Almost 30 years ago, when he was hosting the Breakfast show on Triple M, Dean Miller and his then colleagues, Gary “Badge” Belcher and Clare Blake, spent 27 hours on air to raise money for charity.
I wonder if that’s something he and Sofie Formica might consider doing now? It’d be one way to draw attention to their new 4BC Breakfast show.
If they did, they’d be following in a long tradition of on-air stunts. From gotcha calls to feats of human endurance, it’s all part of making the “theatre of the mind” come alive.
About 20 years ago, Stav Davidson, then new to the B105 Breakfast show, had a Brazilian wax live on air. More recently, he jumped out of a plane and showered the suburbs with cash as he fell. (I’m told a lot of it was never recovered.)
At least he didn’t drop turkeys from the sky as the staff of the eponymous fictional radio station in WKRP in Cincinnati did in a classic episode.
Davidson’s predecessors at B105, Jamie Dunn, Ian Skippen and Donna Lynch, presented their show in the nude — but, of course, this was before video, so you had to take their word for it.
Triple M’s Greg “Marto” Martin used to drive a cab around town to take the pulse of the city. Maybe these days it’d be an Uber.
This year, the KIIS 973 trio of Robin Bailey, Kip Wightman and Corey Oates started the year broadcasting from a cherry picker in front of a billboard announcing their return to the airwaves after everyone (including them) thought they’d been sacked. They even dragged the network boss up there, to say he was wrong.
The ABC’s Spencer Howson once had a nude model in his studio, along with a Queensland Art College lecturer, to help listeners of the statewide Afternoons show participate in life-drawing classes.
It attracted the attention of Media Watch at the time, but as the late, great British DJ Kenny Everett said, it was all done in the best possible taste.
I know I’m just scratching the surface here and, in the absence of any actual research, I want to hand the topic over to you. Do you remember any great Brisbane radio stunts? Let me know!
Meanwhile, former Nova 106.9 star Nikki Osborne has taken to social media to announce that she’s cracked a million followers across her video platforms. Seems like there is life after Breakfast radio after all.
Resign of the times
Two networks; a day apart. On Thursday last week, 9News posted a video on YouTube with the title “Angus Taylor resigns from Liberal Party”, when in fact he had resigned from the front bench so he could contest the leadership of the parliamentary Liberal Party.
On Friday, 7News reported that Sussan Ley “resigns as Liberal leader” when in fact she had foreshadowed her intention to resign from Parliament after losing the Liberal Party leadership to Angus Taylor.
I suppose there must be a lot of confusion in televisionland about what constitutes a resignation since so many people who “resign” from the networks don’t actually resign.
On a related topic, someone at 9News seems to have been a little confused about which near-Brisbane city they were in:
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P.S.
I don’t know where they will end up, but I reckon the odds are firming on the 2032 Olympic rowing events not being in Rockhampton. I have written about this before, and I reckon the State Government has wasted a lot of money and effort trying to appease its regional voter base rather than trying to provide the best possible experience for watersports athletes and international audiences.