Posts filed under 'TV/Radio/Media'
I’m only back in the land of communicating with people for a few moments so that I can write this, once I’m done I’m still “off the grid” and will re-evaluate that position on Monday.
Anyway I’m breaking my silence because of the rather busy night I envisage tonight. ABC1 are screening the 25th anniversary episodes of The Bill, whilst up in Queensland they are having an election which I will need to keep an eye on. I figure that the best option here is to record and delay The Bill as necessary, and have the webstream of the ABC TV coverage on, but mute it in favour of the audio from 4BC.
A couple predictions. A Liberal National Party victory, and Pauline Hanson to receive more than 4% of the primary vote (enough to receive payments from the electoral commission), but not enough to win a seat in Parliament.
And if I can soundproof my house to avoid the awful noises of Skyfire, that will be wonderful.
Samuel
March 21st, 2009 at 01:35pm
I’m forced to ask because every time that I’ve either turned on Fox Sports 1 or looked at the schedule for the channel lately, they’ve been showing Saturday night’s NAB Cup AFL match between Geelong and Carlton.
Sure, it was a good contest, but surely they have something else to broadcast.
Samuel
March 9th, 2009 at 07:12pm
I’ve been thinking of calling US talk radio host Sean Hannity for a little while now and finally decided to do so today. It took me a good forty minutes or so of intermittent redialling to get through, and then I spent another forty minutes or so on hold. By this stage an interview was going overtime and with the other interviews they had lined up, it was unlikely that they would be able to get to me for at least an hour or more, if at all…as I was calling from overseas they were kind enough to inform me of the situation, take down my phone number and offer to call me back tomorrow.
Hopefully I’ll be able to chat with Sean tomorrow. His show airs between 7am and 10am Canberra time (with current timezone differences). If it ends up happening, I’ll be sure to let you know.
Samuel
March 6th, 2009 at 10:21am
I went for a two hour walk to my post office box and back at about 2am, and found a letter, marked “urgent”, from a gentleman in Cobram in there, urging me to drop most of Channel Ten’s AFL commentators in favour of Kelli Underwood, an up-and-coming female commentator who caused a stir in 2005 when 3AW made her a match co-commentator, a move which Ten have repeated recently during their NAB Cup coverage, making Kelli the first female to call AFL football on television.
I agree with the sentiments of the letter writer as I think Ten’s commentators are generally quite awful, and Kelli is a vast improvement, however I’m not sure what I can really do about it.
I think I’ll write back to the letter writer asking for permission to publish their letter in full as a “Letter To The Editor”. That’s probably the best thing that I can do under the circumstances.
Samuel
March 4th, 2009 at 04:03pm
Even I, a person who doesn’t believe that Fox News is anywhere near as biased as people claim, was shocked to see them citing Crikey in a story this morning:
Surprise Asteroid Makes Near-Miss of Earth
A small asteroid buzzed by Earth Monday, though only real astronomy geeks in the Pacific would have noticed.
The rock, estimated to be no more than 200 feet wide, zoomed past our planet at an altitude of 40,000 miles at 1:44 p.m. universal time — or 8:44 EST.
Dubbed 2009 DD45, it was discovered only on Friday by Australian astronomers.
Forty thousand miles may sound like a lot, but it’s only about one-seventh of the way to the moon, and less than twice as far out as many telecommunications satellites.
Had 2009 DD45 hit the Earth, it would have exploded on or near the surface with the force of a large nuclear blast — not very reassuring when you consider humanity had only about three days’ notice.
According to the Australian news Web site Crikey, the asteroid is likely to be drawn in by Earth’s gravity, meaning it may return for many more near misses in the future.
(emphasis added to final sentence by Samuel)
At that altitude one can only hope that space junk doesn’t collide with the asteroid and send it plummeting to Earth. Needless to say, that would be bad.
Samuel
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:38am
I was watching Terminator 2 last night and noticed something which I haven’t noticed before, and I’m amazed that it took me this long to notice it.
The character Tarissa Dyson was played by S. Epatha Merkerson, who I know much better as Law & Order‘s Lieutenant Anita Van Buren.
Image credit: NBC Television
I suppose the thing that really threw me off until now is that in Terminator 2 the character Tarissa Dyson spends almost her entire time looking absolutely terrified, whereas Lt. Van Buren is a generally authoritative figure who usually looks to be in control. She also used her voice quite differently in T2, using almost none of her trademark deeper voice which she uses to such great effect in Law & Order, and she was also about as skinny as me in T2.
She is a great actress, I’m just surprised that it took me this long to connect the dots.
On that note I should probably mention that I’m enjoying the current series of Law & Order, which recently started screening on Channel Ten and has been screening for a while on NBC, a lot more than the last couple of seasons, and I think the writing has improved significantly. Lt. Van Buren has a much-needed stronger presence in the investigations, the two detectives work very well as characters which is probably helped by the on-screen chemistry between the actors Anthony Anderson and Jeremy Sisto.
Jack McCoy’s (Sam Waterson) promotion to District Attorney and his love-hate working relationship with the clever but stubborn Executive Assistant District Attorney Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) adds a strength and complexity to the District Attorney’s office which seemed to be lacking for a while. I dare say that Alana De La Garza was well cast as Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa, quite possibly the character which prevents the DA’s office from falling in a heap.
I also note that Law & Order: UK debuted on ITV last week. I watched it with some interest, although I nearly switched off after about ten minutes due to the cardboard acting of the two Detective Sergeants which severely detracted from the show. Thankfully they got better, and the rest of the actors hit the mark in a rather complex and intriguing storyline. I hold out some hope for this series, it was a good start overall and will hopefully get better as time goes by.
Samuel
March 3rd, 2009 at 06:38am
Some sad news from the US. One of the pioneers of talk radio as we know it has died aged 90 in an Arizona hospital.
Paul Harvey, News Commentator and Talk-Show Pioneer, Dies at 90
Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, FOX News has confirmed. He was 90.
Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.
Harvey had been forced off the air for several months in 2001 because of a virus that weakened a vocal cord. But he returned to work in Chicago and was still active as he passed his 90th birthday. His death comes less than a year after that of his wife and longtime producer, Lynne.
“My father and mother created from thin air what one day became radio and television news,” Paul Harvey Jr. said in a statement. “So in the past year, an industry has lost its godparents and today millions have lost a friend.”
Known for his resonant voice and trademark delivery of “The Rest of the Story,” Harvey had been heard nationally since 1951, when he began his “News and Comment” for ABC Radio Networks.
He became a heartland icon, delivering news and commentary with a distinctive Midwestern flavor.
“He’s bigger than anybody,” former Arkansas governor and FOX News host Mike Huckabee said on “Geraldo at Large” late Saturday. “America trusted Paul Harvey.”
He said his passing leaves a hole that could never be filled.
In 1976, Harvey began broadcasting his anecdotal descriptions of the lives of famous people. “The Rest of the Story” started chronologically, with the person’s identity revealed at the end. The stories were an attempt to capture “the heartbeats behind the headlines.” Much of the research and writing was done by his son, Paul Jr.
He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush in 2005.
“Laura and I are saddened by the death of Paul Harvey,” former President George W. Bush said Saturday night. “Paul was a friendly and familiar voice in the lives of millions of Americans. His commentary entertained, enlightened and informed. Laura and I are pleased to have known this fine man, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”
Harvey also blended news with advertising, a line he said he crossed only for products he trusted.
However, it all started in 1933 when his radio career began at KVOO-AM in Tulsa while he was still in high school, his Web site said.
He moved to Hawaii in 1940 to cover the U.S. Navy and eventually enlisted in the Army Air Corps, where h served until 1944.
In 2000, at age 82, Harvey signed a new 10-year contract with ABC Radio networks.
In addition to his unique voice and delivery, Harvey was credited with coining several words on his broadcasts, including “Reaganomics” and “guesstimate.”
Harvey was born Paul Harvey Aurandt in Tulsa, Okla. His father, a police officer, was killed when he was a toddler. A high school teacher took note of his distinctive voice and launched him on a broadcast career.
While working at St. Louis radio station KXOK, he met Washington University graduate student Lynne Cooper. He proposed on their first date (she said “no”) and always called her “Angel.” They were married in 1940 and had a son, Paul Jr.
They worked closely together on his shows, and he often credited his success to her influence. She was the first producer ever inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997, seven years after her husband was. She died in May 2008 after a year-long battle with leukemia.
Story and picture courtesy of Fox News
A voice and presence which will be missed, a person who will not be forgotten. RIP Paul.
Samuel
March 1st, 2009 at 09:09pm
I’ll admit that I was surprised when I noted that there was no rain falling in Sydney last night, because the signal 2CC were receiving via satellite certainly sounded like it was being interfered with by heavy rain. All of that wonderful half-intelligible audio and erroneous pulses…actually one of the erroneous pulses was quite interesting, I haven’t heard a weather update, the top of hour IDP and an ad break simultaneously before.
This was all between 7:30pm and 8:30pm, and by the time I checked in again after midnight, there was dead air. I had better things to do than leave a radio on to see when the next bit of sound might seep out of it, but I did check back every forty minutes or so, and as far as I can tell they returned to normal around 4am.
This does make me wonder what’s going on today. I didn’t hear any of the Steve Price show, but at the moment Tim Webster’s show appears to be being sourced from the 2UE webstream, and according to a media spy contributor, 2HD Newcastle were sourcing the Steve Price show from the 2UE webstream as well.
I suppose I should check 2AY this afternoon to see how the Derryn Hinch show sounds, because I’d be interested to find out if this is a localised issue or not. If the satellite feed is “wonky” on a national basis, then I wonder how Hamish and Andy will be distributed to the FM stations this afternoon?
Still, it’s all speculation at this stage, so I’ll go and have lunch, and then jot down my thoughts on Kevin Rudd’s stimulus package.
Update: Word has it that 2UE are having issues with the link from their studios to the Channel Nine tower which has the dish linking them to the network. In other words, I’d be wasting my time checking if the the 3AW or various FM Drive shows are having similar issues as they shouldn’t be affected…as long as they don’t use the same link from the heap of equipment at the UE building anyway. I might check for the fun of it! End Update
Samuel
February 5th, 2009 at 12:44pm
It’s been a decade since we saw the mining ship Red Dwarf being consumed with virtually no hope for the remaining crew. Thankfully, many stalled movie plans later, we finally have confirmation that Red Dwarf will return at Easter time:
The cast of hit sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf are to reunite for a new two-part storyline which will see them finally return to Earth.
Red Dwarf: Back to Earth will air on UKTV digital channel Dave over the Easter weekend.
It will sit alongside two further new episodes – the improvised Red Dwarf: Unplugged, which will feature the cast dealing with no sets, effects or autocue, and Red Dwarf: the Making of Back to Earth, a behind the scenes look at the new production.
The new two-parter will begin a decade on from when the crew of the Red Dwarf were last seen, with a “shock development” throwing Rimmer, Lister, Cat and Kryten back to Earth.
Naturally there is no news about when the ABC will screen it (and I’m assuming that they will considering that they still have the rights to the original Red Dwarf episodes), but I, for one, can’t wait.
Samuel
January 30th, 2009 at 02:53pm
Macquarie National News, presumably delirious in Sydney’s cooler temperatures after recent “scorchers”, have invented a new word to describe the supposed issue of greenhouse gases making the planet hotter…apparently the climate is “changeial”.
(click to enlarge)
Macquarie get full credit for this one as, despite the story being from AAP, there is no sign of the word “changeial” anywhere in the AAP feed, or on any of the other websites which grab content from AAP.
So, is “changeial” the act of causing change (eg. “Humans are supposedly being changeial to the climate”) or the process of something changing (eg. “The climate is being changeial all by itself”)?
Update: They’ve changed the headline to “Rudd, Obama pledge to team up on climate” which, whilst great from a typographical standpoint, leaves me no closer to finding out what “changeial” means. End Update
Samuel
January 28th, 2009 at 01:48pm
It seems that stray hairs are very good at confusing the chroma key on Nine News. Last night both of the female presenters’ hair managed to confuse the effect, making bits of the green screen quite visible.
It seemed to only occur where hair wasn’t in a dense bunch, and at first I thought the gorgeous Stephanie Brantz had decided to get the hair on the back of her head coloured green, but when I thought about it for a moment I realised that this would have made the hair invisible on the broadcast. My suspicions were confirmed when Kellie Connolly returned to screen with a faint green outline.
Here’s what Stephanie Brantz looked like last night:
(Click to enlarge)
Stephanie is looking as wonderful as usual, however if you look to the left of her head you will notice a large section of green interlaced with hair, and a small amount is visible to the lower right of her head as well.
Kellie Connolly had the same (albeit slightly less noticeable) problem:
(Click to enlarge)
If you look to the left of her head, from about half way down her forehead down to her shoulder you will see that she almost has a green halo. Those stray hairs have caused the building to the left of her mouth to be discoloured with a green tinge. There is also a small amount of green to the right of her head, around the ear line.
This is something Chris Bath over at Seven doesn’t have to worry about. Seven use a real set with a television (edit: projector, apparently) behind the presenter, so Chris can have as many stray hairs as she likes without any risk of confusing the chroma key effect. Only the weather presenters have to worry about it.
Interestingly, the consummate weather man Mike Bailey didn’t have any stray hairs, and as such was not plagued by green outlines:
(Click to enlarge)
I do have to ponder one thing though. Mark Ferguson was dropped from the weekday bulletins and replaced by Peter Overton whose ratings have dived. Mark was supposed to become the weekend anchor, however Kellie was filling the chair last night. One does have to wonder if Nine are reconsidering their decision in light of Peter’s poor ratings performance?
Samuel
January 25th, 2009 at 05:02pm
Some sad news from Britain. Budget cuts at ITV have forced the halving of the number of episodes to be produced of The Bill.
Later this year, ITV will move the show from its twice-weekly 8pm timeslot to a once-weekly 9pm timeslot, something which they claim will allow the show to become “grittier and more action-packed”.
The reasoning behind the halving of production appears to be entirely financial, as the show is a solid performer for ITV, albeit with too many regular cast members to fit in to any given episode, winning the ratings in its timeslot week after week, averaging around 5 million viewers. It is also a fairly solid performer for the ABC here in Australia, with the two episodes being shown back-to-back on a Saturday night rating well for ABC1. Last Saturday, The Bill was the 7th most watched show with 686,000 viewers in Sydney, bumping the ABC ahead of Seven in to third place for the night.
Over the last four weeks The Bill has been the 64th, 44th, 28th and 32nd most watched show nationwide for the respective weeks.
An ITV source for Britain’s Sun newspaper claims that the cut in production will result in some redundancies, although what that means for cast is still unclear. “Mass exit” storylines such as another station fire (like the one which killed six characters in 2002 and the one which killed three characters in 2005) have been ruled out.
ITV insist that the per-episode budget will be increased, which will probably be a good thing considering some of the dodgy editing which has been apparent in episodes to air on ABC1 in recent weeks (especially the botched noise reduction in one of the interview scenes which made everyone sound like they were talking through a decaying pillow), although I am concerned about the increase in “edgy” and “dramatic” content which the 9pm timeslot will apparently allow ITV to screen…I can only hope that ITV don’t intend on returning The Bill to the soap opera formula they used earlier this decade when Paul Marquess was producing the show.
At this stage it is unclear what the ABC will do when ITV halve production. The most likely thing for them to do will be to keep running dual Saturday night episodes until they reach the episodes which ITV will screen at a rate of one per week (theoretically this should happen towards the end of the year) and then start screening only one episode each Saturday, although it would be nice if the ABC would keep screening dual episodes until sometime early next year when they would only be a few weeks behind ITV rather than a few months.
Regardless of what happens, all I can really hope for is that the show’s quality doesn’t suffer, as it has been doing very well (for the most part) lately, and a drop in quality would be a shame for a show with a proud 25-year history like The Bill.
Samuel
January 24th, 2009 at 04:25pm
Remember these two gentlemen?
It’s Paul Blunt and Leighton Archer hosting 2CA’s breakfast show, on the day of 2CA’s 75th birthday in 2006. At the end of 2006 the duo split with Paul leaving the station and Leighton staying on at 2CA and doing a number of jobs. Leighton left in October last year.
The reason that I bring all of this up is that I was tempted to write this article midway through last week when I noticed that Paul Blunt had returned to Canberra from Light FM in Melbourne, taking on the Drive (2pm-6pm) shift and the Acting Music Director role at Mix 106.3. Leighton returned a couple weeks ago and has been 2CC’s and 2CA’s traffic reporter.
On that basis alone it makes for a somewhat interesting story, but there is a new twist to it which has come to light in the last day which makes the whole thing even more interesting. 2CA have announced a change to their lineup for 2009…Ilija Dugandzic (afternoons 1pm-4pm and Music Director) has resigned, and will be replaced by, you guessed it, Leighton Archer. Leighton returns to 2CA in February.
In terms of playlists, I think it’s fair to say that 2CA’s immediate rival is Mix 106.3, so it’s rather interesting that the former “Breakfast Boys” are now “Afternoon Adversaries”. It’s such a pity that I don’t have access to the raw ratings figures as it would be interesting to see how the trend lines go on this particular battle.
I suppose this means that ATN will be looking for another traffic reporter…pity in some ways, Leighton sounded quite excited by the chaos of the traffic on many occasions, and I haven’t heard many Australian traffic reporters who sound excited about what they’re reporting.
Anyway, a belated “welcome back” to both Paul and Leighton, it’s good to have you both back on Canberra’s airwaves.
Samuel
January 24th, 2009 at 09:50am
I tuned in to 2CC at 2:30 to listen to Murray Wilton filling in for John Kerr, but all I got was dead air. Upon checking the 2UE webstream I discovered that they were in the middle of an ad break, so it was quite possible that the break hadn’t been fired off locally for one reason or another, however when 2UE returned from their break, 2CC were still out.
Satellite issues perhaps? Check the 2AY webstream…Murray Wilton, half a second behind the 2UE stream. We did just have a storm pass through Canberra and it’s possible that it confused the satellite decoder, but normally that only affects the audio and not the pulses.
I wonder if I’ll hear the news at 3am? It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Fairfax Syndication somehow managed to kill 2CC’s feed for the hour, although I would expect 2AY to be affected as well if that were to happen. If there’s no news at 3am then I might be interested enough to leave a radio on and see how long it takes for some audio to grace the 2CC frequency…even the emergency tape would be nice.
On the bright side, the one station in Canberra that I can resuscitate is on-air, so I don’t need to leave the house.
Update 3am: Time pips, news intro and the news. Well done Fairfax, I assume that you fed silence to 2CC for the entire 2am hour. End Update
Further Update: It has been brought to my attention that this was probably caused by heavy rain corrupting the signal, causing the satellite receive at 2CC’s end to change channel. The receiver would have then changed back to the correct channel just before 3am when control signals told it to do so. End Update
Samuel
January 24th, 2009 at 02:56am
According to Ian Ross’ latest news update, Seven News will have live coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration at 6pm.
So, did Seven build a time machine or is Barack Obama re-enacting the inauguration for international television news services?
Samuel
January 21st, 2009 at 05:02pm
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