It’s been a big week for Radio. It dominated the media thanks to comments made by two of its highest profile megaphones, Kyle Sandilands and Alan Jones. Jones was nailed by ACMA for breaching the industry codes on factual accuracy and for not providing sufficient opportunity for significant viewpoints on a topic. Kyle was nailed in the court of public opinion for his remarks about a journalist who correctly pointed out that his new TV show had tanked.  So what’s new? The fact that the advertisers that underpin his employment and personal lifestyle have deserted him in droves. Ray Hadley also got a run this week for his slanging match with climate change advocate Professor Tim Flannery. And who could forget the judgement in late September against arguably Australia’s biggest megaphone Andrew Bolt, nailed by Justice Mordecai Bromberg, for contravening section 18 (c) of the Racial Discrimination Act in two articles published in the Herald Sun in 2009 suggesting that fair skinned aboriginals were unfairly claiming aboriginal status to gain entitlements that should rightly go to their darker skinned cousins.

While the Hadley vs Flannery brawl has yet to draw a penalty, what these incidents have in common is that they have all involved deeply personal and vitriolic attacks on individuals. In football parlance, “they have played the man and not the ball.”

The other thing they have in common is that while the protagonists may claim that it is an issue of freedom of speech, its really about business – the business of giving an audience what they want via a format that’s been proven to work.

In the case of Kyle, he was reacting to a story by Alison Stephenson on news.com.au that panned his and Jackie O’s TV show ‘A Night With the Stars’. The show, which started with 1.6 million viewers and ended with a paltry 250,000 was, by any rational measure, a disaster.

But while Ms Stephenson focused her criticism on the show itself, Kyle chose to respond by attacking her, personally, on his 2Day breakfast program saying, “You’ve got a nothing job anyway. You’re a piece of shit. You’re supposed to be impartial, you little troll. You’re a bullshit artist, girl. You should be fired from your job. Your hair’s very ’90s. And your blouse. You haven’t got that much titty to be having that low cut a blouse. Watch your mouth or I’ll hunt you down.”

In the past, such outbursts by Kyle, while sparking outrage among non-listeners, has only served to strengthen his appeal with core listeners. No problem there. But this time it’s costing his employer money as advertisers pull the pin. Some observers say that it will all blow over and the advertisers will return. But they can’t keep coming and going every time Kyle opens his mouth and lets out a howler. And even in the short term an advertiser boycott could cost tens of thousands a day.

As one observer suggested to us, Kyle could have defused the problem with a heart-felt apology rather than one that merely implied that he felt sorry that Ms Stephenson is so thin skinned that she took offence where none was intended. Perhaps a bunch of flowers and a bottle of bubbly, personally delivered to her by Kyle saying that he had had a very bad day and had lost his head and regrets every word and seeks forgiveness would have kept sponsors, public and other stakeholders at bay.

The business dilemma facing SCA management now is that having nurtured Kyle’s bad boy image, will he have to mend his ways to retain his sponsors but lose audience as he loses his bite – which will, in turn, lose sponsors?

The Alan Jones case draws this dilemma into even sharper relief. Neither talk network, MRN or Fairfax would be drawn on the ramifications of the ACMA decision but It could impact on the way that they do business as much, or perhaps more, than the cash-for-comment inquiry has.

The full story and ACMAs finding is a little complex to detail here but briefly, it involves Alan Jones last year taking the side of a farmer who claimed he was being victimised by the (then) NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change for allegedly clearing land in contravention of native vegetation laws.

Jones let fly at the department calling them, “scumbags that run around preying on productive people.” Moreover, he named an individual employee of the department. It was alleged that Jones intimidated him by repeatedly calling him a “turkey” and making statements such as, “he better start checking the address of his nearest Centrelink office” and “this bloke (name of DECC employee) who’s giving you grief, we’ll find out where he goes next.”

Although the complaint (by an un-named complainant to ACMA) that such statements were “likely to incite, encourage or present for its own sake violence or brutality” were dismissed, the other two that 2GB had breached the commercial radio codes of practice by “failing to present factual material accurately and by not making reasonable efforts to present significant viewpoints” were upheld.

Curiously, this was the first time ever such breaches had been found against a station, perhaps because no one had bothered to file a formal complaint before. Ironically, although the first complaint failed, arguably the other two may never have been lodged in the first place had Jones not resorted to a personal attack on a public servant who saw no other recourse than to complain to ACMA.

The same scenario could be argued in the case of Andrew Bolt. As onerous as his opinion about fair-skinned aboriginals, as a group, may be to some, his right to express it is incontrovertible. What precipitated his run-in with Justice Bromberg was that he chose to give as examples nine individuals, who he named. They took personal offence and decided to sue. At that point Bolt’s opinion was not valid unless backed by facts – which on several occasions, he got wrong.

With its findings ACMA has set a number of benchmarks…

• There is a difference between what it considers to be fact versus opinion and the two should not be confused on-air.

• Material presented as facts should be correct at time of broadcast or corrected if they subsequently turn out to be wrong.

• Strong opinion of one view must be balanced by an alternative view.

Although this may sound fair and reasonable for current affairs programming, it is not a recipe for a successful talkback format. If these are to be the new benchmarks, rigidly enforced, then talk stations have a problem.

Although they may not like to admit it, in the same way professional sport attracts fans, talk radio works best when it harnesses the innate tribalism among its listeners. 

It’s all about Us versus Them. Us being right-minded, hard working Aussie battlers who vote Liberal. Them being Labor and Greens voting bleeding hearts who want to destroy this country with multiculturalism and a carbon tax. Like professional sport, its not about giving Them an opportunity to convince Us of their view. Its about Us attacking Them at every opportunity with our view. And if that attack becomes personal, all the better. 

In future, talk stations may have to temper those personal attacks that have lately become the stock-in-trade for some announcers because although 2GB was exonerated on the incitement to violence complaint, clearly if they keep targeting individuals, those they offend are likely to use the ACMA route to pepper the station with ‘fact and balance’ complaints, trivial or otherwise.

We’ll find out more over coming months as ACMA processes several other similar complaints that are already in the pipeline.

Whether you agree with this analysis or not, most pundits will tell you, “conservative works, (small L) liberal doesn’t.” That’s not a social observation. It’s a business one.

If talk radio is made to conform to the industry codes that ACMA has now upheld regarding facts and balance, Alan Jones may end up having to sound more like Q & A’s Tony Jones.