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[Thursday 3pm #9] This week I make the radio ratings May 28, 2009

Posted by Nathan Hobby in Thursday 3pm feature posts, current affairs, media.
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This week, I am one of the lucky Australians to be surveyed for official radio ratings. I have to place a cross in every fifteen minute slot I listen to, and then another as to where I am listening. My participation will explain the sudden massive surge in Radio National’s ratings.

I get angry about commercial radio. For this reason, as much as I have been tempted to check what song is playing on one of those dreadful stations during some particularly dull moment of PM, I have avoided it, because I would hate for them to get one extra official listener.

Does commercial radio accurately reflect the tastes and demeanour of the majority of Australians? Do most Australians really want more chances to win every hour? Do they really want to listen to hours of commercials every week, propaganda that incites discontent and more spending?

Well, yes, probably.

I keep seeing a billboard for 94.5 FM with the slogan “Pack more into your morning with Bodega’s Bunch”. And every time I ask, pack more what? Insipid banter? Prizes?

And yet I must confess that I feel addicted to Radio National in a way that isn’t altogether healthy either. I find myself needing to listen to it even when I don’t want to. There’s some need to hear the voices, to learn something more.

I wish I wasn’t driving home so often at the time PM goes to air. I always feel like I need to listen to it, but it’ s never satisfying. Always the new surfaces of current affairs, the latest political developments. All this surface is so draining. I could listen to news and current affairs programs for the next twenty years and get no closer to an understanding of the situations described, the long history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, say.

I think as a society we need less news and more history. That’s why many of the other programs Radio National produces are so invaluable, reaching beyond the surface to history, analysis, ideas. In Perth, you’ll find it at 810AM. (Do not confuse it with 720AM ABC local radio; 720 is like commercial radio without the commercials.)

Press Council upholds complaint against The West Australian – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) September 14, 2007

Posted by Nathan Hobby in Western Australia, current affairs, media.
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Press Council upholds complaint against The West Australian – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

This news item is strange absent from The West Australian’s website.

The finding against The West illustrates for me that the paper will do anything for high circulation and doesn’t care much about journalistic standards. It seems to me that under Paul Armstrong’s editorship, the paper has become more like a tabloid, a daily Sunday Times. What do you think?

I also hate the way a popup ad which takes a few second to kill hits me everytime I open the site. I know I could easily change my settings, but I bet they’re relying that people are lazy like me and keep forgetting to.

Riot cops prepare for Sydney’s ‘worst-ever’ violence : thewest.com.au September 9, 2007

Posted by Nathan Hobby in current affairs, politics.
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Riot cops prepare for Sydney’s ‘worst-ever’ violence : thewest.com.au

I hate the way they’ve locked the whole of Sydney down. The establishment is throwing everything it can against the protestors. It has all the power and all the money, and it would dearly love there to be no voice of dissent. No-one to say to Bush and Howard: you have done evil!

Stephen King mistaken for vandal in Alice – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) August 16, 2007

Posted by Nathan Hobby in authors, current affairs, writing.
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Stephen King mistaken for vandal in Alice – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I’ve sometimes thought of secretly signing my book when I see it in a bookshop. I’ve never actually done it surreptiously, though.  I  asked the assistant at Floreat Forum Book Exchange if she wanted me to sign my book, and she said ‘no’. Stephen King has the right idea – just go ahead and do it.

King’s Park turns sinister August 16, 2007

Posted by Nathan Hobby in current affairs, media.
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Police and forensic investigators this morning continue to trawl through bushland in Kings Park in the search for missing mother-of-two Corryn Rayney.

Today marks nine days since Mrs Rayney disappeared after a bootscooting class in Bentley on August 7.

During guarded comments to waiting media yesterday, police admitted they had found “disturbed soil” in an area of Kings Park where an oil link from Mrs Rayney’s car lead them yesterday.

http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=145&ContentID=37511 

The story has been building up for days. At first she was just missing, mysteriously, after a Bootscooting class. And then yesterday her car is found in Subiaco. And then a trail of oil into King’s Park and recently disturbed soil.

It feels, reading the paper and listening to the news, that the media has this expectation: today there will be a body.

And Perth, voyeuristically, waits. I peer into King’s Park from the bus on the way to work, but I don’t even see any police cars. Somewhere in there, a body.

King’s Park seems a place for bodies. Recently, there were weeks of stories in the local paper about a missing Nedlands man, Benjamin Roberts. His poster was up at the local supermarket. He looked familiar; maybe I met him once. And then the postscript: a tiny article in the local paper saying that police had confirmed a body found in King’s Park was that of missing Benjamin Roberts and no suspicious circumstances were involved. Between the lines: a suicide, and, hence, thankfully, not a media fanfare. I felt so sad reading about it. He was my age.

A few years ago, a homeless woman was found dead in King’s Park. She had no family.

King’s Park has taken on a sinister aspect in my mind. A place of secrets. A place of death. Like the aquifer in Tim Winton’s The turning.

Rising cost of living hits low paid – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) August 13, 2007

Posted by Nathan Hobby in Western Australia, current affairs, some people i hate.
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Rising cost of living hits low paid – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

In WA, average wages have gone up 5%; rental by 17% and food by 11%. This is why the mining boom is bad! It’s created two classes of people in Western Australia – those that win and those that lose. I hope all the minerals run out soon.

(Yes, I realise that would be disastrous for the economy.)