September 1, 2010: Cammie King Conlon, 76, US child actor who played Bonnie Blue, the daughter of Rhett Butler and Scarlett O'Hara, in the 1939 epic Gone With the Wind. She also voiced a character in Bambi, in 1942, but never worked in movies again.
Link: NBC

Are television stations becoming irrelevant? When we thought of television just a few years ago, it was often in terms of the most successful network. For example, in the US it was NBC's Thursday-night lineup of great comedies; here in Australia Channel 9 was a powerhouse across the board. There was an audience out there that almost never changed channels. Now, the focus is very much on individual shows. MasterChef is the perfect example: with it, Channel Ten earned supreme ratings glory, without it, Ten was relegated to fourth place on some nights. The fact is that, despite the stations' sneaky attempts to keep us glued (usually by running popular shows beyond their scheduled finish time), we are more willing than ever to switch stations to follow the programs we like. We'll also record, time-shift and download the shows we want to see and often, horror upon horror, fast-forward through the ads). That's why the longterm future for successful TV networks won't be as simple broadcasters, but as producers and distributors of the content people want to see. In the short term, though, they are creating digital channels in the hope that their mix of reruns and cult-appeal first-run shows will attract the audience members who aren't tuning in to the main stations. Eventually, though, we'll all be able to download legally whatever we want whenever we want. The channels' biggest hope then will be to create more and more "event" television, like MasterChef, that relies on us all watching it at once, tweeting about it as we go, and chatting about it over the watercooler the next day.

Savetheregent.com's Brett Debritz was on the Jamie Dunn and Ian Calder show on Radio 4BC this morning reacting to Sustainability Minister Kate Jones's dismissal of the 6000-plus-signature Save the Regent epetition. The audio is here. If you want to take a stand against the minister, email her and contact your local Member of Parliament, reminding them that you vote and you want to Save the Regent even if Kate Jones, Anna Bligh, Paul Lucas and Stirling Hinchliffe do not. There's a full list of contact details for Queensland MPs here.

August 30, 2010: Victoria Longley, 49, Australian actress who had a distinguished stage career and mentored young television actors, of breast cancer. Her own TV career included roles in Wildside, Young Lions, Water Rats and All Saints while her stage credits included King Lear, The Vertical Hour, and The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?
Link: SMH

This is from www.telegraph.co.uk. Sir Sean Connery really is looking great for 80.

In journalism, it's variously called a "write-off" (or "woff"), a "blurb", a "gofirst" or a "standfirst" - a short, snappy line that summarises or teases a story and, hopefully, encourages people to keep reading. Some sub-editors are very good at writing them, to the point where the standfirsts oversell the story and reading on only sets up the reader for disappointment. Some blurbs, rather like the one I've cut from brisbanetimes.com.au and pasted here, miss the point. Surely the big news about Matthew Newton is not how he worked so hard for months and will now miss the chance to host The X-Factor, it's the fact that he had a spectacular metldown (not his first) and allegedly beat up his (now ex) girlfriend Rachel Taylor, who has taken out an AVO and vowed to press charges, and was consequently dumped by the show and by his own management. I don't think anybody is, as the blurb seems to imply, standing around the barbecue today discussing how unlucky Newton is. (Apart from the one X-Factor wannabe quoted in the story.) In fact, I suspect many people will, like News Ltd writer Paul Kent, vigorously take another tack. My opinion? Newton probably is ill, in which case he needs treatment, but that shouldn't be allowed to overshadow what he's (allegedly) done. We should all take a reality check on who the victim really is.
PS: Yes, the blurb is supposed to summarise the story at hand, but it doesn't even really do that. Maybe "X-Factor contestant defends hard-working Matthew Newton"?

In a week that has already seen Australian networks Seven and Ten announce new digital channels (7-mate and Channel Eleven), Britain's Channel 4 has unveiled its autumn season with at least one idea we'll undoubtedly be seeing in the antipodes soon. Channel 4, which is screening its final series of Big Brother, is to launch a "docu-soap" called Seven Days in Notting Hill. According to the Guardian, "viewers will see events that have only just taken place [and] will also be able to give online advice to the people in the show". I imagine Ten or one of the other Australian networks is already eyeing "Seven Days in Bondi Beach". Channel 4's schedule will also feature comedy series from Morgana Robinson (described as "Kenny Everett without the beard"), Frankie Boyle (a Scottish comedian who was the standout performer in the panel show Mock the Week, which hasn't screened here) and Robert Webb (solo, without his higher-profile partner David Mitchell). I'd like to think Australian audiences will be seeing all of that somewhere sooner rather than later.

Reports that Hamish Blake and Andy Lee (pictured) are quitting their drivetime show, which blitzes the ratings every weekday in every major metropolitan market across the nation, is bad news for the Austereo's Today radio network. It's hard to imagine another act, local or networked, that could garner such consistently high ratings. Of course, it also presents an opportunity for other stations to even the playing field in the afternoons, and that's got to be a good thing for the medium. I'd like to think we'll get some strong local shows, but I fear networking is inevitable. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if 2011 is the year that one commercial network attempts a national breakfast show. I know they've failed in the past, but the times they are a'changing. The shame for Austereo is that, if anybody could do it, it would have been Hamish and Andy.
P.S. One last thing about H&A: they proved that you don't have to be obnoxious to score big listener numbers. They'll be missed.
P.P.S. The duo will still be heard on Austereo one day a week.

Cirque du Soleil is returning to Australian next year, with a fresh production of Saltimbanco, the show that introduced Australians to the Cirque experience 12 years ago. Rather than under the big top, it'll be in theatre mode at entertainment centres. Dates include Perth in April, Melbourne in May and Brisbane and Sydney in July. Tickets on sale October 18. Details here.

August 23, 2010: George David Weiss, 89, US songwriter whose hits included What a Wonderful World, The Lion Sleeps Tonight and Can't Help Falling In Love.
Link: BBC

A brief beef: I am sick of seeing and hearing news items where local governments are referred to simply as "council" without an article. Would we write or say something like: "Mr Bloggs said bank would put up interest rates"? No. Yet we often read or hear in the media the likes of: "Cr Nerk said council would approve the project." I know public servants and politiicans speak this way but that's no reason for media professionals to follow suit mindlessly.

Some further comments on Anna Bligh's responses regarding the Regent at People's Question Time:
1) Under the Heritage Act no listed areas can technically be demolished or altered radically. Ms Bligh's claim of intervening to save the facade and staircase areas is bunkum. It was already heritage listed and "protected".
2) The Regent has recently been commercially unviable, but arguably that was because its operators were not motivated as they have other premises nearby at the Myer Centre. We know there are other cinema operators who would give their eye teeth to take the Regent as is, and make it a goer.
3) Why no mention of the Brisbane International Film Festival? It operated successfully at the Regent for 17 years and now lacks a home.
4) If the Regent has failed as a commercial cinema and people are crying out for more theatre space here, why not take the perfect opportunity to negotiate with the building's owners for a multipurpose theatre to go in there instead of a carpark and and tower lobby?
5) It might be privately owned but the Regent is a building of state significance and iconic status. The wishes of the community to save and continue the Regent as a proper cinema should be taken into account by the owners and the government.
6) Ms Bligh should look at the thriving live theatre scene in Melbourne, which is due to the number and variety of commercially viable venues. We need more venues so more big shows can come here to Brisbane, not just a larger Lyric Theatre stage.

Premier Anna Bligh faced some tricky questions about the Regent at People's Question Time on August 18. The full audio and transcripts are here, but here's what was said about the Regent:

MODERATOR: ... And certainly one of the most popular questions that was asked online was about the Regent Theatre in Brisbane, and there’s a question for the Premier: Kim, Bonnie, David, Lara, Michael, Belinda, Prue, Thomas, Daniel, and Brett are all interested in this issue but Damon of Red Hill says “Given that Premier Anna Bligh stated that the Regent Building is one of the last pieces of the cultural history of early life in our city, why was a February 2008 ministerial directive which protected the entire Regent Building rescinded in February 2009 in favour of a development which does not meet best practice standards for the preservation of a historic site.

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Scott Mayman has moved on from ABC Coast FM on the Gold Coast following a reorganisation of the station. I'm told that Mayman's afternoon Chillout show has been axed in favour of a networked show to be heard on both the Gold and Sunshine Coasts. Coast FM, which started out as a unique member of Aunty's local radio family, now also takes Steve Austin's night show from Brisbane, along with the networked Conversation Hour with Richard Fidler, Nghtlife with Tony Delroy, Overnights with Trevor Chappell, AM, PM and The World Today. My source says Mayman, on whose show I used to be a regular guest a few years ago, is now working as an Australian correspondent for CBS News in the US, where he once worked. The change comes just short of Mayman's 25th anniversary as a broadcaster. I hear a celebratory program may soon go to air on another station.

August 15, 2010: Robert Wilson, 53, bassist with US funk group The Gap Band. Their hits included Oops Up Side Your Head, Big Fun and Party Lights.
Link: BBC

We journalists are a sensitive breed. We take it personally when people say bad things about our profession or our particular medium. In fact, we often get so emotional in defending ourselves that we don't do what we're trained to do -- and that's look clearly and objectively at the facts. For years now, many newspaper journos have had their heads in the sand about the implications of declining circulation. If they are not in denial about it -- and how could you be when you look at the figures -- they are full of wacky ideas about how they can reverse the trend. The sad fact is that the decline of newspapers is terminal, it's just a matter of when the plug will be pulled. Specialist publicaions may have a little longer, but it's likley that print will be dead within a decade or two. This doesn't mean newspaper journalists are necessarily doing a bad job, it means the demand is for online delivery. All very good -- except that too many online consumers expect their news for free, and it's near-on impossible to deliver a quality product for nothing. In the UK, the Daily Mail may have found a formula that works -- but it's too early yet to say whether advertising alone can support the major mastheads as we know them. Even if it does, further staff cuts are inevitable -- and, of course, that will impact on quality. It's hard to know what to make of Rupert Murdoch's plan to introduce a national "newspaper" for delivery on iPads, but some commentators have already written it off. At least Murdoch is putting his money where his mouth is and giving it a go. And, by doing so -- and by constructing paywalls around some of his existing online products -- he's acknowledging the thing many of his own employees can't accept: that newspapers are living on borrowed time.

I was complaining on Twitter recently about the trouble I've been having with video on the websites of Australia's two biggest newspaper publishers. On the Fairfax sites (including brisbanetimes.com.au and smh.com.au), videos auto-load after a short delay in which, if I can find the right place to click, I can switch them off. Videos on the News Ltd sites (news.com.au and its subsidiaires) give me the option to watch or not but they take an age to load (and I'm not a patient person, so I often abandon my attempts). Neither situation, I ventured in a Tweet, is ideal. One of my tweeps said video has no place on newspaper sites. I disagree. I think they should offer video -- and, inevitably, they will have to do so just to be able to compete -- but they should invest more not just on the content (which can be amateurish) but on getting the technology right. Then I remembered one provincial newspaper where I worked as a younger man, where the IT guy (as he would be called today) was a slacker who deliberately made maintaining the very basic computer system seem more difficult than it really was. Because nobody else on staff knew much about computers, he'd created a nice little earner for himself and his secret knowledge. Of course, nowadays there are many different technologies at play and different delivery platforms to consider, so the job is genuinely difficult. But the fact is, they've got to do it. If the product doesn't work to the expectations of the potential readers, they will go somewhere else. A technological failure could sink a masthead just as easily as an editorial error.

August 14, 2010: Abbey Lincoln, 84, US jazz singer, songwriter and actress whose hits included ou Gotta Pay the Band, recorded with Stan Getz, and Devil's Got Your Tongue. She was also active in the civil-rights movement.
Link: Shanghai Daily

August 9, 2010: George DiCenzo, 71, US actor, commercial and cartoon voiceover artist and producer who appeared in more than 30 films including g Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Back to the Future and About Last Night.
Link: Wikipedia

In the official radio ratings survey 5 for Brisbane released today, B105 remains no. 1 overall, with 612ABC's Spencer Howson still king of breakfast. Overall, the top four were B105, 97.3FM, Nova 106.9, 612ABC and Triple M. It was a solid result for 97.3, whose Robin, Terry and Bob also came fourth in breakfast after Howson, B105's Labby, Camilla and Stav, and Nova's Meshel, Tim and Marty. 612ABC also had a good survey, adding points across the day, with Steve Austin being particularly strong in the evenings. After recent gains, 4BC has slipped back marginally overall and in the breakfast shift, where Jamie Dunn is now in sixth place ahead of 4BH and 4KQ. Stablemates BC and BH had the biggest losses overall. In the Sydney results, covering the periods May 9 to June 12 and June 27 to Ju1y 31, the top three were 2GB, ABC702 and 2Day. The two leaders both had falls, but not enough to topple them. Biggest gainer overall and in breakfast was 2UE, while WSFM also added audience in breakfast. Nova held steady in breakfast, with a slight rise overall, and Classic Rock and Triple M slipped slightly. In Melbourne, 3AW held its big league, followed by ABC774 and Fox FM. Triple M, home of Eddie Maguire, slipped marginally overall and in breakfast. Newcomer MTR ranked at the tailend, but it wasn't on air for the full survey. The networked Hamish and Andy show continued to blitz allcomers in the drive shift.
Disclosure: Until today, Brett Debritz was a regular on the 612ABC breakfast show with Spencer Howson. He will be watching future surveys with great interest.