Frank Avis' Memoirs of 42 Years in Radio

June 2022

2022-07-11T12:00:00+10:00

No great drama in the latest radio ratings with Ben Fordham leading 2GB to another solid victory ahead of the FM-ers KISS and SMOOTH. The main interest in the second half of the year appears to be whether Kyle and Jackie O can pick up another couple of points and challenge Ben in Breakfast.

A bit of ancient radio history attached with an autographed photo of Mike Walsh from the old Mike Walsh Show at 3XY. I'm sitting here with memories of over 50 years ago recalling the old team of Mike Walsh, Frank Avis, Barry Seeber and Pam Peters with the occasional guest appearance by our beloved Chief Engineer, Wally Chamberlain, if somebody accidentally left the studio door open.

And can you allow me another bit of nostalgic licence to include a really nice "thank you note" from a bonza bloke "Gentleman Jim (Sir James) Hardy, the Olympic yachtsman and the man who led our original mission to take the fabled America's Cup, through the 70s.

Well the voters have spoken in Election '22 and it ended pretty much as all the scribes predicted, including Yours Truly. Anthony Albanese sneaked across the line on preferences while the Greens and assorted "independents" took the Liberals to the cleaners in the inner city. It was a nightmare for the major parties with Labor ending up taking office on a primary vote of around 33%, something that hasn't happened in the post-war era. We'll be governed by a party that 67% of the population didn't vote for. This is the new political reality. Letter to the Editor writer David Rose from WA drew our attention to this, observing that Canberra would have to deal with a new player, "a climate class with their lattes and laptops". Commentator Chris Kenny calls them, "the fake Independents, who effectively argued that somehow, they could alter the nation's climate and limit our suffering from natural disasters. The proposition is an absurdity but what is even more preposterous is that the Liberal Party never challenged it." Actually I didn't see any signs of the Liberals challenging anything. The opposition started its campaign about 18 months ago, a clearly orchestrated plan, involving Labor, the Greens and a bevy of climate change advocates who mounted a massive operation aimed at demonising Scott Morrison. The message was clear – whatever was wrong with the world it was all Morrison's fault. COVID, the bushfires, the floods, the rising cost of living – blame ScoMo. Look at what he did over COVID - having the audacity to tell Beijing that we needed to have a transparent enquiry into how it started. Is he stupid – triggering all those Chinese retaliatory trading responses? Doesn't he know how to lie down and let the Chinese tanks roll over the top of him? Then there's the alleged rape of a staff member in Parliament House. Where was ScoMo? Why didn't he run to her rescue? Where's a Prime Minister when you need one? This message was repeated and repeated, proving the old advertising adage, "If you repeat the message often enough, and long enough, they'll believe it". They did. The problem is no one challenged it.

The LNP Election campaign is one of the most astonishing exercises in my experience. There was this recurring theme of "it won't be easy with Albanese" which sounded like a lot of negative, luke-warm waffle. And who wants to spend thousands of dollars with a theme mentioning your opponent?

The Government campaign was like being trapped in a lift forced to listen to Victor Silvester's ballroom orchestra playing his top Fox Trot hits from the 40s. You couldn't call it colourless, it wasn't that good. Anybody with any experience in mass marketing could have told them that they had to go all out positive. Get out and plug the amazing economic comeback since the epidemic – unemployment down below 4% – Australia's back folks – we're one of the hottest economies in the world. This wasn't the time for a Bill Lawry innings of survival: get Victor Trumper out there team, to start whacking the bowlers back over their heads. No, not a sausage. ScoMo was treading water and whatever happened to his front bench team – Josh Frydenberg and Peter Dutton? Were they out there defending their leader? I don't know if any tactic could have kept the LNP in power but, struth, couldn't they have gone down with a bit of fight? I don't know who organised this alleged campaign but they need to return to their original career – almost certainly in accounting. At least Albo managed to scratch out a majority of 77 seats, which means the new Labor Government won't be forced to depend on a field of one-trick ponies.

I recently had one of those chilling moments when for a brief time I saw the future. It was just a second or two on BBC or SKY TV showing the Royal carriage trundling along the street during the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Celebrations – a gold-encrusted carriage drawn by horses but Instinctively I said to myself, "This is completely inappropriate." In modern parlance, "bad PR". For a brief period I think I saw the end of the Monarchy. I sort of like the British Royal family – sorry but I have to admit it – all that history - Henvy v. Elizabeths I and II. It's all such a part of the British fabric but, honestly, I think it's gone. Once the Queen passes I've got this feeling the whole thing will just gradually dissolve to black. I mean here we are, millions of Brits can't afford to pay their energy bills (God knows what'll happen to them in the Northern winter). Millions are scratching to afford just their basic bangers and mash. The cost of living is catastrophic – food, petrol – it's all going berserk. COVID is killing millions (we're losing around 40 lives a day here in Australia) while Russia continues its barbaric invasion of Ukraine. And what am I looking at on British TV? A golden Royal coach parading down a street in London. Don't see that passing the pub test in good ol' Blighty.

At last a promising end to our long-running search for that elusive hot, new(?) TV crime drama. I am so excited. Recently I was reading a TV preview in an out-of-the-way publication where the critic went full-on about an LA-based detective series, Bosch. Trouble is he was talking about the 8th season coming up in 2022. What - a top rated TV crime drama, going into its 8th year and I've never heard of it? Not on my cable network, not on mainstream TV. Where has this little masterpiece been hiding? It took some hard sleuthing from our researcher Darleen who eventually tracked it down on something called Prime Video. We are half way through after several long, long nights and OMG it is gritty and glorious. Think Law and Order (remember the beloved Lennie?), NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, even Dirty Harry. I'm promising you that, within 10-15 minutes, you'll be immediately in love with our lead Detective Harry Bosch, brilliantly played by Titus Welliver. And ditto for the rest of the team – Bosch's daughter, Harry's partner, his Lieutenant and a couple of laconic detectives, the Heckle and Jeckyl of the squad room, including the guy with the 1940s hat. Just sit back, relax and soak it in, ok? As Harry would say, "Copy that."

I was sitting with my partner Darleen watching her beloved Eels in the NRL when the defence had to take a kick from the goal line. The player sent a 40 metre drop-kick up the field. Later in the match, with the scores dead level and just minutes to play, one of the players attempted a field goal, which would have given them a one point win. Again, it was a drop kick. There and then the reality hit me: the only place I could see a drop kick in 2022 would be in Rugby League. One of the most iconic features of Aussie Rules had been deleted from the game. Over 100 years of watching the majestic drop kick had disappeared. Apparently a group of coaches – Norm Smith, John Kennedy Snr and Ron Barassi – decided the drop was too unreliable. It just mysteriously vanished. And the VFL/AFL – the keepers of the flame, the people who are supposed to protect the legacy of our game – apparently just sat there unmoved. How did we, the fans, let that happen? What about all that history. Fred Goldsmith grabbing the ball at full back and thumping a long, driving drop up the field, or Fred Swift crunching one to the centre where it was marked by Bill Barrott who pumped a massive 60-metre drop into the goal square. Watching Bustling Billy latch on to a big drop was like going to football heaven. What about Syd Jackson getting on to one in the centre square or Barry Cable letting fly from the half back flank to centre half forward? When Barry got to North Melbourne from the West, coach Ron Barassi took him aside and told him to forget the drop kick... Just replace it with the drop punt... Barry, the Prince of the Drop Kick and Stab pass just shrugged and said, "Ok Ron, you're the boss." Can you really just air-brush all of this from our treasured game?

"I despair of being able to convey to any reader my own idea of the beauty of Sydney Harbour. I have seen nothing equal to it in the way of land-locked sea scenery - nothing second to it. It is so inexpressibly lovely..." (1873)

—Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)

Frank Avis loses contact with modern radio

2015-10-20T12:00:00+10:00

Sincere thanks to radio wiz Andrew Kilpatrick for taking the time to explain to me what Smooth FM is and where it came from. Apparently it used to be Vega but has now opted to be Smooth. I had to control my immediate reaction which was to ask Andrew what Vega was and where IT came from. Didn't pursue that line of enquiry: I hate to hear a grown man cry on the other end of the phone.

It's getting really torturous in the radio business. I've got a feeling that it might have started when I joined the old 2UW back in the late 80's-early 90's. Manager John Williams converted the place to FM a few years later and renamed us MIX 106.5. Now I've gone and John's gone and it's become KIIS FM. People are returning to Sydney after a 4-week holiday, tuning into their car radio and expressing immediate concerns that their pilot touched down in a completely different country. People say to me that in order to understand the modern industry I have to get on to the same platform as the marketing/programming gurus of 2015. My problem isn't the platform. I'm at the wrong station.

Incidentally when you do find the right station there's no point getting money out to buy your Pensioner Excursion Ticket. Everybody has to have an Opal Card. I went to use my Opal device recently and mistakenly tried to get through the turnstiles with my Blacktown Library card.

From what I hear the whole Opal network went down for 8 hours.

I'm also extremely keen to destroy any lingering connections I have with old mates in the media business by asking: why do we need SBS? Can you tell me? I mean surely we don't need the news from Southern Mongolia, followed by the latest from Taiwan, Chile, Andorra, Cuba and so on? Anyone who is really interested in updates from these far flung places will surely find all they need on any one of their electronic devices. I appreciate that SBS does produce and re-play some excellent documentaries... I mean anybody who came up with that gloriously insane social farce HOUSOS deserves to be very honourably mentioned... but can't we just put SBS on a spare ABC channel or two? We can trim all of the pencil shufflers at the top and middle tier of the bureaucracy and cut the news completely. I know you're going to hate me for this but seriously there is so much diverse material from one side of the world to the other that is freely available these days.

I've had a few extra weeks now to digest one of the darkest chapters in our short political history... the political assassination of Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The plotters finalised their plans while the PM was overseas and then struck when least suspected. The conventional wisdom was clear, that no one would make such a traumatic move a week before a vital by-election, at Canning. I mean why would any LNP supporter put this key WA seat at further risk? Ah, but our conspirators were way ahead of the rest of us. They chose to strike because of that very reason, that no one was expecting an attack. This is Australian politics answer to Pearl Harbour. Malcolm Turnbull, hereafter known as Iago, and Julie "Lucrezia" Bishop took cunning and deception to a new height... er sorry depth. As we speak, hundreds of Liberals are resigning from the party, unable to believe this has happened. Iago attended a party meeting this week and people fell out of their chairs laughing when he spoke about unity. On the other hand, the latest polls show LNP voters believe Turnbull has a better chance of winning the next election than Abbott. Don't you just love politics? As the beloved Lennie said in Law and Order... "go figure?"

When Turnbull took over we all waited on his first words, explaining why he had moved to replace a Prime Minister. Surely, we thought Abbott must have done something absolutely horrendous to deserve this... something that the party simply had to address. Then Iago made his pronouncement... it was the opinion polls. They were really bad. He had to step in for the party's sake. Here was the rescuer, moving to save his party from internal collapse. (Anyone seeking further collaboration should go to their copy of Julia Gillard's speech after she shafted Kevin 07.) This is the same Iago who when asked at a doorstop a year or so back confidently told reporters that he paid no attention to opinion polls. They went up, he said, they went down... there is only one poll that counts. There was no change in fundamental policy... no dramatic departure from the Abbott programme, really. Just the odd peripheral change here and there. Iago grabbed power for one reason... HE WANTED THE POWER.

The Abbott thing has had me bemused for months and months. As I said earlier on there was this bizarre, orchestrated anti-Abbott campaign, championed by at least one major newspaper and one major, national radio/tv network.

But it was vitriolic. When Abbott's Stop the Boats campaign actually worked in a couple of weeks there were reporters who were virtually frothing at the mouth in very public anger.

I just couldn't and haven't been able to discover what this was all about.

Increasingly I ran into people... perfectly well educated, decent citizens... who laughingly derided the Prime Minister. People told me he was a "boofhead", a "goose", an international embarrassment.

When we discussed his economic programme they would collapse to the floor, unable to restrain their laughter and make various suggestions that Tony Abbott "wouldn't know the economy if he ran into it". I thought to myself... "I've missed something here"... so I returned to my Abbott biography.

Yep... no one had changed the PM's background. He was still a graduate of Sydney Uni with a double degree in Law and Economics and no one had withdrawn his BA, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Oxford with majors in Philosophy and Economics. I would have thought that stints at Australia's oldest Uni and at the world's oldest English speaking University would have meant that Tony must have picked up something... Nope, not good enough mate. Stick to your surfing. Forget those economics tutorials. (By the way, forget the regular University Ratings which show strange things like Melbourne Uni or the ANU being preferred as Australia's leading academic address. Trust me folks... it's SYDNEY. All of Asia... the Pacific and beyond. They desperately want to go to SYDNEY Uni. You stand in the middle of an Asian city and announce that you've got a double degree from Sydney Uni up for grabs and you'll be trampled to death in the rush. 30 seconds... that's all I'm giving you.)

But back to poor old Tony. What did he do while in office? Exactly what he said he'd do. He sealed our borders and stopped the gangs selling space on floating coffins coming out of Asia. He ended the carbon tax and the mining tax. And he addressed the economy with Trade Minister Andrew Robb signing Free Trade deals with Japan, South Korea and China (although the unions are desperate to contain the agreement with the Chinese, a debate which continues). As I write this Australia is finalising the Pacific Free Trade agreement â€“ massive deal â€“ and Andrew Robb is working on a Trade deal with India. Will Iago claim this as part of his programme?

I remain where I was when I started writing this... "bemused".

Paul Kelly, writing in the Weekend Australian, advised Abbott supporters to "get on with it" and put their backing behind the new PM. But he understood how many of them felt "after years of sneering at the poll-driven, media-grovelling superficiality of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor years, the Liberals have descended into the same sandpit."

And while I'm on a roll, losing friends, allow me to indulge myself even further. If Europe wants to save its civilisationâ€”which cannot survive dealing with over a million immigrants in a year - please ring Tony and Scott and get them to stop the boats. 80% of these people are economic migrants, paying criminal gangs to get them into Europe, where they can head for countries with strong welfare policies. If you want to know how to stop this calamitous exodus from the Middle East and Africa, just intercept the boat people and deal with them at their point of embarkation. Set up temporary protective areas for the genuine refugees, escaping from war zones, until they can be resettled in their country of origin. Do whatever it takes to feed, house and protect these people. Believe me, this will be much much cheaper and socially advantageous than the alternative. For the others, organise their safe return to their original countries where the citizens can establish a society which they don't want to leave. That is what you're supposed to do in a country... govern it properly for the good of all. There you go... how's that for political in-correctness?

Oh and back to radio... yes it's a bit shambolic here at the Media Centre... I have these memories of Brian Henderson doing Sunday afternoon radio, was it 2SM, which he shared with another well known jock back in the 50's. Can anyone remember this... where Hendo and the other announcer did the afternoon DJ shift, alternating every half hour? If so can you tell me what station and who the other guy was? I'd love to have that confirmed. Thanks.

Frank Avis continues his radio memoirs, amongst other things

2013-08-27T12:00:00+10:00

Wow, two chapters in quick succession after such a long interruption... What's going on here?

And not a medical bulletin in sight. We'll take this as another episode of the ravings of a former radio man... You tend to rave a bit in my industry. Some members even do it on air. I haven't altered my view that radio these days is overwhelmingly fake but have to admit that this concern is not shared by the audience who seem very happy with what they're getting.

Have you noticed that young kids are increasingly watching animated material... On their iPads, computers, even the major commercial movie successes for the under-17's appear to be animated product. As each year goes by we get fewer and fewer humans. Example "The Simpsons". Bart and Homer are the new reality and you have to wonder what is going to happen when these kids get into the 18 to 25 demographic. Will the new Seinfeld and Friends be animated? Take this a step further to start making predictions about radio. Will the day arrive when, with state-of-the-art technology near perfect, that the breakfast show on Mix 106.5 is done by a computer? There'll be the guy, the girl, the traffic reporter and the news presenter all done by the computer. It's the end of egos. No more hissy-fits and incredibly economical, needing just one nerd sitting at the controls. "Hal... Let me back into the control room... Why have you locked me out? Hal... Hal!"

"Sorry Dave but somebody had to do something about the ratings..."

Now, having given the ABC a bit of a spray in my memoirs it's only fair that I pay tribute where it is due in repeating my view that ABC NEWSRADIO is going really well considering how it was absolutely dreadful when it kicked off more than a decade ago. I tend to hear it in the evening when I'm bedding down for the night, listening to the quarter hour updates plus the input from the programme's partners, the BBC and US NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO. The show rolls on really well, the interviews are just enough but not too long and the presenters get better daily. I have a keen interest in its success because I'd tried from 1975 to interest commercial operators with the format, especially 3DB and 2GB.

But ABC NEWSRADIO is nothing like FRANK AVIS NEWSRADIO. The problem with the this sort of format in the commercial sector is that it is so expensive the host station needs to "on sell" it at least state wide and, in a perfect world, nationally. So most of these operations tend to see news from a national overview. That's so with most of the US formats and also the case with the ABC variation. You need it picked up nationally to make it work. My concept took the opposite view... My NEWSRADIO WAS TOTALLY LOCALLY BIASED. Hence it was only financially viable in the major markets. You couldn't syndicate my concept. You could sell a lot of its product but the buyer would have to tailor that material to suit his needs. That's labour intensive. It couldn't be pre-packaged by the originating station. My concept is LOCAL, unabashed, unapologetically so. If SYDNEY was deluged with 2 inches of rain in half an hour that would be my story... Without any qualification. It would be the only thing my audience wanted to know about. But it certainly wouldn't constitute the most important information for listeners in Adelaide, Perth or Bendigo.

This is the NEWSRADIO dilemma. How do you tailor the format to sell it nationally without compromising your local audience? One possibility is to aim your format straight at the listener in the host city and build in a 3 minute "local break" in the format hour where your affiliates can address their domestic issues. But I've listened to a few variations on this principle and from the affiliates point of view it just doesn't work. And often seems to demean the local news. It's sort of tacked on somewhere... Makes the locals feel as if they're down the bottom of the news food-chain.

The big issue of the day, as I write this chapter, is the Kevin and Julia Show. It's like Days of Our Lives and the Bold and the Surgically Enhanced, only it's real. It's happening in front of us. The ALP is tearing itself to pieces in full view of the voters. The one thing we'd all been asking is: Could Labor possibly replace another sitting Prime Minister? Having assassinated Kevin 07 would the party then be capable of doing a complete about-turn and knifing Julia Gillard? (Oh God I Iove this stuff... It's like Greek or Shakespearean Tragedy.) And the answer is: YES, YES. Not only would they do it, but THEY ACTUALLY HAVE... THEY'VE JUST DONE IT! Kevin 07, the man described by his own party as a psychopath, a narcissist, in fact I think one leading figure said he was "clinically insane"Â, is now back as Kevin 13. And here's the absolutely incredible thing: for a while I actually thought HE COULD WIN. Huh Huh Huh... Don't you love it! Kevin is back walking the walk while his ALP opponents retire in droves. I've lost count of the Labor MPs who are jumping ship or joining the mutiny against Captain Gillard. There was Bill Shorten - Julia's staunchest supporter and one of the insiders who help bring Rudd down in 2010 - going on national TV telling the world he'd just informed Julia he was going to vote for Kevin in order to save the party. There were rats and traitors everywhere. Remember when Julia knifed Kevin in 2010 and how he was totally humiliated, in full public view? Remember how we wondered why he didn't just get out... Why would he stay on with that lot for Heaven's sake? REVENGE, dear reader, plain old REVENGE. And he got it. He knifed Julia and then watched her totally humiliated in public... On TV, on the front pages... BBC's lead story do you mind? Now, that's humiliation.

And Kevin, for a week or two, really turned the opinion polls around. Out there on the street they were chanting, "Kevin... Kevin... Kevin," and Tony was near invisible. But my political friends just winked and said, "The honeymoon's going to end soon." And it has. Labor's stocks are declining weekly as we head into the run home. You know things are turning nasty when a radio station revamps the lyrics of the Platters classic, The Great Pretender, to become, "Oh oh oh... Yes, Rudd's the Great Pretender... Dooby dooby."

Can a party sack two sitting Prime Ministers in 6 years and survive? Can a party be driven with unremitting venom and vitriol and survive? Er, probably not but it'll be wonderful drama on election night. And I still have this gut feeling that it's going to be a lot closer than the polls suggest. I'll be transfixed watching on 9 or maybe the new Fox Election Channel? Dooby dooby do...