It looks like half the on-air staff at 2CC and 2UE are on holidays or suffering from a “lurgy” at the moment.
2CC’s Drive presenter Mike Welsh is on holidays, Mike Frame is filling in for him, except for today…Mike is busy hosting a racing luncheon (if my memory serves me correctly) which means that Kris McKenzie will be hosting the drive show today. Thankfully 2CC don’t believe in having “filling in for” in the voiceovers, otherwise we might hear “Kris McKenzie for Mike Frame, filling in for Mike Welsh, with thanks to Blumers Personal Injury Lawyers, on your talk radio, twelve oh six, two double C”.
Mike Frame will be back on deck on Saturday for the weekend programming, and Glenn Wheeler will be returning to weekend afternoons on 2CC. At this stage it is unclear whether or not 2CC will block out Sydney programming between midday and 2pm like they did last year, but it is clear that Framey won’t be hosting those two hours…perhaps a general talk show with Kris on Saturday and a local sport show on Sunday?
Stuart Bocking is having a week off next week, so John Kerr will be filling in for him, John will probably also run his normal weekend show this weekend, and leave it to Clinton Maynard next weekend. John has been afflicted by ill health a bit lately, so there is a chance of Clinton getting a weekday berth in the coming week.
John Laws is also due back on Monday, although I wouldn’t hold my breath, and if he does come back, I wouldn’t expect him to be there all week. His health problems are becoming more of a concern, and I do have to wonder how much longer 2UE will put up with his endless amounts of sick leave.
2UE have today proven that John Stanley’s previous go at filing in for John Laws on a public holiday was not just a desperate attempt by 2UE to fill some air time in the absence of a lot of people…John Stanley is now officially the third person in line to host the John Laws Morning Show, behind John Laws and Tim Webster.
John Laws returned from holiday on Tuesday, and is today unwell, his usual replacement Tim Webster is far too busy working with Channel Ten preparing their coverage of the AFL Grand Final to dash in to 2UE, so 2UE’s afternoon presenter John Stanley took over the show.
This further proves my theory that 2UE are likely to offer John Stanley the morning shift when Lawsie eventually retires. It’ll be a hard choice between Stanley and Webster, both of which do an excellent job, but I think John Stanley will be the most likely option due to Tim Webster’s ongoing comittment to Channel Ten.
Steve Liebmann is likely to host John Stanley’s show this afternoon.
Update 1:29pm: John Stanley is filing in for himself on the afternoon show…see comments below for more details. End update
Channel 4’s rather odd comedy, The IT Crowd is premiering on ABC TV tonight at 9pm…the humour is very offbeat and probably won’t appeal to many, but I found it rather amusing when I watched it on Channel 4’s website back in February.
The first (and only so far) series has a mere six episodes, so it will be over very quickly, but the international sale of the series during the television ratings season is a pretty decent indicator that Channel 4 plan on filming another series…hopefully slightly better than the first.
Well I was going to write a post featuring a classic Canberra television commercial from 2004 (it was a remake of one from many years prior) for the now (once again) defunct Shoprite Supermarket chain…but as I watched the ad last night (for the first time this year) I spotted something I hadn’t spotted before, so I watched it again, and then it dawned on me…I recognised one of the “shoppers”…It’s 2CC’s Mike “occasionally in the plane” Frame!
It’s quite funny to think that my favourite ad (I drove plenty of people mad by playing it over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over) of 2004 features a person I chatted with on the phone and on Canberra’s airwaves, and I didn’t even know it…and of course by the time I actually met Framey, I had forgotten all about the ad.
Here’s the ad, those of you based in Canberra might remember it, those outside of Canberra can get a glimpse of what we saw and heard day in day out for months (I distinctally remember Shoprite sponsoring 2CC’s news twice, their second sponsor tagline was “This news brought to you by Shoprite supermarkets, right around the corner from anywhere”).
This is my first time uploading videos to Google Video and YouTube, and they both shrunk the video to about the size of a matchstick, so for your convenience, you can download my original version here. Overall I’m happier with YouTube, uploading was easier, faster, and didn’t ruin the aspect ratio (I had to remaster the video for Google to accept the aspect ratio).
And just in case, like me, you want to sing along with it, here are the lyrics:
Just what you need and so you shoprite
Just what you want, just what you like
Just what you need and so you shoprite
Just before work, just any night
Just what you need and so you shoprite
Just for the service, just for the smile
Just for that genuine shoprite style
Just for the specials that make it worthwile
Just ‘cos you’re busy, just ‘cos you’re bright
Just what you need and so you shoprite
In my view this is a brilliant ad, and contains something that so many ads are missing these days, a good solid recognisable jingle…sure, it’ll drive you up the wall if you watch or hear it often enough, but I think it’s fantastic.
Now for a look at Framey’s journey through the Shoprite supermarket.
There’s quite a few groceries in that trolley, I think I can see some celery and even a distinctive older style “Black & Gold” label.
Framey’s considering which product from Shoprite’s massive collection he will next add to his nearly overflowing trolley.
A wry smile from Framey as he finds the item he was looking for.
It’s always a good idea to weight a watermelon before purchasing it.
What happened to the trolley???
And then we don’t see Framey again…maybe he went searching for his trolley?
The annual Mid-dawn ratings for various capital cities have been released, of particular interest to me is the Sydney Ratings, as they influence Sydney’s mid-dawn programming, whcih in turn affects the programming they relay into Canberra.
2UE’s Stuart Bocking is off to a great start, pulling the station back within 5 points of rival 2GB, 2GB are on 16.9%, 2UE 12.5%, Triple M 9.5%, Mix 106.5 8.8% and NewsRadio 8.1% rounds out the top five. According to RadioInfo, this is the highest score NewsRadio has acheived in mid-dawn, and it’s all to do with “specially programmed” BBC radio, which is broadcast by NewsRadio overnight.
Radioinfo has plenty of info on some of the other capital cities:
In Melbourne Trevor Chappell’s national overnight program on ABC774 is top with 21.7%, followed by 3AW with 20.3%. Nova 100 is third with 10.3%, followed by Gold on 7.7%. NewsRadio does not score as strongly in Melbourne with only 2.8%, while SEN, which broadcasts overnight international sport, scores 4.7%.
In Adelaide talk station 5AA was streets ahead of its rivals on 28.0%. ABC talk station ABC891 was second with 15.0%, followed by SAFM on 11.3 and Mix 102.3 on 9.6%.
Radioinfo’s headline for their article about Mid-Dawn ratings is “Talk top at nights”…and why wouldn’t it be? If you’re listening to the radio in the wee hours, you’re probably not after presenter-free music and ads…you probably want some company, and these ratings show that.
It looks like the gradual revision of 2CA programming has started this morning, with their short, not quite on the hour (or the half hour), pre-recorded news bulletins scrapped in favour of sharing live news with 2CC under the guise of “Capital Radio News”. I personally think the old “Capital Radio Network News had more gradeur…but it did take half a second longer to say, and that’s half a second not dedicated to news.
As of 5:30 this morning 2CA and 2CC have returned to sharing the bulletins, something they stopped doing when 2CA relaunched with their failed “new sound” in late January.
Also, 2CC have a new outcue for their news bulletins, no longer do we hear that “There’ll be more news at (time of next bulletin) on 2CC, where you’ll hear it first in the nations capital”, instead we now hear that 2CC has “live local news on the hour, the half-hour, and when it breaks”, which is remarkably similar to the outcue used by KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles, their outcue is “KFI is the station with live local news on the hour, on the half, and when it breaks”.
Mind you, the new outcue must be one of the most short-lived outcues in the history of radio…by 7am they were back to the old “There’ll be more news at…” outcue, which is probably just as well, as the new one was a downright lie.
On weekdays 2CC have live and local news from 5:30am to 6pm, with live (but not local) news from 7pm to 11pm, and pre-recorded news (thanks 2UE!) from midnight to 5am. Weekends are the same, except the live but not local news starts at 1pm, and the pre-recorded news runs through until 5:30am.
2CC also have an actual intro for Dennis Leigh’s traffic reports…it’s just a sound effect of a car horn beeping twice and 2CC’s voiceover man saying something to the effect of “2CC Traffic for (insert sponsor here)”, but it is a change from the newsreader informing us that it is now time for 2CC traffic…he still gets a live intro from presenters though. That being said, Dennis changed his outro from “more 2CC traffic shortly” to “more Canberra traffic shortly”. Oh it’s a strange day in news and traffic at that station today.
As for 2CA…looks like the old format might be making a bit of a comeback, something which was rumoured a couple days after their recent ratings disaster. A source inside Capital Radio said to me “It looks like we will be heading to a “Classic Hits” type of format over the next few weeks”, and it looks like that source was right…in fact it looks like the old format is making a comeback, the news is certainly an indicator of that.
The source also told me “the music has been pretty “confused” since we started, with songs like “Morning Has Broken” followed by Nickelback etc. Realistically, I think the younger audience would switch off when the old stuff came on, and the older audience would switch off when the new stuff came on.” Which left them with a mere 2.9% of Canberra, most of which who switched off when music they didn’t like started playing.
The Sydney Swans reserves have thrashed the Belconnen Magpies to become back-to-back ACTAFL premiers. The Swans won 10.16 (76) to 6.7 (43). The win good be a good omen for the Swans first grade team, who won the AFL Grand Final last year after the Swans Reserves won the ACTAFL Grand Final.
Based on the scores at each break, it looks like the Swans dominated the entire match, but were terribly inaccurate with their kicking (excusable given the strong winds)…Belconnen had a decent start, they were level with the Swans at quarter time, Sydney 2.6 (18), Belconnen 3.0 (18), but from there on it was all the Swans.
The second quarter saw the Swans score five time, with the Magpies only scoring once, the Swans led by 19 points at half time, 6.7 (43) to 4.0 (24).
The third quarter saw a minor comeback from the Magpies, but the Swans were still in control, the Swans scored 10 times (only goaling from three attempts) whilst the Magpies could only score four times, and goal once. At three quarter time the Swans led by 35 points, 9.14 (68) to 5.3 (33).
Belconnen appear to have had a better last quarter than Sydney, but it was too little, too late. Belconnen scored five times, and kept the Swans to three scores. At full time it was the Swans winning by 33 points, 10.16 (76) to 6.7 (43).
According to the Swans Reserves website, the goal scorers were as follows:
Best on ground for the Swans was Bevan, and best on ground for the Magpies was Braton.
I am rather disappointed to see that the only people to bother covering the story seem to be the Swans Reserves website, not even the local ABC could be bothered to cover the match, instead being more interested in an out-of-town rugby match. I’m not picking on the ABC here, I’m disappointed with all media outlets, it’s just that I think the ABC had the best opportunity to cover the match.
Obviously the match will be newsworthy by morning when the local media outlets read a press release from AFL Canberra or the Swans Reserves…but the most important match of the local season might as well not have been played with the amount of interest the media took in it.
Due to today’s bus strike, and the fact that I have to be at work at 9am on the other side of town, I don’t have time to finish my analysis of Canberra’s latest radio ratings, so please enjoy this abstract summary instead!
Just having a look at the 2CA website (hooray, they finally updated the AFL schedule), I noticed that they are running a webpoll, namely “Who is the biggest knob?”, with the options being Germaine Greer, Jon Stanhope, The Breakfast Boys, Tom Cruise and Paris Hilton.
As I write this post, the results are as follows:
Jon Stanhope 56.0%
Germaine Greer 28.0%
Tom Cruise 6.0%
Paris Hilton 6.0%
The Breakfast Boys 4.0%
So our beloved Chief Turnip is Canberra’s biggest knob…sounds about right.
A few days ago I made a comment about the aging Optus B1 satellite needing to be replaced, and whilst this is still true (Optus D1 is due up later this month), it is not the cause of the Southern Cross Syndication programming faults also mentioned in that article. Instead, it would appear that Southern Cross moved their programming services over to Optus B3 a few months ago.
The constant losses of signal experienced by network stations last week were in fact caused by regular solar activity, which unfortunately does disrupt the signal.
However, I believe that Optus B3 is not transmitting its signal as strongly as Optus B1 did. The reason I believe this is that minor sudden rain showers seem to be able to cause much more disruption than they used to. On the weekend, both 2CC and 2CA lost their network feeds temporarily when a brief rain shower occured at the receiver. Previously, such an intensity of rain would not have been enough to cause that disruption.
In other corrections, I also mentioned on the weekend that 2UE are running pre-recorded news, and managed to play a bulletin which was 24 hours old at 2am on Sunday. This is true, but it was not quite as recent a development as I thought. In the article I mentioned that 2UE followed 3AW’s lead to pre-recorded overnight news, it is now apparent that this is wrong, and 3AW actually followed 2UE’s lead (thank you to the people who alerted me to this error). Regardless of that, it is still a terrible way to run a supposed news leader…and I really don’t know what will happen if and when major international news breaks after midnight.
Once again, the Southern Cross Syndication website is well behind actual events…months on from 2UE’s decision they are still advertising the 2UE NSW news feed as “Live every hour around-the-clock plus half hourly in breakfast”. (Source)
I can only hope that they aren’t trying to use a strange definition of “live”.
It looks like 2UE have entered the pre-recorded news game, their 2am bulletin this morning was unfortunately a repeat of yesterday’s 2am bulletin, featuring news of the newspoll predicting a Peter Beattie victory in “today’s state election”, the motor racing industry mourning the loss of Peter Brock (but none of the details revealed during Saturday), a report which made the multiple bombings in India sound like they only just happened in the last few hours…and all of the latest in sport…from Friday night.
In fact the only thing which wasn’t out of date was the time call…at least they managed to play a 2am bulletin.
It’s a real shame that 2UE have followed the lead of their sister station in Melbourne, 3AW, and started pre-recording overnight news bulletins…looks like 2GB might be the only live and local overnight news service in Sydney after all.
Or if not, send the long overdue replacement satellite up to take its place please?
This is now officially out of hand, the Optus B1 satellite has managed to stop broadcasting almost hourly all day, and has been having similar incidents throughout the week. The poor panel operators at stations which rely on that satellite are surely being driven mad by the constant loss of programming, and the shambles it makes of ad break schedules.
The John Laws show was a joke this morning…Tim Webster was filling in, but we didn’t get to hear much of him doing that, instead network stations had to take other measures, which in 2CC’s case meant playing lots of songs which sounded like songs Webster would have played…and even replaying interviews Webster did last week! The bits of Tim Webster’s show that we did get to hear seemed to mostly involve him playing more music (with constant audio glitches from the satellite feed).
I don’t know what Southern Cross plan on doing about the football tonight…I think we are going to have a bunch of network stations getting the webstreams ready just in case…or perhaps they will just ring the feeder stations and use a telephone quality signal.
Either way, this is a mess, and Optus need to get the replacement satellite up there before B1 completely dies.
I didn’t hear it myself, but I received a phone call from a reliable source around 9:40 informing me that John B1_B5 spoke to Tim Webster (who if filling in for Lawsie) on the John Laws Morning Show at around 9:10.
