Let the election games begin!
A mysterious missive arrives in the mail. Plus: more from the trenches at 4BC.
It must be election time.
An official-looking envelope has turned up in my mailbox, promising to contain “2024 STATE ELECTION IMPORTANT VOTING INFORMATION”.
There is no indication who it is from, but it includes two actual Electoral Commission Queensland forms to allow the recipient to lodge a postal vote and a envelope for them to be returned.
Oh, and there’s a letter from the leader of one of political parties. Just one of them, raising my suspicions that this is not an official communication but a party political one designed to fool people who are not paying proper attention or have some kind of impairment.
The letter is from David Crisafulli, the leader of the LNP and, by all accounts, the favourite to win the election.
Oh, and the return envelope is for a P.O. Box address that Google tells me has been used in the past by LNP candidates.
I’m sure there is nothing at all illegal about this and that the other parties are possibly/probably doing it as well to seek some sort of advantage. But I really wish they didn’t, because it taints the whole process.
We don’t have to look too far to see how fragile democracy can be, so we really shouldn’t be trying to game the system we have.
4BC breakfast battle
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. And, when it comes to statistics, you can twist them to suit almost any narrative. So it is with radio ratings.
As I’ve recorded in previous posts, there’s a lot of turmoil at Radio 4BC, where the ousted Breakfast show team of Laurel Edwards, Gary Clare and Mark Hine is taking a final bow this week. Next week, in the lead-up to the election, Peter Fegan steps in as temporary host before a permanent replacement is named.
It’s no secret that he wants the job full time, and he’s said to be lobbying hard for that to happen.
However, I was quite shocked to read an item in the national press about one of his presumed competitors, 4BC Afternoons presenter Sofie Formica (whose show I produced for one whole week a couple of years ago and have not contacted regarding this story).
While talking up Fegan, and hinting that Formica was not a suitable panelist for Channel 9’s election debate (which is nonsense), the story mentioned Formica’s poor ratings at 4BC without noting:
Afternoon shows tend to rate lower than the station average — including on 4BC’s successful sister stations 2GB and 3AW. The shift is regarded in the industry as a “s—t sandwich”. Given that, and low overall ratings for the Brisbane station, Formica is holding her own (including against the notional competition at the ABC).
Fegan’s own ratings in the Weekends shift are around the same as Formica’s are in Afternoons — and lower than those of his predecessor. The simple fact is that neither of them is a proven winner.
That’s also true of Michelle Tapper, a fill-in presenter being talked up in some of the online stories that are fuelled, as an observer astutely noted on social media, by a lot of “backgrounding” from people who either work at 4BC or used to. (Yes, I used to work there, but I’m not whispering to other journalists, I’m saying what I think out loud.)
I also take issue with reports of 4BC “returning” to “a hard-hitting talkback focus”, as if there is any evidence that that format has been a success in Brisbane in recent times.
The reason Laurel, Gary and Mark got the Breakfast gig in the first place was because they had been popular on 4KQ and “hard talk” wasn’t breaking through. (As I’ve said elsewhere, they got dudded by management who weren’t prepared to follow through on a format that would appeal to their audience, thus opening the door for 4BH.)
Peter Gleeson, who has left the station to run the state’s new greyhound complex, gave it all he had in the Drive shift in terms of right-wing shock jockery and failed to trouble the judges.
I honestly don’t have a horse in this race, but as I’ve said before I do want 4BC to succeed and to remain live and local — and there’s a real risk that it won’t. Sydney-based management at Nine Radio has misread the Brisbane market again and again because they desperately want it to be like the thing they know.
History tells us that the more failed attempts they make, the more they will lose the faith of the potential audience and the harder it will be to get it right next time.
Also, to revisit the racing analogy, the people who keep backing the wrong horse — and not just in the Breakfast stakes, nor only in Brisbane — may be the ones who need to be reined in. It’s not their money they’re betting with; it belongs to Nine shareholders.
To my mind, of course they should be considering Fegan, Formica, Tapper, Mornings host Bill McDonald and others, but they should also look at candidates other than those who are pushing themselves forward — including some from left field (and I use that term advisedly).
©2024 Brett Debritz. If I’ve inadvertently used copyrighted material, failed to give credit where it’s due, written or said something you disagree with, or otherwise upset or unexpectedly delighted you, please leave a comment, email me or connect with me at @debritz on X or @brettdebritz on Threads. I also have a YouTube site, @radiobert. Links are provided as a courtesy; I take no responsibility for their contents or give any warranty of their veracity. Photo: Brett Debritz
The battle of the electoral junk mail has indeed begun. A few weeks back I received a flyer in the mail. On one side was the policy-free vortex known as David Crusafulli. On the other side was the smiling-ish face of our local member for the past 15 years, the achievement-free Dr Mark Robinson, who is not standing for reelection. His successor is likely to be the harder-than-hard-right former federal Senator, the truly dreadful Amanda Stoker - so why send election mail with Robinson on it? He’s literally not going to be on the ballot.