Can 10’s new news line-up deliver?
Update: RIP, Jan Power. Plus: koala country, are those job vox pops for real, where is the home of hit music, and is it curtains for Kyle?
A lot of people were surprised when it was announced that Sharyn Ghidella would be joining 10 News First Queensland as its Brisbane-based reader.
Not that there were any doubts about Ghidella’s ability to anchor a bulletin, nor because she’d only just left Channel 7 and got a new gig so quickly.
The big surprise was that in a time of belt-tightening across the industry, Channel 10 was having another crack at producing a truly local news bulletin.
For the past few years, the Brisbane news has been presented from Sydney, cobbled together from windows of local content inserted into a national bulletin, all helmed by Sandra Sully and mostly put together in the right order.
Another surprised followed. Just a few days ago, Ten announced that Ghidella would be joined in the Brisbane studio by weather presenter Liz Cantor, who also hails* from Seven.
There’s no doubting the firepower of the stars, but can 10 compete with the better-resourced (although recently depleted) newsrooms at Nine and Seven? Or, more to the point, can their 5pm news draw eyes away from the popular game shows, Tipping Point and The Chase?
Perhaps the thinking is that, in these days of flexible hours and working from home, more eyeballs will be available in the earlier timeslot. And, of course, watching 10’s news doesn’t stop the news junkies from also watching Ghidella’s former colleague Max Futcher at Seven or Andrew Lofthouse and Melissa Downes on Nine. And maybe even Jessica van Vonderen on the ABC news after that.
The outcome of the experiment starting tonight, September 2, will be interesting, because Channel 10 hasn’t really been competitive in what these days I suppose I should call “the news space”.
When its bulletin has attracted attention, it’s been for the wrong reasons — including two famous “hot mic” moments, when Glenn Taylor was fired for suggesting a drug-cheat swimmer be suspended “by his testicles” and Marie-Louise Theile wasn’t for calling her husband an “arsehole” because he didn’t (or perhaps did, I can’t quite remember) want to go skiing in Aspen.
Those were the days.
So, why is 10 putting renewed effort and expense into local news now? Probably because it is one of the few areas where broadcast television has an advantage over streaming services and vodcasters. I guess the thinking at Paramount (10’s parent company, which is in the process of being sold) is that it needs to up the ante with some credible talent on screen and behind the scenes.
*See what I did there?
Farewell, Jan Power
Jan Power, a vital part of Brisbane’s food and arts scene for five decades, died over the weekend.
I will write more about Jan in my next newsletter, but I wanted to acknowledge her as soon as I could. The Brisbane Times has an obit here.
Queensland’s koala capers
Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary made international headlines in July when it announced it would no longer allow visitors to cuddle its main attraction.
General manager Lyndon Discombe said the decision was made after public feedback: “We love that there is a shift among both local and international guests to experience Australian wildlife up close, but not necessarily personal, just doing what they do best — eating, sleeping and relaxing within their own space.”
Of course, many Brisbaneites and visitors to the River City will remember when you could not only cuddle a koala at Lone Pine, but you could also be greeted at the ferry pontoon by a koala clinging to a dog’s back.
Here’s some fuzzy home-movie footage from my family’s archive:
Vox-pop pranksters
If you follow TikTok or YouTube, you may have seen a series of short interviews recorded in the Queen St Mall and other Brisbane CBD locations where people are asked what they do for a living and how much they get paid.
Now I’m not going to pay out* on the people who make the videos, but I have it from a reliable source that some of the interviewees don’t tell the truth. So, you should take the more outrageous claims with a grain of salt.
This sort of thing doesn’t just happen to social media folk; television reporters get caught out too.
A few years ago, one Brisbane news bulletin captioned an interview with a witness to a crime with the name he provided them: Jack Mehoff. Say it out loud.
*See what I did there?
Who’s giving us the hits?
As radio futurologist James Cridland has noted on social media, two Brisbane radio stations, B105 and KIIS, have been using the same promo line, “Brisbane’s No.1 Hit Music Station”. As Dire Straits’ Mark Knopfler sang in Industrial Disease about two men claiming to be Jesus, one of them must be wrong. The ratings would suggest B105 has the stronger claim.
This isn’t the first time two stations have adopted the same slogan. Why do they do it? One reason is to confuse the audience as to which station is on — and that could work in their favour when some of those confused people are filling in the listening diaries used to determine the ratings.
Who’s having a laugh?
Which media personality, who was fired from a high-profile job for unethical conduct, recorded a message for Facebook where he spoke about the value of honesty and integrity?
Meanwhile …
Former Queenslander Kyle Sandilands and his radio show co-star Jackie “O” Henderson have made headlines again for a distasteful stunt that involved recording their staffers urinating. Inevitably, calls have gone up (again) for the KIIS breakfast show to be cancelled, or at least withdrawn from the Melbourne market, where it’s not doing well in the ratings anyway.
Two takeaways:
KIIS management seems to have no ability to rein them in — even though there is growing support for action by the broadcasting authority and/or an advertiser boycott.
Sandilands and Henderson obviously thrive on the attention they get for this kind of thing. But they are also smart enough to know that public tastes change, and maybe they are not quite as far ahead of the curve as they used to be. Once you go down the track of what the aforementioned Mr Cridland has called “lazy smut”, there may well be no turning back. Perhaps they foresee a day when they might have to cash in early on their much-touted $200 million 10-year deal.
P.S.
Thanks for all the great feedback I’ve been getting lately — including a pledge of financial support should I decide to start charging for this newsletter (which I won’t for the foreseeable future). I’m doing a “soft relaunch” of Mister Brisbane with the aim of posting more often and trying harder to fill a niche in the local landscape for informed insights and a little gossip. If you have thoughts on what I’m doing, or could be doing, please let me know.
Disclosure: Brett Debritz used to work at 4BC, the ABC, Sunday Mail, Brisbane News, Sunday Telegraph (Queensland edition), Sunday Sun, (Daily) Sun, Brisbane Accent, Queensland Times, Gatton Star, Western Star, Queensland Graingrower, Daily Mirror (Sydney), Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Shanghai Daily, Bangkok Post, The Nation (Thailand), The National (UAE), The Herald (Glasgow), and group of British newspapers including Oxford Journal, Sheffield Journal, High Wycombe Observer, South Oxfordshire Guardian and the Banbury Cake (yes, really) operated by Goodhead Publications (yes, really). I know that’s already quite a lot, but I’ve left a few out.