Today, passions overflow on genteel afternoon radio, strange denials, radio ratings, blaming the victims and much more.
Poking the Bear
Spence Denny was filling in for regular ABC 891 Drive presenter Michael Smyth this week when an interview about the State Government’s proposed crackdown on the tattoo industry got more than a little out of hand.
He was interviewing a fellow called Bear, who owns two tattoo studios in Adelaide, and is part of a group that is protesting against the State Government’s proposed laws to ban the families of motorcycle gang members owning tattoo parlours.
Denny asked whether the perception of a connection between outlaw bikies and the tattoo industry was fair – a question that enraged Bear.
“There’s a perceived perception that there is paedophilia riddled through government agencies,” Bear thundered.
“OK, you’re getting a little bit off track here,” said Denny, somewhat understating the matter.
“Are all politicians and everybody in government paedophiles?” Bear countered, rhetorically (we hope).
Spence tried to head this argument off at the pass, without much luck.
Bear thundered on.
“They want to declare us criminals, well why don’t we declare them paedophiles?”
“Nobody’s declaring you a criminal,” Spence retorted.
“They are! This is what the law is about!”
Butchering the message
InDaily’s food column wrote a benign few sentences back in July about Fleurieu farm gate butchery Wakefield Grange planning to open a shop in Yankalilla.
The piece, somewhat inexplicably, sparked a meltdown from Wakefield Grange’s owners, who took to social media to declare it wasn’t true (whereupon their Facebook followers piled in about the evils of the media).
After all this fuss, what should happen next?
Lo and behold, Wakefield Grange was in this week’s Advertiser food section proudly touting its new shop in Yankalilla.
Sweet relief
After a bumpy 12 months, Southern Cross Austereo has something to celebrate with the latest radio ratings showing the rebranded SAFM – now known as hit107 – continuing to climb back up from the mat.
The station looked in trouble early this year after the rebrand failed to make a dent in its rock-bottom ratings. Then one of the breakfast team – Dani Pola – up and left. However, the return of untouchable comedy duo Hamish and Andy in the drive shift has sparked a revival across the schedule.
Meanwhile, golden oldie AM station Cruise has ended its dream run, losing significant market share.
Nova also lost share, leaving hit107 breathing down its neck – almost unthinkable a year ago.
Who said it?
A recent edition of Radio National’s Media Report included a fascinating discussion with women working in sports journalism.
One of the interviewees – the ABC’s Walkley Award-winner Caro Meldrum-Hanna – recounted the following disturbing exchange on Adelaide radio in early 2013 after she had scored an exclusive interview with Stephen Dank, the figure at the centre of the then breaking Essendon supplements scandal.
“There was a lot of publicity in the lead-up to the interview and I was on radio doing publicity with a couple of guys on the sports afternoon program in Adelaide. Instead of actually talking about what’s going to be in this interview, it was an interrogation as to my relationship with Stephen Dank!
“They said, ‘Come on Caro, tell us the truth. You have a pre-existing relationship with Mr Dank, don’t you? That’s how you’ve got this interview.’
“And I said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
“‘Come on, pull the other one! How’d you get it then? Come on, we know you have a pre-existing relationship with Mr Dank, so come on, tell us – what’d you do?’
“I said, ‘I think I’m going to get out of this interview now, I’m going to go, have a good afternoon boys,’ and I put down the phone and sat there in the booth at the ABC. I was bright red and I wasn’t really thinking at the time. I thought, they’re suggesting that I had a sexual relationship with this man. I was very embarrassed and wondering what I’d said on air live.
“The next minute, I get a call from the producer and he said, ‘Our phones are going off, our audience is so offended. The boys are copping it for what they’ve just done. Can you come back on air live? We’re going to issue you an apology.’
“I said, ‘Save your apology. I’m not going back on air with you.’ That really shocked me. That genuinely surprised me. It was bizarre.”
Meldrum-Hanna told Media Week she believed the interview was on FIVEaa, but can’t recall the names of the presenters.
The current FIVEaa sports crew can’t recall the incident. Fill-in presenters maybe?
It’s spooky Possums
Barry Humphries has just scored a gig promoting the digital versions of Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspapers.
The connection seems a little strange, considering he believes one of the few things that’s changed in Australia since the 1950s is the quality of our newspapers.
That, and the scourge of new technology.
“I never feel I’ve been away, and luckily Australia never changes, it’s no different in Australia than it was in 1956, in a very good way,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald last year. “The only difference is people have mobile phones all the time. They’re always updating their Facebook page, and the newspapers aren’t as good as they were, I’m sorry to say.”
Naughty corner
News Corp’s tabloid commentators have taken careful aim at victims of domestic violence this week.
Andrew Bolt, unaware of the obvious irony, wrote that anti-violence campaigner Rosie Batty had “no class“. His problem was that Batty had praised Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for understanding that domestic violence was a gender issue. It’s hard to imagine an Australian with more class than Batty, who has shown frankly amazing levels of strength and intelligence after her son was murdered by his father.
Another News Corp provocateur, Miranda Devine, also wrote a piece this week blaming violence on “unsuitable women” having children to “a string of feckless men”. All of which seems to point to the conclusion that Turnbull was right.
Top of the class
This little story from The Australian’s excellent Queensland editor, Shane Rodgers, took our fancy this week. It’s about a group of students from QUT making the finals of the Global Business Challenge with their work on using duckweed as a global superfood for animals. The piece recalled to us a media flurry in Adelaide early this year about “green slime” despoiling the Torrens during festival season. The slime was actually duckweed – a harmless and amazing plant which is high in protein and can grow in very low quality water.
Media Week is published on Fridays.
