Television

In The Australian today, Michael Bodey looks at the reasons the Vega radio stations in Sydney and Melbourne failed. He points, quite rightly, to a failure in the market research, with potential audience members misleading the researchers about what they actually wanted to hear. Of course, radio isn't the only medium that relies heavily on research. Many of the changes in newspapers over the past decade have been driven by surveys and focus groups. And, while it's undeniable that newspapers worldwide are losing readers, the papers that have had the biggest drops in circulation include those that have had dramatic makeovers driven by this research. Television, of course, is in a different situation. Since they advent of people-meters, programmers have an instant, accurate snapshot of what people actually are watching (and what they are not watching) - assuming the researchers have their demographic sample sorted out properly, that is.
Update: A Twitterer suggests that maybe it wasn't the research to blame, but the flawed implementation of the research.

A clever satire on television news from The Onion. Note: strong language.

Update: A little bird tells me (as my father used to say when he wasn't seeing a man about a dog) that Rick Burnett will be using the Nine news appearance to announce that he's taken up a new job which may have some synergies with his new "hippy" look (as shown in this picture I took of him a few weeks ago). It won't be at Channel 9, or any other TV station. (Saturday, March 13, 10.40am AEST)
Update 2: As revealed on Nine, that job is CEO of Keep Australia Beautiful. (Saturday, March 13, 6.27pm AEST)


Channel Nine Brisbane teaser ad, featuring former Extra host Rick Burnett, as posted on YouTube by regular debritz.net commenter Kuttsywood on March 12.

On the subject of Doctor Who (see last item), here's the opening credits of the first episode of the fifth season, which introduces new Doctor Matt Smith. As mentioned on Spencer Howson's b612ABC breakfast show this moning, the program will screen in Australia on April 18, two weeks after its debut on the BBC, and will feature on the ABC's iView service from late on April 16:

The Channel 9 Today show's "March with Magda" is coming to Brisbane on Monday, March 15. If you want to follow Magda Szubanski around New Farm Park for an early morning constitutional, be at the Rotunda at 6.45am on the day. It's part of the Jenny Craig/Women's Weekly "Australia's Greatest Weight Loss Challenge", with the aim of getting Australians to lose one million kilograms. In a Nine media release, Today co-host Lisa Wilkinson says: "Every time Magda is on the show, we get huge feedback from viewers who are inspired by her story, and want to take action themselves."

Don't say you haven't been warned: The Footy Show is returning to Channel 9 next Thursday night at 9.30. This year it will face competition from a new show on Seven fronted by former Footy Show star Matthew Johns and featuring Shane Webke. It will premiere sometime this month. To misquote Roy and HG, sometimes too much sport is more than enough.

Channel Seven Brisbane is declaring victory in the battle for Ipswich. A day after both Seven's Sunrise and Nine's Today broadcast from the southeast Queensland city, Seven has issued a media release declaring it had an average of 76,000 viewers on the day. The release continued: "For 6 consecutive years Sunrise, hosted by Melissa Doyle and David Koch has remained south east Queensland’s number one breakfast program and in that time has not lost one week of ratings. " The folks at Nine know they have a way to go and, according to information relayed at a briefing (i.e. long lunch) for journalists (me included) and other media folk at the Normanby Hotel on Tuesday, they are pumping more money into the Queensland market with a view to making Today No. 1. The good news for viewers should be that intense competition makes for better TV. Or, it should ...

A sneak preview of Jerry Seinfeld's new show, The Marriage Ref, has received scathing reviews in the US. Here's a few lines from the critics:
"Jerry Seinfeld''s new show almost cancels out Seinfeld." (Gawker)
"The most God-awful mishmash of a comedy-variety show." (Time)
"Who knew Seinfeld could be this unfunny?" (Baltimore Sun)
"Painful, pointless, obnoxious..." (New Jersey Star-Ledger)
"How could a man as funny as Seinfeld produce such a remarkably unfunny show?" (Huffington Post)
Mind you, TV.com says: "My recommendation is to take a look at the show for what it is, and not for what so many are pissed off that it isn't."

No need for Australian free-to-air viewers to wait until nighttime this year; Channel 9 has announced it will screen the Academy Awards live on Monday, March 8, from 11am. According to a Nine media release, the coverage will start with the Today Show’s Karl Stefanovic and Lisa Wilkinson hosting a red-carpet special, crossing to Richard Wilkins at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles at 11am. The award ceremony proper, hosted by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, will start at 11.30am.
Update: I spoke to Richard Wilkins today and, ironically, he says, as a viewer, he'd much prefer to wait until the nighttime broadcast, like a footy fan who turns away when the scores are on the news. However, he says, the internet and other news sources has created a demand for a live broadcast. And, of course, he'll be in LA, so there'll be no escaping it. (Still, it's hard to feel sorry for him.)

Coincidence or not? According to information from the two networks, both Channel 7's Sunrise and Channel 9's Today show will be broadcasting live from Ipswich, near Brisbane, on Wednesday. Well, presumably, they'll actually be broadcasting live to Sydney and Melbourne but on a one-hour delay to Brisbane. But they will be here.
Update: Spencer Howson tells me it's Ipswich's 150th aniversary on Wednesday, and 612ABC will have reporter Anne O'Keeffe on the scene, too. Time for your close-up, Cr Pisasale?

One of my pet hates has resurfaced -- the way films and television programs depict newspapers. Here's a still from a promo for the pay-TV channel 13th Street. No professional newspaper journalist I know would repeat the word "husband" from the main headline in the subhead, and none of them, I hope, would forget to put an apostrophe on the possessive form of the word.

The media release proclaiming a ratings victory in Queensland says "Nine wins gold" -- an allusion, of course, to the Winter Olympics. But it was the British program Top Gear and the American sitcom Two and a Half Men that helped Channel 9 snatch victory overall and among its preferred People 25-54 demographic last week. The Games didn't make the top 10 -- and neither, surely worryingly for the former undisputed king of the Bribane 6pm slot, did the Channel 9 News. Seven's Sunday News was No. 3 among all viewers, however Nine notes that its News had its best result so far this year, winning on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Presumably, the return of Melissa Downes after maternity leave will be credited, but it might also have to do with a big local story that happened early last week. Maybe viewers still "come home to Nine" when a Brisbane significant news story breaks.

Some sharp media satire for the weekend, from British comedy duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb:

Foxtel today issued a media release blasting Nine's coverage of the Winter Olympics and accussing the free-to-air network of missing Torah Bright's gold-medal ceremony. Here's Nine's response.

A press release issued by Foxtel's public relations department this afternoon criticising the Nine Network's coverage of today's Winter Olympics action is both erroneous and inflammatory.
Foxtel CEO Kim Williams has subsequently apologised to Nine CEO David Gyngell regarding the contents of the release, which Mr Williams described as "disgusting", along with an undertaking that such behaviour will not be repeated.
In its release a Foxtel spokesperson asserted that Nine had been in a commercial break during the "history making award ceremony" for gold medalist Torah Bright, and that Nine presenter Ken Sutcliffe had minutes later presented that ceremony as "live".
The later assertion is totally false, as the record shows. And the event referred to was in fact a flower presentation ceremony - not the medal presentation which Nine will cover live tomorrow.
The Nine Network covered Torah Bright's winning gold medal run LIVE, as it did her first interview, and the first interview with her family. It did take a commercial break after that extended live sequence, but returned with the flower presentation ceremony in full, clearly indicating it had just taken place.
CEO David Gyngell pointed out that Nine was a commercial television station which provides free coverage, but must necessarily schedule ad breaks through extended live coverage.
"Our telecast of the Games has been first class, and the coverage of Torah Bright's fantastic win was entirely appropriate in every respect. Nor do I make any apology for Nine running a Woolworths commercial after her event was completed, and post all the relevant interviews and replays of the event. That is a commercial reality. And Woolworths are a great sponsor of the Games." he said.

Like millions of kids of my generation, the one before it, and the one now, I've watched thousands of hours of cartoons and live-action television shows and films in which the characters have died in the most awful ways. It has not inspired me, or the vast majority of others who consumed this material, to take a weapon to another person. Yet, in the wake of the tragic schoolyard stabbing at Shorncliff this week, Queensland Opposition politician Vaughan Johnson reckons we need censorship to "shield" children from the "filth" on television. Johnson should study his history. The fact is that we had lived in less violent times since the introduction of film, television and video games. If he doubts it, he should read up on the ways people died in ancient and medieval times, and even in 19th century Australia. Humans had at their disposal an ugly array of weapons and torture techniques that could inflict slow, painful death -- and all of them devised by people who had never seen a crime drama on TV or played Grand Theft Auto. To think censoring film and television beyond the restrictions already in place will magically solve schoolyard violence overnight is, at best, naive and at worst dangerously misguided. Good parenting and good schooling will make a difference, though.