Internet

Are we a nation obsessed? As I write, four out of the top five most popular stories at brisbanetimes.com.au are about Lara Bingle and Michael Clarke. I wonder how many of those hits were a consequence of people looking for copies of that photo?

Is it time for the media to lay off Lara Bingle? Sure she's done her best to be famous, but is there any reason now for blow-by-blow coverage written by journalists who are apparently being paid to trail her every step. And do the public really care that much?

The internet continues to present a challenge for radio folk who've never had to know how to spell. Here's a bit of my pedantry on Twitter (read from the bottom up):

Take a look at the list of the most popular stories on any news website and you're almost certain to see at least one with the word "nude" in it. It is, of course, one of the most searched-for words and it draws Googlers to sites they might not otherwise visit. At the moment, the story doing all the business is about footballer Brendan Fevola's nude photograph of model Lara Bingle, with whom he had a brief fling a few years ago. (Are the management of Fevola's new club, the Brisbane Lions, surprised it took him so long to get into the headlines for the wrong reasons, I wonder.) However, with paid content very much on the agenda at the major news organisations, is this kind of traffic really helpful? How many of the people who come to these websites because they think they are going to see a naked model would ever pay to do so? (A quick estimation: none. Especially after they discover that they don't actually get to see a nude photo.) And does a reputation for prominently posting such material (or at least pretending to be publishing it) really help the credibility of news sites that hope to charge for content one day soon? These are questions people in high places in the media really should be asking themselves as a matter of urgency.
PS: Before anybody else says it, the Fevola-Bingle story is a legitimate one. But plenty of "nude" news stories are not and their presence on news websites is used purely to draw traffic in what I would argue is a very short-term strategy.

I am trying to put together a showreel of highlights from my various radio spots and decided to search for audio on the ABC Brisbane website. Although I know Spencer Howson posts my segment every week, a search for "Debritz" at abc.net.au/brisbane yielded just one result (from 2007, when I co-judged a 612ABC competition with Lord Mayor Campbell Newman) and this message:

A big week in Brisbane radio, which has seen the release of the first ratings survey for 2010 and 20th anniversary celebrations for B105 and Ipswich's River 949, will culminate tonight with a party to celebrate the retirement of uberproducer Majella Marsden. Over three decades in radio, Majella has worked on popular programs at 4BK (the Wayne Roberts Show, where she was also heard on air as "Deirdre Slack"), B105 (the Morning Crew with Jamie Dunn and Ian Skippen), 4BC (the Peter Dick program, among others), River (Wayne Roberts again) and 612ABC (Breakfast with Spencer Howson and Drive with Kelly Higgins-Devine, who'll be paying tribute to Majella on air this afternoon). A big night is guaranteed, with many current and former radio stars in attendance, and there'll be news, gossip and pictures here tomorrow.

This image from Brisbane Times had me scratching my head for a while. Presumably the maximum was a forecast that's been overtaken by reality.

Nielsen Research asked 27,000 people from 52 countries what they have paid for on the internet and what they might pay for. Movies top the list, but only about 10 per cent of people have actually bought them online and less than 60 per cent of respondents said they would consider paying for them. It's no surprise that 85 per cent of people said they'd prefer everything to be free. Is there a business model for paid content within this data?

Users of Australian news websites will, by now, be intimately familiar with Mike Van Niekerk. He's the bloke who pops up on video whenever youcall up one of the Fairfax web pages, such as smh.com.au or brisbanetimes.com.au, telling you how wonderful the new page design is. Problem is, Mike just won't go away. If you access the sites from different computers, as I do, you're likely to see and hear him several times a day. And it's been going on all week. Mike, I'm sure you and your team are very proud of your work in redesigning the sites and making the video more prominent (even though I have my reservations about it), but I think you've outworn your welcome.
PS: By the way, Mike, I think you need to do a bit more work on the sites -- unless, of course, you can explain how "Porn star demands apology" is a "related video" to your invasive instructional one.

Common wisdom in the media is that the web is a hangout for young folk. Well, the top stories on the Farifax news websites today suggest otherwise. The No. 1 story on its Brisbane, Sydney and Perth sites? An affectionate review of a Cliff Richard and the Shadows gig mostly attended by senior citizens.

Further to my previous post about time zones, maybe Australian TV and radio stations could use their websites or some of their digital spectrum to provide a genuinely live feed, especially for programs that are likely to generate real-time feedback in social media.
Update: The more I think about this, the more annoyed I get. The networks (especially TV but now radio, too) are the ones who took away our local viewing options and forced us into having a national water-cooler conversation with the same programs on at the same time across Australia. But when the time zones change, and with social media allowin real-time conversations, it's just tough luck for us. If I was a TV executive, I'd be addressing this as a serious issue.

Twitter is a great tool for other media - as demonstrated yesterday in Brsbane where local media were able to provide flooding and transport-delay updates. But, as I've said here before (and on 612ABC last week), it presents a problem for national media trying to promote their shows when daylight saving means "live" is not "live". Some advice for tweeters from national TV and radio programs that are shown on delay interstate: how about adding to the tweet the time the segments you're promoting will be seen/heard elsewhere? People who don't live in the southern vortex get mighty upset when it's assumed that they do.

No booze for kids; let them have soft drinks and get cancer. From news.com.au:

It seems Senator Barnaby Joyce isn't the only one having trouble distinguishing between billions and millions. The couriermail.com.au website can't quite decide, between the headline and story intro, how much the Moranbah ammonium nitrate plant is worth.