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Five World Medals for Australia at NY Festivals Balmain-based creative director John Bevins has won a gold world medal in the public service category of the New York Festivals for his RTA spots, which were recorded and produced at Stella Sound. This was the only gold world medal in the Public Service category this year, and the only gold world medal won by an Australian radio commercial. Flagstaff Studios in Melbourne won Australia's only silver world medal, in the Products and Services category for their White Pages ad "Shouting" for Clemenger Harvie Edge. Paul Le Couteur was the sound engineer and Ceri Davies did the casting. Adelaide agency Killey Withey Punshon! won a bronze for "Elephant and Gloves" engineered by Les Frances at Good Audio Sense studios and Hobart-based Clemenger BBDO International also won a bronze for Betta Milk, for their "Jive" ad produced at Sonic Solutions by sound engineer George Goerss. In
the Craft and Techniques category, Shane Hurford and Wayne Smith at C91.3
in Sydney won one of only three world medals awarded. Their "Bacon Racquet"
spots for Campbelltown Tennis Club won a bronze in the copywriting
sub-category. There was only one other bronze and one silver awarded for
radio advertising Craft And Techniques, even though there are nine
sub-categories open to radio stations world-wide. The judges gave no medals this year for Best Humorous Spot, Best
Direct Response Spot, Best Original Music and Best Use of Sound.
Awards Still Open: Media Federation Awards close July 17th. and the Mobius Awards - Entries open August, deadline 1st October 2002.
Production teams at Triple M stations in Brisbane and Sydney, RG Capital stations in Gosford, Gold Coast, Bundaberg and Devonport, Magic FM Pt Lincoln and 96.5 FM Geraldton are all finalists for the Best Station Produced Commercial. A record 1227 entries have been received for this year's Commercial Radio Awards, a significant increase on last year's 801 entries. There are several new categories this year including Most Popular Station Manager, a Listeners' Choice Awards and a Commercial Radio Hall of Fame. The Awards ceremony will be held at the Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Centre on October 19th. For more information check out the Commercial Radio website.
Street Remley says he got hooked on radio ads from his first job as a copywriter in a large advertising agency in America. "Radio was very damned hard to do really well. It's easy to do kind of mediocre but to do it really well is difficult and challenging and great fun. I just loved the process," he says. When he became creative director at Young & Rubicam and moved to Australia with the agency, he still preferred radio to TV. "I found even as a creative director that with television your work was always diluted by other opinions whether it's the art director or another writer or the eventual director of the commercial or the casting agents. The problem becomes that there are so many cooks that your original idea is maybe not even recognisable by the time the commercial is finished with television. "With radio I found you can always keep control and I've always liked the fishbowl of the studio. It's just you separated by a window from some really good actors. I love the solitude of writing radio and then I like the production end of it very much." Street says the challenges that have to be overcome along the way aren't limited to budgetry constraints. You need a great idea, good music, good actors and determination to drive the idea to its conclusion. "...an awful lot of people are not going to be as interested in it as you are..." The minute you skimp on any of those elements, you're compromising the quality of the ad. "The minute you accept as good enough, an actor who isn't really good enough, or if you don't devote enough time to it, or if you despair and say my client just doesn't have the money to do this well then you're going to end up with something mediocre. ..so given the fact radio always has to be done to a pretty tight budget and given the fact that an awful lot of people are not going to be as interested in it as you are ..it becomes hard to achieve excellence in radio...and yet the process itself is great fun." If you think he sounds enthusiastic about radio commercials in general, get him started on the topic of the radio writers' school and he becomes positively effusive. The first school was held in McLaren Vale in South Australia 21 years ago. Officially though, the Hunter Valley gathering next month is the 20th anniversary, because that's how long the Radio Marketing Bureau has been involved. Street insists it's still the best of its kind in the world, even though he's set up similar schools in the UK, New Zealand, South Africa, Singapore and Malaysia. "It's
a wonderful event. It's a real hands on grass-roots workshop where the
writers work like hell. They do a lot of writing and we do a lot of
debating and arguing and discussion about radio. It's not about a bunch
of guys standing up and giving speeches. It's a pure, tough, sweaty
workshop."
This
year's Radio Writer's Workshop is limited to 25 participants. Tutors: 3AW Talks All Over Nova... In the latest metro radio ratings in Melbourne Nova dropped 2.5% overall, while 3AW improved by 1.8% and had healthy gains in breakfast (up 1.8), mornings (up 1.7) and drive (up 0.8.) The ABC's modest rise of 0.3% in Melbourne was enough to take it into third position overall with 11.4% of the available audience. In Sydney 2DAY held its number one position overall despite suffering the biggest drop in listeners (down 0.9%.) 2DAY suffered the biggest drops in most key shifts including breakfast (down 0.6%) mornings (down 2.0%) and drive (down 1.9%.) There was no change in the top positions overall in Sydney with 2GB and 2UE remaining number two and three respectively. Alan Jones is maintaining the number one breakfast spot for 2GB, while John Laws is still holding the fortress for 2UE with the most listeners in mornings. Jones increased slightly (up 0.3%) while Laws dropped by the same amount. ...But Aunty Falls at the Fourth In Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth the ABC metro stations were the only notable movements - the ABC dropped from fourth to fifth spot in each of these cities, while the position of the top three radio stations remained unchanged. Brisbane's top three remains: B105, 97.5 and 4MMM. The new number four is 4KQ with 10.2% (up 1.6%) Adelaide's top three remains: SAFM, 5AA and 5MMM. The new number four is MIX on 10.9% (up 1.5%) Perth's top three remains: MIX, 92.9 and 96FM. The new number four is 6PR with 11.1% (up 1.4%) The ABC also dropped from fifth to sixth in Sydney, so its number three position gain in Melbourne was the only bright spot in an otherwise bleak ratings period for Aunty. Full details available on the ACNielsen website
The first thing you may notice about Nova 100 in Melbourne is that visually, you actually don't notice it at all. There's no signage on the building in Victoria Street in Richmond and if you didn't have the street number, you'd drive past it several times. Once inside however, everything and everyone projects an image that proclaims unequivocally 'we're new and we're different.' Production manager Vicki Marr says it's true : Nova 100 is very serious about being different - not just sounding different. The station's programming may be entertaining, irreverent and deprecating, but being different is hard work. "Having worked in radio for so long it's easy to just default back to the way you would do things in a traditional radio sense and it's actually quite challenging to think outside the square. Sometimes you just think a certain way and then you think, I've just got to turn that on its head because that's just normal radio," Vicki says. However, fewer ads doesn't mean less work. Vicki says they'll often produce 20 second commercials for Nova, and then do 30 second versions for other stations. Promos are also mostly under 20 seconds long and kept to a minimum, because listeners don't discriminate between station promos and commercials. "What you find is on air, things burn really quickly because they cut through so well. So you need to get variations of that ad and you probably need to have more variety of things on air. You do get more time to work on things, especially in commercial production, but we don't have a dubbing person either, so the commercial person has a bit more work to do in those kinds of areas. "As far as the creative goes we can be a bit more adventurous and with clients who are willing to be a bit more out there you can have a bit more fun with them and that's quite enjoyable. Some of the results we've been getting have been really good too. So that's satisfying." For Vicki personally, producing Martin and Molloy provided the creative highlight of her career so far. "They just did things no-one else did. They'd come up and say "I need a sound effect of someone sticking their hand up a cow's bum" and you'd just have to come up with it. "And they understood production really well, especially Tony Martin. So they'd record a few bits of pieces and use them so well on air - integrating the recorded with the live stuff very nicely so it was just so slick. I've never worked with anyone like that, before then or since." At Nova 100 the creative edge is maintained largely through collaboration. "There is a lot of communication between departments - more so than other stations I've worked at," Vicki says. "And the focus a lot of the time is purely on delivering something different.so it's the team of people that helps that to happen. "I enjoy working in a station that I can enjoy listening to at home. There are so many things you've thought for years about radio, like why are there so many ads and why do they repeat the same songs so much and why can't they be a bit edgier with their music. You get here and you think "Oh my God, someone's actually doing it." It's like a breath of fresh air." VICKI
MARR - production manager Nova 100 Melbourne Production jobs: Started at 5PBA Adelaide, worked her way up through carting and commercial production at SAFM Adelaide (twice) and 5DN Adelaide. Did breakfast production at B105 Brisbane then moved to Melbourne in 1995 to produce Martin and Molloy at FOX. Went overseas for 18 months, including 10 month stint at GWR in England. Back to MIX in Melbourne then the job at Nova.
FIBRE received a $600,000 federal government grant late last year to progress the provision of high-bandwidth services among film and television and post-production companies in Australia. Higher bandwidth should also create opportunities to help push Australian expertise internationally through the Internet. FIBRE has chosen two suppliers - Uecomm and Comindico - following lengthy negotiations with a range of telecommunications providers. "This industry is very diverse, in terms of geographical location, access speed requirements, domestic traffic and international traffic," commented Judi Tucker, Fibre's Executive Director. "To find one single carrier with the ability to offer the wide range of services at locations required, in a cost effective manner, was an insurmountable challenge. We have identified the suppliers who come closest to fitting most companies' requirements. The bid from Uecomm and Comindico recognises the aggregated industry needs, and uses the strengths of both carriers to provide the best possible service for FIBRE users. It's an excellent outcome for the industry." Following an initial trial phase with organisations located in four states, a commercial service offering connections ranging from a DSL service up to 100Mbps fibre-based connections, will progressively be available in all major production centres across the country.
The Broadband Advisory Group's terms of reference indicate the federal government is particularly interested in identifying impediments to broadband take-up in key areas, including small business. Maybe someone should mention to the government (and Ziggy Switkowski) that two key impediments are availability and pricing of infrastructure. Although the terms of reference specifically mention small business, there's no small business representative on the advisory group, and no mention of businesses based outside metropolitan areas. More details at www.noie.gov.au/Projects/consult/BAG/index.htm
The Australian Content in Advertising Standard requires at least 80 per cent of advertising time broadcast between the hours of 6 am and midnight, to be used for Australian produced advertisements. All networks complied with the standard in 2001 with the amount of foreign advertising well below the 20 per cent maximum allowed. In 2001, foreign advertising averaged 7.5 per cent of all advertising on the Nine network, 8.6 per cent on Seven and 10.8 per cent on Ten. The average for the Seven Network in 2001 (8.6 per cent) is a significant decrease from the 2000 average (10.6 per cent). The average percentage of foreign advertisements broadcast by networks Nine and Ten increased slightly from their 2000 levels (up 0.1 and 0.3 per cent respectively). All TV commercials broadcast in Australia must be cleared by the Commercials Acceptance Division of FACTS. In 2001 foreign advertising represented 2.7 per cent of the total number of all advertisements cleared by CAD, compared with 3.7 per cent for the previous year (and 3.3 per cent for 1999). Full details on the ABA website
The Australian Broadcasting Authority is inviting applications for two new commercial FM radio licences in Queensland. One licence is to serve the Gold Coast (102.9 MHz) and the other to serve Nambour (91.1 MHz). Anyone interested in applying must purchase an information package from the ABA and submit their application before midnight on Tuesday, 23 July 2002.
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Killer Bits: July 2002
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