Posts filed under 'TV/Radio/Media'
It has often been said (usually to me) that 2CC has too many Mikes and Johns and that it must be an employment condition…to these people I am now able to inform you that 2CC have added a new employment condition. 2CC are now filled with “Classic Aussies” who go on tour with the Kingswood which 2CC are giving away to celebrate their 30th birthday.
Mike Frame is commonly regarded as both a Mike and a Classic Aussie, but today a new Classic Aussie emerged, Kevin Wolf, Kevin is not a Mike or a John, but does talk about sport an awful lot, which seems to make him a Classic Aussie. I am reliably informed that there may be more on the way (more Classic Aussies that is, not more Kevins…not that it would be a bad thing)…we will just have to wait and see.
Samuel
September 22nd, 2005 at 07:41pm
Regular readers might remember from the comments on this post, that I’m not a huge fan of John Mangos. I must say however, that in the last few days I have begun to like him. It does usually take me a few days to get to like him again, either that or it takes him a few days to settle in. In the last few days I think his presentation has changed slighty, possibly more towards the comments I made in that post about how I would run an afternoon show. Maybe TinMan passed on the message?
Anyway, you may also recall from that post that John Stanley had a caller make a bet with him. If John Stanley could avoid saying “good on you” for an entire show, the caller would dress up in a chicken suit and wave a Dragons flag by the side of a busy road near the St. George Leagues Club. John Stanley only just managed to survive that bet, and the caller followed through on his part of the deal, as can be seen in these photos from the 2UE website.
Samuel
September 19th, 2005 at 07:18pm
I’ve been noticing a few things over the last few days. 2UE are definetly still settling in to their new studios, and the presenters/panel operators have had a lot of fun. There have been plenty of incorrect sounds playing, callers that seem to invoke strange noises, and the best mistake of all last night.
2CC’s ads weren’t playing last night, which meant that John Kerr’s little accident was quite audible, he managed to leave his or one of his guests microphone on during an ad break. Normally this would be difficult to hear as the ads would have drowned out the noises in the studio, but because there were no ads, the minimal bits of noise prevented the emergency tape from kicking in, and we were able to hear John Kerr talking to his regular guests Simon & Dale (who review movies and other related things every 2nd Monday at 1am) about their thoughts of the new studios, he was also informing them of the details of a movie screening that he had invited them to. This was just before the 2am news and it was quite entertaining hearing the people moving around the studio as you could quite clearly hear them moving closer to, and further away from, the microphone. Eventually we heard the producer in the distance saying something, followed by running noises and then the microphone turned was turned off, leaving us with silence and then the emergency tape.
I have also noticed over the last few days that the pulse which starts the ad breaks is arriving before the audio, sometimes by as much as two seconds, which leads to ads talking over the top of the presenters. Also the 2UE promos are often audible in the background as they return from the ad breaks.
Interestingly John Laws went to take a call this morning and somehow set off the 2UE news theme, which not only confused and entertained John, it probably sparked mass confusion amongst relay station staff who would have looked at the clock to double check the time. I certainly checked the clock on the computer I was using at the time.
George Gibson was plagued with computer issues the other night, 2CC had their pre-news intros, followed by the time beeps and then no news theme, 2UE’s news started and then mysteriously switched to 3AW news, they didn’t send a pulse at the end of the news so there was 15 seconds of dead air and 15 seconds of backup tape, followed by something rather odd, a pulse and the 2CC news theme, with George Gibson talking because his intro didn’t play and his computer wasn’t behaving, which seemed to prevent him from taking phone calls. He took an ad break (which suprisingly played an ad break and not the missing weather on 2CC) and then at the end of the ad break George played his intro and was able to take phone calls again.
I’m sure these issues will be worked out eventually, but for now they produce quite a bit of entertainment for people like me.
Samuel
September 19th, 2005 at 12:01pm
Broadband Over Powerline (BPL) is an exciting new technology that utilises the existing powerlines to bring broadband Internet access to every home with a connection to the elctricity grid. BPL is really just a new adaption of existing Power Line Communication technology used in such things as home automation.
The alternating current that currently uses the power lines operates at 50-60 Hz depending on your location, whilst the newer BPL signals operate at around 1-30 MHz and can bring speeds of up to 2.7Mbit to homes. Whilst this is certainly a clever technology, it has certain issues.
Some people may have already worked this out simply from reading the above, but I’ll explain it anyway. Powerlines tend to be unshielded and untwisted, making them perfect antennas, and this also means that they are very good at creating radio frequency interference.
The main problem with BPL is the enourmous amount of interference that it does create, in some cases blocking out AM radio frequencies, as well as some amateur, government and defence frequencies. There have been reports of interference to the FM frequencies as well, although I find that slightly harder to believe.
Considering that virtually every suburban power line would be acting as a radio transmitter, the concerns of people in the radio industry (especially amatuer radio entusiasts) are quite understandable.
It’s not all bad news though, as the FCC and the ACMA (formerly known as the ABA) have released rules requiring “notching” of the frequencies used by BPL to avoid the interference. The majority of the BPL systems that are capable of notching frequencies operate at mainly higher frequencies and are therefore capable of higher speeds, it is expected that they will be able to provide speeds in excess of the 24Mbit potentially provided by ADSL2+
The important thing for now is making sure that the regulators are kept up to date on what interference is occuring, and to make sure that the electricity companies know that they can’t take shortcuts and create unacceptable interference.
BPL will be the way of the future, potentially providing much more than just Internet access, but it is important that it is setup in the correct manner, and the only way to ensure that is to keep a close eye on the regulators and the companies involved. I for one don’t want to lose AM radio, FM may be technologically superior, but I find AM has many benefits, including it’s incredible ability to “bounce” for incredibly long distances at night. People don’t seem to realise that AM radio is capable of stereo transmissions, or that digital radio will probably use frequencies currently used by AM radio. Certainly FM is better at reproducing music, but it is more suceptible to frequency drift.
I’m sure John B1_B5 understands the theory behind AM and FM better than I do and will hopefully be able to explain things a bit more clearly and correct any mistakes I may have made. I’ll admit that I don’t really understand the theory behind AM and FM radio very well, but I’ve done my best…
Anyway, I’m all for BPL, as long as it is implemented in a correct and cautious manner.
Samuel
September 19th, 2005 at 10:50am
With large thanks to TinMan, I am able to bring you some photos of the new 2UE studios. To fit them on the page they are thumbnailed, but clicking on them will take you to a larger version.
Firstly from production:
Now the newsroom, if you look closely at the TV in the top right of the picture you will notice The Price Is Right on it:
Then we have two pictures from the John Laws studio (naturally the golden microphone was locked away at the time, but the mixing desk’s are gold in colour):
Once again, a big thankyou to TinMan for taking these photos, and congratulations to 2UE, it looks like you did a fantastic job.
Samuel
September 15th, 2005 at 07:30pm
Today from midday to 2pm something unusual occured on 2CC, a local afternoon show hosted by Mike Frame.
I must say, I enjoyed Mike Frame’s show, and not being a huge fan of John Mangos, I found this show to be quite refreshing, and in fact just the way I would run an afternoon show, plenty of light banter and some good music too. Mike Frame had to go to Kippax, so the Drive show with Mike Welsh was extended by one hour so that it started at 2pm rather than 3pm.
I enjoy John Stanley’s show, but I’m not a fan of John Mangos…he doesn’t exactly sound awake to me, or interested in his show. I would be very pleased to have Mike Frame fill in for John Stanley while he is on holidays, unfortunately though i think it was for one day only, as I am led to believe this may have been the result of 2UE upgrades….which reminds me, I’m still waiting for some photos of the new 2UE studios….must contact that person again.
Still, Afternoons with Mike Frame sounds like a good idea to me!
Samuel
September 14th, 2005 at 02:51pm
It appears that 2LT Lithgow had much more fun than 2CC did last night. 2CC’s problems were of course ads from Sydney, Lithgow probably let the monkeys loose in the studio, I’ll let “it’s just not radio” from google groups aus.radio.broadcast explain.
This might explain some of the network dramas experienced overnight by
the once listenable 2LT Lithgow. Had the misfortune to discover the 2UE
Garden show this morning on 2LT, minus any sign of pulses. No
commercials, no weather, no news theme, just plain old silence each and
every network break.
To compound this embarrassing error, the imbecile repsonsible for the
on air mechanics hadn’t factored in any left over commercials;- so at
9:00am today, listeners were treated to ALL the Garden show commercials
back to back! 30 minutes worth, non stop!
And this on top of last night’s N.R.L cock up between 8:00pm and
11:00pm, which came complete with 3 hours of automated local program,
SIMULTANEOUSLY…what a joke! Just reinforces that old adage about
peanuts and monkeys hey!
Don’t know who runs / owns this mob but is it any wonder regional radio
has such a poor name. Guys, do yourselves a favour and hand back the
license, you are a disgrace. You take the Gold Logie for destroying
regional radio credibility.
Being from the Bathurst region , I thought 2BS / B-Rock had that mantle
well and truly covered. WRONG, they now have another contender.
Now, where’s that bigger antenna??????
I guess this is why these changes are made in the middle of the night on a Saturday…nobody in the regional studios to take any notice.
Samuel
September 11th, 2005 at 06:26pm
Congratulations to Sydney radio station 2UE, who have now moved to their new digital studios. The first program broadcast was Saturday Night Live with Stuart Bocking at 9PM last night, which was pretty much exclusive to 2UE as most of their network stations (including 2CC Canberra) were covering the rugby league finals.
I did notice though that 2UE managed to send their ads through to the network stations, this may have been an operator error (there were a couple of those as the staff got used to the new equipment) or it may have been an oversight on the technicians behalf where they either forgot to prevent ads from being broadcast to network stations or forgot to inform the operators of the correct procedure for ad breaks.
According to people who have worked their previously, with the old equipment it was neccesary to mute the computer on the audition channel which went through to networks during ad breaks, and it may be similar with the new equipment.
Most of the network stations (actually, I think all of them) run automated overnight, so they pretty much leave the 2UE channel and the computer channel open and things work as expected, as 2UE sends silence to network station during the ad break. Instead, last night 2UE sent their ad breaks through, so the computers at local stations played the ads, but 2UE were also playing ads and therefore both sets of ads were playing over the top of each other.
If it happens again tonight I will make sure I bring it to 2UE’s attention tommorow so that they can fix it.
Apart from that, the new equipment and studios should be fantastic, and I will be keeping an eye out for some photos to share with you, especially the new John Laws studio, which is rumoured to have a gold coloured desk.
Samuel
September 11th, 2005 at 05:23pm
You may recall that a few weeks ago I gave City News the title of “Worst Newspaper In The Country” and that part of my criticism related to their anonymous editorial “by some anonymous person calling themselves “The Whip”, who…provides a fairly generic semi-relevant rubbishing of the news.”
I picked up City News when it arrived today and had a flick through, and was suprised to find an editorial by somebody with a name, Catherine Lumby to be precise. I decided that it would be worthwhile having a read of this new editorial, and was sadly disappointed.
I was expecting something with some relevance to the current world situation, instead I found myself enduring her writing an essay about her view of the definition of sexual harrassment, and then found that the entire thing had just been lifted from Crikey.com.au.
It reminded me to some extent of those columns you tend to see near the editorial and letters to the editor in a real newspaper, except that those tend to have some relevance to the news in the paper. At least those aren’t lifted from a website.
Perhaps City News would be better off calling it a “column” rather than an “editorial” as the term “editorial” in a newspaper indicates that the column is written by one of the editors and is related to the news. A “column” on the other hand is an opinion peice that doesn’t necessarily relate to anything, but usually relates to the news.
I suppose City News could just call it “Crikey Corner”.
If you want to read Ms. Lumby’s ramblings, it is currently available on the City News website and probably more permanantly on crikey.com.au.
Samuel
September 10th, 2005 at 10:35pm
Radio historian and former broadcaster/program director at numerous radio stations, Wayne Mac, is currently producing a book “on the life and times of Australian commercial radio” called Don’t Touch That Dial – Hits ‘n’ Memories of Australian Radio. Wayne’s book will probably only be available in a limited print run, but he has plenty of information on his website, www.waynemac.com.
So why am I telling you all this? Well, I have been rather excited about this book for a while, and it seems that a lot of people in the radio industry are too, and tonight we all have what will probably be a “once in a lifetime chance” to hear more about the book as Wayne will be appearing on Perth’s Radio 6PR to talk about his book, and I for one will be listening to the webstream (and if I remember, recording it).
He will be on 6PR at around 9PM perth time (GMT+8), last night the webstream wasn’t working, so let’s hope tonight is different, otherwise I might be making a phone call to Perth…
Samuel
September 4th, 2005 at 07:55pm
For those of you who don’t already know, Sydney radio station 2UE are moving to new all-digital studios in a new building.
The news that I am able to break to you right here is that the first show to come out of the new studios will be Saturday Night Live with Stuart Bocking at 9PM Sydney time, this coming Saturday (September 10), all programming from that point on will be coming from the new digital studios.
2UE were due to start broadcasting from the new studios early this week, but they pushed the date back so that all the staff could learn how to use the new equipment.
It has been said, although I am unable to confirm it, that John Laws’ office is twice the size of 2UE breakfast host Mike Carlton’s office, and that Mike isn’t overly pleased about that.
It is also said, and probably correctly said, that the John Laws studio will have a gold coloured desk with his signature on it, which should match his golden microphone quite well.
Apparently 2UE own this building at 170 Pacific Highway, Greenwich, which has a Dick Smith Electronics store in it (Think Tandy/Radio Shack style store). I suppose if the techs ever need to fix anything they can pop downstairs and grab a bit of solder!
Samuel
September 4th, 2005 at 07:42pm
As you may recall from somewhere in the middle of last night’s lengthy story, I got a “new” radio yesterday.
It’s not exactly new as it is older than I am, but it is new to me, and I like it.
Due to some camera issues I was unable to take a photo of it, and instead I have found one on the internet of another one which has had more wear and tear than my one.
From the site I found the picture on comes this brief history of my WM-F57 Sony Walkman
1986. What the…? For years, Sony marketed the Wakman as a personal stereo experience until this one. The WM-F57 was outfitted with a tiny speaker elmininating the need for headphones. This model shares the same chassis as the WM-F77, my favorite Sony Walkman of all time. It has auto-reverse, local/dx FM sensitivity switch.
Well, I have always had a bit of a fascination with older radios, and to find one that was the first walkman to ever have an inbuilt speaker, and to be one of the few models (based on my research) with a multi-directional cassette tape player lacking mechanical problems makes me very proud.
Older radios have a certain charm to them, and my one is no exception.
Samuel
September 3rd, 2005 at 07:15pm
Well, apart from a minor incident at school which I won’t comment on until the issue is resolved, I had a pretty good day.
This was mostly due to a lunch meeting with my bus driver friend, which turned into an entire afternoon meeting.
Just after 1PM I met him outside my college (Dickson College) and, rather than doing what we have done for the last two weeks and going to the Dickson Tradies Club for lunch, we went all the way to Tuggeranong for lunch, which was very good. That fried rice and chicken satay with a cappucino was very nice.
After this we went out to Queanbeyan and a used furniture shop which I can’t remember the name of…it is at number 117 on a street in Queanbeyan if that helps. My bus driver friend has an involvement in the store, so it was good to see it for the first time, and meet some interesting people at the same time.
Whilst out there, I was able to pick up a rather nice vintage walkman. Currently I am taking two radios around with me, one is a torch radio which I use as my loudspeaker radio, which is what I prefer to use when walking or sitting in certain areas as headphones do irritate me to some extent, especially as I find they hinder my ability to hear my surrounds. The other radio I carry around with me is a newer walkman which only has a headphone output, this is useful on buses etc as people can be irritated by loudspeaker radios in confined spaces, and holding one right on your ear is unpleasant and partially disorienting due to it partially blocking external noises and effectively preventing my ability to identify the location of noises.
This “new” radio (it’s new to me) has an inbuilt speaker AND a headphone output…and suprisingly it is able to have both the headphones and the speaker on at the same time, it also features a switch to turn the speaker on and off. This will probably be able to do the job of the other two radios and provide a better loudspeaker sound quality than the torch radio.
Not that I have any problem with the other two radios, they are very good and have done their jobs nicely, but this “new” radio has made things easier.
I was going to take some pictures of this radio, but the camera refuses to accept perfectly good batteries and is being argumentative, so you’ll just have to wait.
Back to the story of my day. After the visit to Queanbeyan we decided to have a coffee and as such went back to Dickson, and in particular, Hudson’s, which is owned by people who used to be my next door neighbours. After this my bus driver friend dropped me off at home, which was probably just before 5PM.
After this I went to check the John Laws website to see if this weeks “Best of Laws” segment was on his site yet. Before I go on, I am going to address the ongoing concerns of a number of people who read this blog. Yes, I listen to the John Laws show, this does not mean that I agree with everything on it, but I do enjoy the show, and I do have a very large amount of respect for John Laws, and I find him entertaining. If you disagree with me, I am fine with that, I acknowledge that, just as I am not a fan of most FM music stations, a lot of people can’t stand talk radio and some/all of the presenters. That’s fine, and I have no gripe with that, in fact I find it refreshing that people have incredibly different opinions when it comes to the media, it makes my life much more interesting and entertaining.
Back to the story (again), as I said, I checked the John Laws site for this weeks “Best Of Laws” segment, as there was one section in it that I heard this morning and wanted to hear again, it featured this woman who was probably drunk going on and on and on and on and on and on about absolutely nothing, and it was hillarious, as were the comments Lawsie made.
The main reason I mention this is that I noticed last week that the people responsible for maintaining the John Laws site had delibearately destroyed the audio quality on the music in the file, which really hurt my ears and was hard to listen to. I sent an email to John asking for an explanation, and whilst I never got one (or at least I wasn’t listening to the show when he explained it, if he did at all) the audio quality had been fixed for this week, which pleased me immensely, and I just had to email Lawsie to thank him for fixing it, which I have now done.
I suppose I should have a quick count of my drinks so far today (hmmm, yesterday, I’ve been typing this for a while). I had a cup of tea at my breakfast/morning tea (yes, I had another alarm clock accident), I had a coffee at lunch, a coffee at afternoon tea, a coffee at dinner, a coffee this evening and another coffee this evening. Lunch and Afternoon tea were strong, in fact so were the home made ones, so that is 5 strong coffees, no wonder I don’t feel tired…
I really do feel like sitting here and continuing to type gibberish, but I won’t, I’ll finish this here and get some sleep…if I can! Hmmmm, I wonder if the ads are playing on 2CC tonight…must check…..
Samuel
September 2nd, 2005 at 11:56pm
As some of you may recall from a previous post, I am now working with Australian Independent Radio News.
I can now prove this allegation by the fact that I finally got around to organising a photo shoot today and I am now appearing on the “On Air Team” page.
The photo you see there is a condensation of this photo
And now, simply because I am nice, you can hear my 5PM Saturday 27th of August 2005 bulletin here.
All feedback appreciated!
Samuel
September 1st, 2005 at 10:05pm
This evening I finally got around to making a 2CC poster to attach to my school bag. I tried many different ways of attaching it to the exterior of my bag, including multiple sticky tape attempts. Unfortunately all of these attempts were unsuccessful, so I decided to use staples. I got the stapler and realised it was empty, so I filled it and proceeded to staple the corners of the poster to the bag.
The top corners were easy as the stapler reached the corners around the zip. The bottom corners however could not be reached by the stapler and I instead had to unfold it and put something behind the paper to bend the staples in place and make it easier to staple. I used a metal ruler, however the first staple I did that way caught me with the ruler slightly out of position and my finger in position, so I ended up with a staple in my finger which, needless to say, hurt.
I eventually got the staples in the right places and I now have the following half-A4 poster stapled and taped to my bag. (Some of the tape couldn’t be removed after it stuck to the paper, so it is now providing extra support.)
Samuel
August 29th, 2005 at 09:45pm
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