(Above: Janet Albrechtsen on Q&A. Pay particular attention to the eyelashes and the peculiar thing draped around her neck, proving that ABC wardrobe has too much spare time on its hands).
Masochists with a strong enough stomach will have already visited this week's Q&A; sadists will of course have sent their resident masochists along for their weekly remedial and strength training.
So far as the pond is concerned, interest centres on Janet Albrechtsen's appearance in tandem with Barnaby Joyce - two treasured contenders for premium pond participants of the year.
Sadly, as the transcript will demonstrate - and is available here in the usual ABC way - the program was exceptionally dull, as the shadow of the Gillard coup loomed large over the participants.
All that emerged from Albrechtsen was that conservatives promoted women, that she listened to ABC radio, that she thought former Chairman Rudd very peculiar and a rotten leader, and cried for himself, and that Mark Latham had an astonishing insight - that Julia Gillard ain't no soccer mom. As Gillard isn't a mom, the news that she didn't take the non-existent ones off to soccer was most reassuring, because otherwise we'd be thinking about taking our delusional PM off to the loony bin.
I guess this is what passes for informed commentary in the commentariat. Oh and she thinks that Julia Gillard is a top notch performer, pretty first class.
All in all, it was a very average performance - there's a certain stiffness in Albrechtsen that alienates the cameras, and she exudes a certain tart discomfort whenever she speaks.
But all that dancing with the ABC - they love her so much she keeps on getting invited back, for no discernible reason, except she's the token conservative you have to have to keep the party seemly and balanced, like the mad aunt from the wrong side of the table you put down at the end next to the Fotherington Smythes or Wilson Tuckey - is really just an entree, for today's column Sky shames the ABC.
And here's where it gets juicy.
That night Sky News became the default national broadcaster.
Um, could we add the default national broadcaster for the 34% of punters who bother to get Pay-TV delivered to their homes. While the other two thirds of us cruise along quite comfortably without.
Well a little background is in order here since you won't find any disclaimer at the bottom of Albrechtsen's column. The owner of the rag The Australian, for which she scribbles, is also the owner of BSkyB and thereby the owner of Sky News, and the owner, one Chairman Rupert, last we heard was seeking to increase his stake in BSkyB from the 39% current stake to a full buyout, only to be told he would have to tickle a little more than the twelve billion pounds on first offer.
Naturally the dirty digger also has his paw in Foxtel, the cable carrier of Sky News, with a 25% share, along with the 25% held by Consolidated Media Holdings and 50% owned by Telstra.
So when it comes to boosterism for Sky, a grain of salt should be added to the meal, any meal, dished up by News Corp.
But of course the irony is soon to hand, which is to say when seeking proof of her opinion of the ABC, where better to turn than to ... the ABC:
Media Watch! Would that be the same Media Watch as the thunderer dismissed in an editorial back in 2007, Old tricks back at Media Watch?
Through bias, Media Watch has surrendered the right to pass judgment on other people's work
Why bother with a media television program that lacks journalistic integrity and conducts its affairs along the lines of an insiders' club that pushes its ideological prejudice at taxpayers' expense?
Indeed. Except of course when Media Watch is doing over the ABC, rather than The Australian or some other antipodean outpost of Chairman Murdoch's empire.
Of course the subtext in all this is the ongoing feud between Sky and the ABC about the ABC's decision to set up a 24/7 news channel - as noted by the ABC here in Sky falls on ABC's news channel. Then of course there's the ongoing feud between Sky and the ABC as to who might run the Australia Network, as outlined here in The Australian in ABC, Sky to contest diplomatic broadcast contract.
Of course the good thing about the cardigan wearing latte sippers is that they'll run a show like Media Watch, sometimes to the chagrin and ire of The Australian and other Murdoch lackeys.
You won't find that kind of freewheeling independent dissent and review anywhere within the corporate cogs of News Corp. And if you cared for a broadcaster treating its conventional programming as fodder to be interrupted at whim so it could track the latest shock horror news from Canberra, then surely the ABC wasn't up to the job on the night of the coup. Not that other broadcasters were so worried about the events:
To be fair, not every network did what Sky News did. But why couldn't the ABC?
Or put it another way, why couldn't the other networks? Could it be that they, or their punters, didn't care that much? No, no, no ...
The answer is all about culture. Wednesday evening was a study in contrasts between a network that gets the importance of delivering news as it happens and a complacent national broadcaster that doesn't get it. Worse, in the days that followed, a self-congratulatory national broadcaster tried to pretend it had not let down those Australians, like me, who look first to it for the best coverage of news and current affairs. And those who don't have cable TV were doubly let down.
Yep, you read it here. Or there. Janet Albrechtsen looks to the ABC first for the best coverage of news and current affairs. Not Sky, and not the offerings of Chairman Rupert. Suddenly I feel faint.
And Aunty let down the political junkies, so here we go again with a cry for Canberra navel gazing as the only way to live a life, or run a broadcaster.
But what happens to those who don't care, caught up in the middle of some program of interest? Well I know listening to Phillip Adams about Kyrgyzstan is in fact the only known certain cure for insomnia in western civilisation, but what if his somnolescent drone had just got you nodding off, and you get some news jock screaming in your ear that the PM had called a meeting in the morning? Nothing had been decided but you could spend the next hour working out that nothing had been decided, and casting and re-casting the runes and counting the numbers and talking drivel for minutes on end ...
Worse still, what if you'd woken up after Midsomer Murders had sent you spiralling into torpor, and just as the dreary inspector is about to name the murderer, you're sent post haste to identify the assassins at work doing a Caesar/et tu Brutus routine in Canberra? Sure it might have been David Stratton instead, but then at least you know you'll be soundly asleep and nothing could wake you ...
Well you see there's a double irony at work here.
Yes of the kind you put on a separate news channel, not as a way of interrupting the programming for those who couldn't give a stuff about the shenanigans in Canberra.
But you see as soon as you argue for a 24/7 news channel so that political junkies and commentariat perverts can indulge to their hearts' content, you tread on the toes of Sky News.
Oh lack a day, what to do? Well first stroll down memory lane to the good old days of David Hill and his hands on ways, rather than the clap happy cheerfulness of the current incumbent, and then have an acid flashback of clear Q&A proof that the ABC is over-indulged:
Aunty already has three channels - ABC1, ABC2 and ABC3 - and buckets of money. I was reminded of that on Monday when, sitting in a flash make-up room prior to an appearance on Q&A,I was politely asked by an expert make-up lady whether I wanted a few false eyelashes to enhance my eyes for the cameras.
Memo to make up person at Q&A. Make sure next time Albrechtsen looks like a bat out of hell. And tell wardrobe to forget making suggestions, let her dress the way she likes. Oh she did? Sssh, say no more ... (but what is that thing draped around her neck?)
And then back to the party line, which is to explain how a dedicated news channel isn't appropriate, or needed, and even if there were to be a news channel, the ABC would mismanage it:
While vast resources will be spent on creating the brand for a slick 24-hour ABC news channel, the ABC shouldn't need a new channel to report on a critical night in our nation's history.
The question is whether the ABC will look at its failings or focus only on its successes.
As a former director, I found it endlessly frustrating to hit the wall of ABC suspicion where legitimate, thoughtful criticism is invariably waved away as the ravings of ideological opponents. Yet, the ABC will grow stronger by responding to criticism that is aimed at making it better. It will cement its legitimacy if it can spot its own flaws rather than wait for others to point them out.
After Wednesday, is the ABC asking itself whether it has the energy and team spirit that kicks in so readily at its poor cable cousin at Sky? Does it understand the urgency of 24-hour news, where mistakes will be made and quickly corrected? Or will the monolithic ABC, even with a 24-hour news channel, fall victim to its culture of bureaucratic paralysis and infighting between fiefdoms?
Well actually there's nothing in Albrechtsen's column that wasn't better said or better demonstrated in the Media Watch program dedicated to the matter. Do yourself a favour and take a look. Meantime, Albrechtsen keeps yammering on about how an evening's entertainment needed to be ruined so we could cut to the palace to witness not the ritual killing - that was done in the morning - but the frantic preparations for the ritual killing:
Last weekend on SBS, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was asked what he did on Wednesday night. He recalled "getting all these phone calls from journalists asking 'What's happening? What are you doing?'." He replied: "Well, I'm sitting in my office all alone watching Sky News like you are." What a disgrace that the federal minister who funds the ABC could not get the story from our national broadcaster.
Whoopee, QED, roll on a 24/7 news channel, and leave the rest of the programming unharmed and untouched by the relentless navel gazing of the political junkies who spend way too much time contemplating Canberra when they could have a life. And how can they fund it? Well surely by dropping Q&A, the most tedious aggregation of squawking and preening you'll find anywhere on television ...
Now before we go, there's just one last question. Is Albrechtsen a split personality? Here she is watching Sky:
Via text messages and phone calls, government ministers used Sky as the conduit to tell the nation what was happening. Operating under the old Sky UK motto of "you're never wrong for long", Sky journalists shared the text messages, reporting the night's big developments. .
The rawness of it was riveting. Sky News became a case study of how less is more: the shoestring budgets, the do-your-own-make-up, the journalists who come to the car park to greet you before you go on air. There are no airs and graces at Sky News. Only a hunger to deliver news as it happens.
The rawness of it was riveting. Sky News became a case study of how less is more: the shoestring budgets, the do-your-own-make-up, the journalists who come to the car park to greet you before you go on air. There are no airs and graces at Sky News. Only a hunger to deliver news as it happens.
Yet here she is watching the ABC at the same time and it would seem for the same duration:
After the 7pm news broke the nation's biggest story and The 7.30 Report mentioned it in passing before moving on to Afghanistan, wind farms and renewable energy, we were treated to the usual Wednesday comedy, drama and movie reviews. By the time Lateline rolled around, we heard some more about the history happening in Canberra, then more on Afghanistan and whaling, with a weird interview from a clueless Peter Garrett in Morroco. (sic)
Is she like Elvis Presley, who as any visitor to Graceland will know, had three or four TV sets lined up so he could watch all the networks at once, and had some sixteen in all scattered around the house?
But perhaps the most offensive Albrechtsen remarks are reserved for the folks of the eastern suburbs and Toorak - yes I've battled the drivers in the Toorak village supermarket carpark and survived to tell the tale:
Oh no, it's the secretary v. the company director and Albrechtsen comes out in favour of the secretary! Lordy, and worse still one of those smart arsed newfangled electric beep beep cars with their energy efficiency and greens righteousness about them ...
Sssh, keep it quiet. Next thing you know the ABC will be interrupting its regular programming with a news flash: "We interrupt our regular programming to advise that Janet Albrechtsen now believes in climate change and favours smart efficient little cars zipping in and out, and has banned viewers from driving Bentleys and Rollers, gold plated or not ..."
Come on down Randy Newman:
They got little cars
That go beep, beep, beep
They got little voices
Goin' peep, peep, peep
They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
They're gonna get you every time
That go beep, beep, beep
They got little voices
Goin' peep, peep, peep
They got grubby little fingers
And dirty little minds
They're gonna get you every time
Hey, we're sorry, we love short people. Julia Gillard's a short person. And now it seems we all must endure a 24/7 spin cycle:
... I think we’re just victims to technology. I don’t think anything is going to change. If anything, it’s going to get more fast paced. You only have to look at how things unravelled over Wednesday, Thursday, to see how quickly things changed in Australia. You know, Bill knows more about this than I do, about the fast paced news cycle, where I think, you know, for Julia Gillard to say that she’s different as a politician, that she doesn’t fall for spin, that she recognises that Australian’s don’t like spin, I think that’s a bit rich. You know, politicians live on spin. It’s their daily exercise, and I don’t think there’s any way of getting around that. That’s some fact of modern life now.
Spare me days, no thanks for that Janet. Isolate the virus. Bring on the ABC's 24/7 news channel and treat it like a gulag wherein all the commentariat commentators can frolic at their leisure, and perverts can dip in to the spin at their perverse pleasure. And if they must take Q&A with them ...
And take that Sky TV ... since if you speak for the nation, you seem to have lost some two thirds of the non-paying sheep in your care ... and the political junkies are demanding their fix, from, shock horror, the ABC no less which should be the supplier of the best news and current affairs in the land. Vale Chairman Rupert ...
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments older than two days are moderated and there will be a delay in publishing them.