I had a bit of time and the song was a more appropriate length than one of the others in the log, I decided to run it. Had I recognised the song from the title, I would have played it and made the rest of the hour fit around it.
The song was “What’s Up” by Four Non Blondes. It’s a song which aired the last time I was in Deni and wanted to jot down the title and artist, but I didn’t get a chance to check the log and promptly forgot about it until today.
I was very pleased to hear the song, and I have now purchased a copy from iTunes.
On a related note, three brick bats to the Universal Music Group. I am becoming increasingly frustrated by their policy of disabling the embedding of YouTube videos of music to which they own the rights. I wanted to embed the song here for your reference, but the only embeddable version I can find in a hurry is a techno remix of the song…all of the videos of the original song (not live versions) that I’ve found have embedding disabled. I have noticed that many YouTube videos have recently started to carry ads over the video with a link to iTunes to purchase the song…so one wonders why Universal are cutting off a potential revenue stream. I’m sure that, if you don’t know the song, you would be much more likely to watch a video of it on this website than you would be to go to YouTube and find a video of it.
I’m sure Universal have their reasons, but as far as I’m concerned, embeddable videos of music are a great promotional tool for music companies. The whole idea of disabling the embedding of music videos is just nuts.
I’m on a roll here, so Universal Music Group, have another couple of brickbats!
There has been a change of plans for the coming week. I was going to be producing and presenting the local news on 2QN and Classic Rock, however this is no longer the case. Instead, due to a staff illness, another fill-in journalist will present and produce the local news, and I will be hosting breakfast on 2QN.
I have to admit that I am a tad excited as this is my first on-air shift in commercial radio. This should be fun.
At this stage I’m not sure if I will be posting news headlines on this blog.
Looks like the Fairfax Syndication operation is currently kaput. I noticed that Tim Webster’s show was unlistenable to due to satellite issues (partial words interspersed with odd noises and silence) and that 2CC fell back on the 2UE webstream. Currently they’re taking the rugby league off 2GB’s webstream as far as I can tell…sounds great, but it causes me to fiddle with delaying the television coverage to keep the commentary in sync (it’s roughly a 20 second delay).
Fairfax Syndication’s technical website is not very optimistic, having the current message:
15 May 2009 – 19:58:00
Please note the current system outage is more serious than first thought. Unfortunately we cannot give an estimate when normal services will resume. Please check this website. News is available from Digital Courier.
With Medispy currently off the air due to scheduled maintenance, I’m in the dark as to what other stations are doing…but one does have to wonder if Macquarie (2GB) News is being made available by Digital Courier, or just Fairfax News. 2GB do put Macquarie News on livenews.com.au at about twenty past the hour, but that’s not quite as useful as live (or thereabouts) news. That might explain why the 7pm Macquarie news did not contain any timecalls though.
Further updates as information comes to hand.
Update 8:43pm: The rugby league is back on the satellite with just the slightest hint of the dreaded underwater bubbling noises which so often are a part of the Fairfax failures. Once can only assume that other programming (AFL etc) is back as well…Friday night must be an awful time for such failures with all the live sport coverage. Fairfax’s website hasn’t noticed that services are online again.End Update
Update 9:11pm: Update from Fairfax:
Please note that 99% of services have been restored. You still may receive an occasional, minor audio glitch, but all programs are available. We will continue to work on the problem until service is restored to 100%.
If I have a car of my own by then, I know exactly where I’ll be on Saturday July 18.
Ray Hadley and the Continuous Call Team – consisting of league Immortal Bob ‘Bozo’ Fulton, Darryl ‘The Big Marn’ Brohman and Steve ‘Blocker’ Roach – have informally adopted the Binalong Brahmans rugby league team.
In an off-the-cuff radio announcement last week, Hadley – 2GB morning presenter and leader of the weekend rugby league panel the Continuous Call – said he’d taken an interest in how the Brahmans were travelling and would bring the team out to Binalong to broadcast the game against arch-rivals Harden on July 18.
I was too tired on the day to go to Singleton when they visited the wife carrying championships last year, and had no transport for it this year. I have something to work towards, although I’m not convinced that I’ll be able to get there.
3AW seem to be having trouble with their tieline link to their commentary team at the AFL this afternoon, as it has dropped out multiple times this afternoon. They’re lucky that 5AA Adelaide (who regularly relay 3AW’s coverage) have their own commentary team out there today because AW are using AA as their backup team.
Current outage over five minutes duration, one wonders how many extra sponsor mentions they will have to fit in to the next quarter if they even get the link back.
Update: 3AW’s commentary team were back online for the half time wrap, but Rex Hunt was audibly ranting at somebody on the phone in the background. Now for the second half they’ve decided to stay with 5AA’s biased coverage. End Update
Update 2:37pm: Somebody told 5AA that 3AW’s commentary team will be back on-deck shortly. I hope they were right. End Update
Update 3:48pm: Full time, and still no sign of the 3AW commentary team…and it only took 5AA until very late in the final quarter to concede that Adelaide’s opponents might just be worthy winners. End Update
You’ve probably heard the news about Karl Stefanovic on the Today show on Monday morning. Following on from a late night at the Logies, Karl had his usual early start on the Today show, but was somewhat more happy and spontaneous than usual, prompting speculation that he was drunk at the time.
Having watched both the Today Tonight story, and further raw footage over at livenews.com.au, I have to say that I believe Karl’s statement that he was not drunk, merely tired, as I don’t think there was enough slurring for him to be drunk…in fact I’m finding it hard to find any slurring.
Perhaps Karl downed a dozen cups of coffee…regardless of the cause, I thought Karl’s performance was well above his normal standard, and is well worth repeating, even if slightly toned down. Happy and spontaneous Karl is much more interesting than normal Karl, especially at 6am.
Livenews.com.au have some raw footage at http://livenews.com.au/entertainment/stefanovic-apologises-for-postlogies-today/2009/5/6/205461 but I can’t find a way to embed it here.
ACT Treasurer and Deputy Chief Minister Katy Gallagher at 9:20 to talk about the ACT budget.
More on the ACT Infrastructure Tax being passed on to customers by Telstra.
The spammers are adapting their messages for the rising unemployment levels.
Maritz baked yesterday’s food with a slight modification…and some sentence which doesn’t make any sense.
A quiz or two.
And more.
The 1WAY FM morning show: 9am-11:30am on Canberra’s 91.9 and 94.3, 1WAY FM.
A look at the ACT budget.
Julianne Thomas from Newsradio 840 KXNT on the US activist group ACORN being charged with voter enrolment fraud at approximately 9:30.
Savanth Sebastian, CommSec economist talking about interest rates (and hopefully a comment about budgets and the economic crisis) at approximately 10:30.
An email from Maritz who seems to be confused by television cooking shows.
Telstra decide to pass on the cost of the ACT Government’s “Network Facilities Tax”.
And lots more.
The morning show: 9am-11:30am on Canberra’s 91.9 and 94.3 1WAY FM
I just noticed what appears to be a new addition to the service lineup on the Fairfax Syndication website: state based weather forecasts from The Weather Channel.
The service is aimed at automated radio stations, with three weather bulletins being provided for each state per day. The service is similar to a well-established service run by the US version of The Weather Channel where they provide individual radio stations with forecasts relevant to their broadcast area which stations then add to their schedule. KXNT Las Vegas are a good example of this, as they receive multiple updates per day from The Weather Channel, and have their newsreader provide the current temperatures at the end of the forecast:
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/KXNTWeatherExample.mp3] Download MP3
Whilst KXNT do this in a live environment, I can see how this would work perfectly in an automated environment where a local presenter could record a bunch of temperature announcements and the automation could play the relevant temperature announcement straight after the Weather Channel forecast. The only issue I see with this Australian version though is that, with the exception of the ACT, a state/territory forecast is not going to be very locally relevant, and wouldn’t be an ideal replacement for the local forecast.
It will be interesting to see how many stations pick up this service, and how they use it. I can only assume that, at some future stage, more specific forecasts will be available by request as the service probably won’t have a high adoption rate otherwise.
As easily predicted yesterday morning, Alan Jones was all over the television last night. On the Nine network he was featured briefly on Nine News, and then got a lengthy story dedicated to his return on A Current Affair prepared, ironically, by 2UE fill-in Ben Fordham.
Apologies for not posting this sooner. I had little time to do anything this morning before co-hosting breakfast with James Scott on 1WAY FM. The plan at this stage is to co-host breakfast for the rest of the week and to host the morning shift tomorrow and Thursday.
Ian Craig is retiring. It was bound to happen eventually, but it is sad to see the various voices of racing disappearing.
AFTER 45 years entertaining the racing world with his dulcet tones and classic calling Ian Craig has announced his retirement.
Craig, the longest serving fulltime racecaller in Australia, said the decision to hang up his binoculars was quite an easy one.
“I have been planning to pull the pin for some time now,” Craig said.
[..]
“I have called 35 Golden Slippers and AJC Derbys and thought the time was right to hang up the 10-by-50s.”
Craig, 67, started at 2UE in 1965 before moving to 2KY in 1968. He will call his final race meeting at Gosford on June 24.
He could not single out one performance as a career highlight but rates Kingston Town, Luskin Star, Sunline and Octagonal among the best thoroughbreds he has called.
One wonders who will fill Ian’s shoes for Sky Channel and 2KY. Regardless of who it is, I get the distinct feeling that the days of “personalities” calling races are all but over.
Not only are AAP not including mugshots in their stories, they’re also leaving out vital bits of identifying information.
Police are warning the public to stay away from four prisoners on the run after escaping from a Parramatta jail.
[..]
John Harris, 18, and three 19-year-olds named Ricky Kincheila, Isaac Haines and Jay Williams are described as being of Aboriginal appearance, while Harris has the name ‘Lauren’ tattooed on the left side of his chest.
So anyone reading or hearing an AAP based report of this story is left guessing as to what most of the escapees look like, and can only identify one of them if he isn’t wearing a shirt…great!
Effectively the message AAP are spreading here is “beware of teenage Aboriginal people”.
The New South Wales Police press release is much more helpful, but it’s sad that people have to dig for the information which the Police have released in an effort to protect the public:
*** Editor’s note: Images of the four men are available by contacting the Police Media Unit on (02) 8263 6100. ***
[..]
The first escaped man is 18-year-old John Harris who is described as being of Aboriginal appearance, with a dark complexion. He is approximately 180cm tall, thin build and brown eyes. He also has a tattoo of the name “Lauren” across his chest.
The second man is 19-year-old Ricky Kincheila who is described as being of Aboriginal appearance, with a light complexion. He is approximately 178cm tall and of medium build. He has brown hair, brown eyes and a beard and moustache.
The third man is 19-year-old Issac Haines who is described as being of Aboriginal appearance, with a light tanned complexion. He is approximately 190cm tall with a thin build. He has black hair and brown eyes.
The fourth man is 19-year-old Jay Williams who is described as being of Aboriginal appearance. He is approximately 175cm tall, medium build with black hair and brown eyes.
AAP, I know that lengthy descriptions don’t make for exciting copy, but some things are more important than that. This is one of them.
AFTER 45 years entertaining the racing world with his dulcet tones and classic calling Ian Craig has announced his retirement.