Listeners are being left behind
Should TV and radio stations be required to make it clear when programs are not live?
Due to the absence of daylight-saving time, Brisbane spends half the year one hour behind the rest of the Australian east coast.
As a consequence, apart from the precious few that are produced locally, “live” television and radio shows are on delay — recorded and then played to air 60 minutes later. Sometimes, but not always, there will be local news, traffic and weather “windows” that may or may not be live. Nevertheless, the entire product is presented as if live, sometimes even falsely stating so.
An hour delay may not seem a lot, but things move quickly in this internet age and not just when there’s a breaking news story. Even when it comes to casual banter between hosts, something that was a humorous or astute “hot take” at the time may not be quite so fresh, funny, relevant or even accurate an hour later.
Then, of course, there is the question of those shows that solicit listener phone calls for talkback or competitions. It means Queenslanders (and all people in places where the time isn’t the same as it is in Sydney and Melbourne) are put at a disadvantage.
(I haven’t tuned in for a while, but I know Triple J used to foreshadow these segments by telling interstate listeners the appropriate time to ring in — but it still means those people don’t have the context of what’s occurred in the immediate lead-up to their moment on air.)
This is also an issue on TV where bulletins, or parts of them are prerecorded for non-NSW/Victorian viewers.
Sometimes it’s a gray area as to when and whether this is happening. For example, do reporters in southern capitals actually hang about for an hour after fulfilling their duties in their home market to speak “live” to the Brisbane newsreaders? Or are those segments prerecorded?
So, I’m starting a campaign to require media companies to alert their audience when something that is passed off as live actually isn’t. This would be in the form of regular announcements on radio and captions on TV.
The bottom line is that saying it’s live is a lie. Sure, as lies goes, it’s a small one. But it goes to the heart of the credibility of the broadcaster. And, let’s face it, credibility — or, at least, the perception of credibility — is one of the few advantages traditional media has over its new-media rivals.
RadioInfo’s Jen Seyderhelm has done an excellent story about how programs are increasingly neither live nor local.
Meanwhile, for those keeping count, Mumbrella has an article here about all the radio people who’ve left or lost their jobs in recent weeks. (A few are missing, including ABC Brisbane’s Rebecca Levingston). As I keep saying, expect more announcements soon.
A question of sport
Stop now if you’ve heard this before, but I want to share something I posted to LinkedIn, which references posts here at Mister Brisbane.
I’ve been thinking a lot about “common knowledge” and “gut feeling” and how it can derail decision-making. I wrote a post in my personal newsletter … about the ratings for a Brisbane radio station not reflecting the widely held belief that Australians are “sports mad” and can’t get enough of it (especially, almost exclusively, the big football codes, cricket and tennis). Meanwhile, arts events are extremely well attended yet -- other than those gigs, musicals or movies involving big names -- they are under-represented in the media. With sport, a lot of mainstream media coverage is now linked to advertising from betting apps (they subsidise newspaper form guides and sponsor sport programs), but is excessive coverage of sport actually driving away audiences/ customers and harming the business? And anybody who really wants a “hot take” on a big sport event can get it live on social media; they don’t have to (or want to) wait for analysis in the press or on the air well after the event. This line of logic can be applied to lots of other “common wisdom” that is never or rarely questioned. It’s lazy and silly and bad for business not to dig deeper to find out whether your presumptions are accurate.
An additional point: When I hear that an NRL State of Origin game or an AFL final has attracted 4 million TV viewers, I think about the 21 million people who aren’t watching and wonder what it is that they are interested in.
Sure, I understand why a business would want to market to four million people in one hit, but I’d want about to find out about the other things that bring people together, too.
at anytime sport comes on radio or TV, I switch stations. If you consider the population of Australia and make assumptions who participates in other things other than sport, the non-sport interest groups far outnumber the others.
I’m one of those who doesn’t care, acutely actively avoids all sports events. I can sometimes hear noise from Suncorp across the river but only find out the next day some event was on. Sport and s a panacea of the masses.