AUSTRALIAN MEDIA GETS TOGETHER TO RAISE MONEY FOR THE TSUNAMI VICTIMS

Now here's a cool thing. For the first time in Australian broadcasting history the three commercial channels are simulcasting a fund-raising event to raise money for the people who have suffered at the hands of nature. Channel 10 will be in control of the event, with channels 9 and 7 patching into the events. Top presenters from all three channels will be hosting the show, which will feature top Australian singers, broadcast "live" from the Sydney Opera House this Saturday night.

It has never happened before. Australian TV is fiercely and agressively competitive - using the US style of broadcasting - but this is quite extraordinary. I don't know if you're a broadcasting buff, but I'll tell you this. Channel Nine in Australia leads the way. There's NINEMSN, just as there is MSNBC in the United States. Channel Nine is the king of TV here. However, Channel Ten was the one with Australian Idol, and the Idol singers will be dominating this show. So Channel Ten got the gig, and Nine, for once in its life, has to not just step back from the limelight, but actually carry a Channel Ten show. It's hilarious! I love this shit, because the underdog is winning. I will give you a report on how the show went when I update this site on Sunday. If you care, stay tuned!

Written January 4th 2005, Sydney Australia 

Tsunami creates a media frenzy across Asia

Just twelve days ago I wrote a story about the media "doing a runner" in Summetime here in Australia because there was simply no news to report during the silly season. (more) Well, unfortunately this year I was very wrong.

Australia is in fact part of Asia. Just to our north is Indonesia - one of the many areas affected by the Tsunamis. Our primetime reporters - who are normally on holiday - are now in all the troubled areas, reporting the horrific events every moment of the day. As much as I hate to say this, news organisations get a buzz from these events. I was watching our Nine Network last night, and just like the other commercial TV stations here, we are being fed news of the events in a magazine style format - personal stories of particular families, with interviews of screaming mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers. These people are still in shock - their worlds torn apart, and its a 7'3" segment for each story, squashed in between highly paid-for commercials, with millions watching their private personal grief.

The ad-reps for the TV stations are prematurely back at work, because the silly season has abruptly come to an end, and the advertising has tripled in price. This is big business at a traditionally baron time of the year for advertising. There's big money in broadcasting emotions - especially tragic ones. So they pump out the stories day after day, and we who are just as guilty, watch it with a kind of gruesome fascination.

I can't even comprehend or visualise 150,000 people as dead. The figure seems too unbelievable, or unreal, or something.

It's interesting that the Tamil Tiger guerrillas, a splinter group operating in the north of Sri Lanka for autonimous control over the past twenty years, are now getting support from the official government so they can all clean up the mess there - together! How ironic that an act of nature of this enormity is what it takes to bring feuding sides together - and how sad. But it is good coming out of bad.

And here's another thing. There were four car bombings in Iraq on December 4th. It barely rated as a news story under the weight of what's going on in Asia. These terrorists feed off the media, and now they are starving for attention and no one is really listening. Terrorists don't see the point in bombing places when there's no media to report it.

I spent 6 days, between December 26th and January 3rd on a remote peninsula off the south of Victoria where we had no electricity - or communication - for the very period since the tsunamis erupted. I had heard of an earth quake before we left on 26th, but had no idea of what was about to happen - until yesterday. I thought it would be great to get away from radio and television. And it was, but when I came back and switched on BBC World, I was watching - for the first time - the images everyone else had been watching for a week. It was strange being so behind, especially with such a big event. Someone asked me "where have you been - out of civilisation?". "Well, actually yes" I replied.

It's hard to imagine what its like when someone you care for is missing in one of those countries right now. Last year my girlfriend went to two of the areas effected, Sri Lanka and India. I'm just glad she didn't leave it to a year later.

Fox News has been showing the most gruesome coverage of the tidal wave events in Asia, having managed to get amateur footage of the tides coming in, from some US tourists videoing from a hotel balcony. Interesting that CNN and BBC World have not done this. Perhaps its an ethics code or something.

Anyway, the news ain't gonna change for some time now. The media has enough bait on its hook to bleed those advertisers dry, and we'll be watching all the way.