Taking live calls without a seven second delay is like driving without a seatbelt. Or having unprotected sex with a stranger. Merrick and Rosso found out the hard way in June 2006 when a woman purporting to be a prostitute suddenly named then NSW Treasurer Michael Costa as one of her clients, live on air. The out of court settlement is rumoured to have cost their employer hundreds of thousands of dollars. So why do many FM announcers, like cabbies, consider it as some sort of badge of honour to travel without the simple apparatus that could save their broadcasting lives in the event of the type of emergency that occurred on 2Day when a 14 year old girl was badgered into admitting she had been raped at the age of 12?
radioinfo put that question to Austereo management. As yet, we have not received a reply.
All we have is what Kyle Sandilands told the SMH,‘‘We’re not on a time delay, but even if we were, I wouldn’t have dumped the segment. There was no breach of any radio code. What I’m most annoyed about is that some of the press have jumped on this and made it out to be a stunt and a ratings ploy.’’
Poor Kyle! And we thought that the 14 year old girl was the victim.
What Kyle and Content Director Guy Dobson know is that ratings are unlikely to suffer. For every listener who says they’ll never listen to Kyle & Jackie O again, most will have lied and many more will tune in just to hear what obscenity K & J come up with tomorrow – even some who called other stations to express their moral outrage.
By Monday, this will all be old news, but Kyle may not get out of this scott free. Television is another context and Australian Idol viewers may see Kyle in a different light.
And then there’s the sometimes slow but always persistent watchdog, ACMA, who insist they can do nothing unless they receive a formal complaint from a member of the public – which can only be considered after said member complains to 2Day-FM and is then dissatisfied with the response.
You can bet that Austereo’s spin doctors are busy crafting a canned “satisfying” response to the many complaints they have already received. You can also bet that no matter how good that response is, some people will not be satisfied and will eventually prod the watchdog into action.
What do you think? Does your station take live calls without delay? Will this incident change their mind?
Should a seven second delay be mandatory for stations taking live calls or doing live stunts with strangers?
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