I could turn in to A Current Affair here and claim to have “exclusive, behind the scenes, never before seen by the public, pictures” but to be fair, anybody who has landed on this website in the last few hours by searching Google for:
mike welsh “ben fordham”
(and a handful of people have done just that) could have seen it, as the fourth result on Google at the time of writing this is for a page of the new, yet to be released, website.
It’s almost an annual tradition for 2CC to launch a new website, and so often they seem to release a seemingly circa 1995 static HTML website, thankfully this time around it looks like they’re actually using a content management system, and have a dynamic database-driven website which they might actually manage to maintain for more than a couple weeks. I’ve got to say, the new website looks pretty impressive.
At long last they have a “Now, next, later, then” system and some useful information about the station on the homepage. It’s certainly a vast improvement over the current website:
Having had a look around the website, it’s clear that there are a few bits of content that need to be modified before the website can go live, such as open line numbers, email addresses, the fact that you need to prefix text messages with “2cc” etc, but overall the website is quite impressive and seems to suit the image the station is trying to portray.
It’s also good to see that, unlike the current website, 2CC have taken new photos of their staff and are no longer relying on the existing photos which are at least four or five years old.
Each presenter now has a readable page, unlike the previous “one solid block of text each” site, and although it’s not visible within the screenshots, each page has a comprehensive summary of regular guests and segments:
Even the newsroom get their own page (although I do recall an old version of their website containing a picture of James Goodwin when he was their afternoon newsreader).
It looks like 2CC have also managed to source the staff photos from 2UE which were used as the basis for the photos on the 2UE website (although the versions on the 2UE website mostly contain a modified background)
Unfortunately there is no sign of online streaming, so it looks like that’s probably not happening. I have reason to believe that the website will be launched in conjunction with a very noticeable and (I would consider it) major change to the station…unfortunately I’m not allowed to tell you about that just yet (you hear things inside buildings that sometimes you just have to keep secret) but suffice to say, I’m making some recordings for before and after comparison.
When will the new website be launched? Well that’s anyone’s guess. I’m not going to post a link to it in its pre-launch state. If you’re really desperate to have a look, then you already have enough information to find it yourself.
The amusing thing is, whoever is developing the site could very easily have locked access down to a few select IP addresses or password protected it. Even a simple robots.txt file would have stopped Google from indexing it…clearly they weren’t too concerned about “sneak peeks”, which for me at least is probably a good thing, because I’ve been trying to work out what they’re doing with their website for a while now…they haven’t been attempting to update the old one for ages, and the new one explains why. Mystery solved, and my head can go back to working on the 15 million other mysteries I seem to ponder at any given time.
I must have been really out of it for the last few days to miss this rather sad news.
Actor Don S. Davis, arguable best known for his portrayal of Major General George Hammond on Stargate SG-1 (and the odd appearance on spin-off show Stargate Atlantis) passed away on the 29th of June after suffering a heart attack. He was aged 65.
Davis will still appear in the upcoming direct-to-DVD film “Stargate: Continuum”.
I would like to take this opportunity to post two videos, the first is a brief profile and interview of Don produced for the first season of Stargate SG-1.
The second is a tribute to Don, put together by a YouTube user going by the name of edison700
This afternoon a bit before 5pm, A Current Affair’s Ben Fordham rang 2CC’s Mike Welsh to take exception at something Mike Said yesterday. Ben made the call after reading a Media Monitors notice which said that Mike referred to Ben as a bully.
2CC have placed the somewhat peculiar exchange on YouTube:
As I said to Mike when I spoke to him a bit later in the day, I don’t know what Ben thought he was exposing because it was blatently obvious that Mike had not seen the video when he spoke about it yesterday, as the video had not gone to air, and Mike had been referring to Ben’s boasting on the Steve Price morning show.
I also have to wonder if the whole thing was a strange attempt by Ben to plug Channel Nine as much as possible.
2GB breakfast host Alan Jones has just announced at a press conference that he has been diagnosed with prostate cancer and will be off the air for the next few weeks for a few weeks when he has surgery, which is expected in a couple weeks.
More details shortly.
Update 12:33pm: I had to step away from the computer for most of the press conference, but I managed to record it anyway.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/AlanJonesProstateAnnouncement20080703.mp3] Download MP3 Audio courtesy of Radio 2GB
I suppose there’s not much to say, other than to wish Alan a speedy recovery. Best wishes Alan. End Update
It lasted two weeks longer than I expected, but that’s made up for by it being axed effective immediately.
Channel Nine’s awful attempt to revamp Wheel Of Fortune by sticking the words “Million Dollar” in front of its name, having the tackiest set and version of the wheel that the show has seen in decades, and finding the worst possible host for the show, has finally met its fate.
I caught glimpses of the first show, forced myself to sit through the entire second show and attempted to watch it again in the second week to see if it had improved at all, and the result was my personal bewilderment that:
1. Somebody at Channel Nine actually thought that it was a good idea
2. Fremantle Media, who own the rights to Wheel Of Fortune in this country, allowed the format to be degraded and tarnished in such an awful manner.
Even though Channel Nine wanted a show to compete with Deal Or No Deal and give their news a better ratings lead-in, they shouldn’t have so blatantly targeted the show at a young adult audience. Wheel Of Fortune has never been a show aimed at a young adult audience, the key demographic is older, and if done properly it will attract others as well. Part of the key to this is the host, Rob Elliott was very good at it, so was John Burgess, the same thing applies to Andrew O’Keefe on Deal Or No Deal…they know how to host a game show and to interact with the guests in (at least what appears to be) a natural manner.
It also helps if you actually have a set which doesn’t look like you brought in the team from (the now defunct game show) Changing Rooms to decorate it, and having a wheel which lights up was just plain odd. Speaking of the wheel, why Nine had to revert to having the wedges cling to the pegs is beyond me as it made it noticeably difficult for the contestants to remove special wedges, and made the whole thing look rather cheap and nasty. I don’t know for sure, but it looked like Seven’s wheel had magnetic wedges as they weren’t connected to the pegs and were much easier to remove.
Also, and I doubt this affected the ratings at all, why was the wheel flat? Seven worked out many years ago that the wheel is easier to work with from a camera perspective if it’s tilted…it looks better on the set too as you can look across at the contestants and read the wheel at the same time.
Personally, I think Nine would have been better off with a more experienced host, a different timeslot (probably 7pm, much like Sale Of The Century/Temptation), and a less deranged production team. Originally the show was (apparently) promised to John Burgess (click here to hear Burgo’s version of events, as told on 3MP Breakfast, March 25 2008), he probably would have made a good host reprising his former role, or perhaps Bert Newton who is still on Nine’s books.
Sadly, Nine botched the show badly, and now after a less dramatic failure with Larry Emdur and Laura Csortan on Seven in 2006, Tim Campbell and Kelly Landry will be known as the hosts who finally managed to consign Wheel Of Fortune to Australia’s “Do not touch with a ten foot barge poll, lest you face the wrath of the ratings” television show bin. Wheel may return somewhere, at some stage, but after this disaster, you can be guaranteed that no television executive will be brave enough to go near it for many years to come.
2GB‘s continuous call team are, for one technical reason or another, not currently being distributed via satellite. I wonder how many network stations are doing the same thing as 2CC and rebroadcasting 2GB’s webstream as a stopgap measure until the satellite feed returns.
One thing I really like about 2GB’s webstream is that it is almost broadcast quality, unlike many other radio station webstreams which sound like somebody decided to run some string between some tins. I’m sure the network stations appreciate the sound quality as well. Although if the person panelling at 2CC could just increase the volume on the webstream channel that would be great, because you are a very long way below normal levels at the moment.
This reminds me of a satellite failure a few years back in which 2CC rebroadcasted 2UE’s webstream overnight. Unfortunately, despite the better sound quality of the webstream being used this time, the sound quality of 2CC’s broadcast is roughly the same due to the levels being very low and the sound being partially obscured by static. Hopefully the satellite will be back shortly.
The other unfortunate thing about this outage is that the webstream is a bit behind the live broadcast, so it’s rather difficult to have the radio on and watch the match on television as the two don’t come close to syncing up. I might have to do what I do when I listen to 3AW’s AFL coverage online, and use a PVR to delay the television footage by the appropriate number of seconds.
Update 7:50pm: Somebody at 2CC reading this per chance? Thanks to the panel op for fixing the audio problems, that’s much better! End Update
Further update 7:55pm: I just went to synchronise the television with the radio coverage and found that they are already in sync. Obviously the satellite feed has returned. End Update
I certainly didn’t expect that, apparently Ron Wilson, co-anchor of Channel Ten Sydney’s 5PM News is going to replace outgoing 2GB breakfast newsreader Rowan Barker whilst retaining his Channel Ten job.
That a very long set of hours. Congratulations to Ron on the new job, I just hope that the hours don’t become too much for him.
I’m not sure where Rowan is headed, but he isn’t the only person leaving 2GB this month. Trevor Long, Executive producer of Sport, Special Events and The Continuous Call Team had his final day with the station on Sunday. His new role is Business Affairs Manager for SBS Radio.
I’m not sure where Fox Sports found the commentators for today’s Brisbane V Fremantle match at The Gabba, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re random people they plucked out of the crowd.
Amongst other things, they’ve come up with the sun marking the ball, a revelation about how “they have so many players in their back line that they won’t have many in their forward line” and something about how Fremantle are having trouble getting the ball out of their defensive fifty with a boundary throw in…my only thought there is that the boundary umpire shouldn’t be playing for Fremantle.
They also have an unusual habit where one commentator will be talking and the other one will interject with a short comment, seemingly forcing the first commentator to stop mid-sentence and repeat whatever interjection the second commentator came up with, almost as if the interjection has forced them to forget what they were doing.
That said, the commentators do seem very enthusiastic and they are certainly very good at providing the audience with some amusement. If they keep their mind in gear a bit more often, they could become great commentators.
I was listening to most of the second half of last night’s AFL match between Adelaide and Essendon through 3AW (via the AFL website) and after the match they noted that callers in Melbourne could ring on the regular number 96 900 693 and callers outside Melbourne could call 13 13 32.
13 13 32 has been shared between 2UE in Sydney and 4BC in Brisbane for ages (with Brisbane callers being diverted to Sydney when 4BC are relaying 2UE), so it’s good to see that Fairfax decided to do something sensible with the phones and provide 3AW’s network listeners across Victoria with a flat-fee number. It should have been done a long time ago, kudos to Fairfax for actually getting it done.
2CC are broadcasting a Canberra Raiders match and you’re more interested in the Brisbane V Parramatta match, and you can’t stand the Channel Nine commentary team, so you mute the television, listen to the 2GB webstream, and use a PVR to delay the television coverage of the match by about ten seconds to bring it in sync with the 2GB webstream.
I’m glad that 2GB are able to stream their coverage of NRL matches (unlike the way the AFL’s radio partners are treated…a case of “you can’t stream the match, but we’ll stream your station through our website”)…if it hadn’t been for the webstream of Andrew Moore, Steven Roach and Peter Psaltis’ call of the match, I probably would have just gone to bed.
Andrew, apparently a Bunnings Warehouse team member, talks about the people who comes to Bunnings’ DIY Workshops:
“They come in with an idea on how to learn something”
There is currently a power failure in Mitchell and Kaleen. ActewAGL hope to have the power back on by about 8:30am.
Update 8:30am: Power has been restored. ActewAGL are blaming an accident on the corner of Hoskins Street and Sandford Street in Mitchell for the outage. End Update
Since 2CC got back on the air just after the 7:30 news was replaced by the emergency tape version of The Carpenters, Mike Jeffreys and Jason Morrison have been having a rather amusing conversation. It’s almost a pity that they’ve gone to a sensible conversation, although they did manage to get the SMS system back online and listener opinions have been fairly evenly divided whether to continue the rambling or have a sensible conversation…the “no music” opinion has been quite unanimous though.
Update 7:58am: Of course Greens MLA Dr. Deb Foskey would be on to talk about carbon rationing during a power failure. Goodness knows what the buzzing noise on the phone line was just when Mike and Deb seemed to be agreeing on the subject of energy efficient houses. “That’s an interesting noise” said Dr. Foskey. All things considered, she took the whole “we’re running on backup power and I can see the time if I point a torch at the clock” thing quite well.
Just a thought, will the satellite receiver work on emergency power? If not Steve Price might be missing a station today. He has already missed his usual chat with Mike at 7:55. End Update
Update 8:15am: Even though I can rarely ever get words right in text messages, I sent 2CC a text message: “2cc no carpenters, but you can croon if you like. Hang in there mike, this is great entertainment from this end of the radio. Samuel”. Mike believes that I just like it because it’s unusual and has put everyone at the radio station in an odd position…well yes, but I also like the fact that this is live, almost completely unplanned radio, and there are a number of people with a good sense of humour keeping the ball rolling. Perhaps I should have suggested that this is precisely why we need to new power station near Hume. End Update
I’m a tad late welcoming them back, but none-the-less, welcome back to the only animated online series (Samuel In Dolgnwot) excluded, that has really every interested me. Frank and Dale are back for a second series. A quick warning though, there is some coarse language so if you don’t want to hear coarse language, don’t follow the link.
By the way, do any of the 2UE (or associated network stations) listeners recognise one of the character voices? I’m not going to say any more than that right now…maybe next week if nobody gets it earlier.
It’s been driving me nuts since the beginning of the NRL season, so I’m hoping somebody here knows the answer.
2CC have been using the following as one of their program intros for the Continuous Call Team (their NRL coverage sourced from 2GB in Sydney) this year. It sounds like something which is commercially available rather than production music to my untrained ear, but it is a long way out of my usually preferred genres of music.
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/2ccContinuousCallIntro2008.mp3] Download MP3
If anybody recognises the music, feel free to leave a comment below or email me. If necessary, as a token of my appreciation, I can reward the first person to identify it with something more interesting than a picture of Tim Campbell hosting Million Dollar Wheel Of Fortune (although to be fair, that could be just about everything on the face of the planet).
