Bolt to buddy up with Price in Melbourne radio wars
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Is Andrew Bolt poised to spearhead John Singleton’s assault on the Melbourne airwaves, defecting from talk titan 3AW for a prominent on-air role with the revamped 3MP? In the latest radio power-play aimed at breaking Fairfax-owned 3AW’s long-time monopoly on the city’s commercial talk radio market, Crikey understands that Australia’s self-declared most popular newspaper columnist and conservative commentator will soon join fellow Fairfax defector Steve Price at the new venture. Bolt failed to appear on his usual breakfast slot on the Fairfax-owned 3AW yesterday, adding to frenzied speculation he would soon announce the move. Last week, Macquarie said that 2UE presenter (and former 3AW talker and program manager) Steve Price, whose contract expires at the end of the month, will be the face of 3MP as it emerges from the ratings wilderness. Pacific Star, Macquarie’s partner in the new station, is refusing to comment. Chief executive Barrie Quick advised Crikey to ring back tomorrow for an “update” on the situation. Quick has previously said he was in the process of poaching a number of high-profile personalities and opinion leaders to spearhead the on-air assault. Yesterday, Bolt posted this blog in advance of the 3AW no-show, sparking rampant speculation in the comment string that 3MP would emerge as Bolt’s new home. He said:
Hey Hey It’s Saturday funnyman and 3AW regular John Blackman then posted a link on his website to Bolt’s blog musing on the irony of the poaching, with AW breakfast host Ross Stevenson remaining good friends with Price from his time on the station. There was no mention yesterday of Bolt’s absence from either Stevenson or breakfast co-host John Burns yesterday. The 3MP transformation will finally bring competition to the Melbourne talk radio market, which currently has no second commercial talk station. Since Fairfax purchased Southern Cross Broadcasting for $480 million in 2007, 3AW and sister station Magic 1278 have been responsible for the vast majority of its radio earnings. For years, 3AW’s advertising monopoly has been considered ripe for the picking. Media analyst Roger Coleman, who holds Pacific Star shares, told Crikey Fairfax has gouged $16 million from the Melbourne radio market last year with total earnings for the radio division at $25.9 million. Coleman says the poaching of Bolt makes sense because of the “cultural schism” between Fairfax and the shock-jock philosophy north of the Murray, which 3MP will attempt to import into Victoria. Coleman likened the 3MP salvo as a replay of Macquarie Radio Network’s attack on 2UE in 2002 when Macquarie famously poached Alan Jones for $40 million. Last October, Crikey reported tensions were growing between Fairfax and Bolt, with speculation a studio would be built at the Herald and Weekly Times building at Southbank if he was to continue his Tuesday morning appearances with Stevenson and Burns. 3AW shares a new building with The Age and insiders say Herald Sun owners the Herald and Weekly Times would be happy to finally free Bolt from the clutches of a commercial rival. A regular radio slot might mean Bolt would have to reduce his commitment to his Herald Sun column and blog, which is updated feverishly between the hours of 6am and midnight. |
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29 Comments
“Australia’s self-declared most popular newspaper columnist”
Surely he meant: “Australia’s most populist and defiantly ignorant loudmouth”.
Truth in journalism requires that he immediately correct the record. Otherwise I might never be able to believe anything he says.
My desperate desire to believe in him must be, umm … I dunno … nanometres deep.
Looks like someone else had the scoop:
All new 3MP Talk Radio welcomes Andrew Bolt, Morning 9 til Noon.
Please tell me you don’t have to drive to Frankston every day though?
Jay Santos (Reply)
Tue 16 Feb 10 (06:48am)
I always thought MPM was one of Australia’s most ignorant and populist loudmouths on the Crikey pages.
Bolt like a lot of the RWDB who post on here has severe difficulty with the truth,wonder how long before one of their heroes Ackerman is forced to print a retraction or will he cost Murdock a few more millions
David Sanderson: Do not read his column, do not listen to his show. It’s simple, return to doing whatever it is you do. We all know loony lefty’s can’t handle the truth, they wish to live life as they would like it to be, not as it really is. This isn’t James Cameron’s fantasy land!
“Something that will appeal to many bloggers”. Things that appeal to Bolt’s bloggers include fascism and racial supremacy, so forgive me for not getting excited by that hint.
JOHNFROMPLANETEARTH, thanks for the advice but I don’t do any of those things. But I have had to endure his doltish ravings about climate change on ‘Insiders’.
His ideas are similar to yours. Who thought up all that rubbish first?
I think the words ‘self-declared’ sum it all up really.
So, instead of not listening to the Blot on 3AW we will now be able to not listen to him on 3 MP!!! Hooray!
Bolt/Price.
Is this a new angle added onto the axis of evil?
Another spoke in the wheel of (climate change) destruction?
Or just a couple of empty windbags farting in the breeze?
“…Or just a couple of empty windbags farting in the breeze?…”
You sound jealous.
Anything more constructive to add?
I wonder what it is like to have a Most Pathetic Mind?
I daresay it is not much fun at all.
I wonder what it is like to have a Most Pathetic Mind?
Well, for one thing, you’d spam up comment blogs with pointless insults and baseless assertions, then criticise others for not being constructive.
What does that make you,The Village idiot MPM
@David Sanderson & John Ryan
Doesn’t say much when all you have left is to scream childish names.
I can tell you were both bullied at school.
Doesn’t say much when all you have left is to scream childish names.
ROFL. Guess who gave us these wise and constructive gems:
19/1/10 - The Tote was “having issues” because it was run by a stupid idiot. Are you and he related?
9/2/10 - Nobody does incomprehensible babbling and class envy quite like the Jezztards. Rinse. Repeat. Yawn.
9/2/10 - You both must be looking for the Hannah Montana blog…plenty of deep and profound usernames over there. And it only costs £1.49 to join.
14/12/09 - That sounds a likely peaceful demonstration from a rabble of misanthropic and unflushable turds.
22/1/10 - Adults are talking. Do you need a cloth? A bib perhaps?
Did you answer “a flaming hypocrite who’s run out of strawmen”? You’d be right, of course, but you can get even more specific. Or, if you’re not convinced, we could even go to the SECOND Google search page for more examples of mature discourse.
I’m just glad the Poison Dwarf is no longer on Sydney radio but wonder who listens to his replacement Lieberbland.
Sancho…yet another stalker.
Thanks for highlighting those posts where I respond in kind to stupid childish name calling.
Tellingly, they are often yours. But I see your all out of ‘talics.
Get a life. Really.
Best to ignore MPM no matter how tempting it is to respond to her provocations. Responding to a troll only feeds her peculiar psychological needs.
Heh. You’re right, MPM. The HTML tags are giving me gip. I have to rely instead on referenced and accurate statements of facts. I’m sure you won’t sink to my level.
As for being a “stalker”, I consider it more of a pest control service. I come here to engage in informed discourse with adults, then you turn up and massively reduce the signal-to-noise ratio of a thread by spraying it with hollow posts that amount to nothing more than “whatever Tony Abbott says is right. Anyone who disagrees is wrong. I assert that X is true, and refuse to offer any evidence for my assertions because I assume that reality must match my preconceptions.”
As for who was bullied at school, I can see, MPM, that you’re as informed on matters psychological as you are on the coal-to-gas engineering process.
What you’re exhibiting is the psychological defence mechanism known as “projection”, where you see in others qualities that you dislike in yourself. How do I know? Science, my friend.
In 2006 a landmark longitudinal study was published which clearly demonstrated that, “children who at age 4 were described by their teachers as “self-reliant, energetic, somewhat dominating, relatively under-controlled and resilient” identified as politically liberal 20 years later. …Conversely, children described as “feeling easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited and relatively over-controlled and vulnerable” favored conservative politics when they grew up.”
Basically, weak, bullied kids become conservative while strong, dominant kids become liberal. Sort of explains why conservatives rant so much about strength and determination: they lack it, and know it.
There’s a layman’s run-down here: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4176/is_20060326/ai_n16174533/
Elsewhere, Jonathon Haidt sums up your situation nicely: “psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.” Link: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt08/haidt08_index.html
If that doesn’t sound like MPM in a nutshell, nothing does.
So, assuming that you don’t get a life - you post here far more often than I do, sweetie - I’ll keep pointing out the crass and simplistic errors in your statements, your peculiar aversion to verifiable evidence, your complete inability to comprehend complex data, your consistent conflation of dogma with objective fact, routine substitution of abuse for arguments, and the piles and piles of outlandish rubbish you just make up because you desperately want to believe it. How does that sound to you?
Andrew Bolt has been caught lying so many times its unbelievable he has such a following. Further to this if you don’t buy his lie according to him you are left wing.
If no one minds, I’d like to drag this conversation down a touch and point out that Andrew Bolt has a laughably effeminate voice.
Moving on, I’m thinking this move will fail for Bolt. We’ve all seen him beat up on people in his blogs and columns, and wave papers around on TV as though he’s an expert on whatever the subject is, but he will find talkback difficult, for the simple reason his opinions will be open to real time criticism.
Lots of people will be doing their homework and lining up to give him a tap on the snout.
Cheers.
Deepfry - they’ve probably already installed a heavy-duty, big red mute/dump button on exceptionally long delay to screen live calls.
Two tossers together….I’ll ignore them both equally.
I remember when Steve Price was in the Thunderbirds’….he hasn’t changed a bit!
As the clever Frontline put it (not an accurate quote!) ” you have a D E audience you appeal to their prejudices, Aborigines are no good drunks, immigrants are taking their jobs, Asian students are taking their kids places at uni…” and the dumb just keep getting dumber. Bolt on radio! makes the movie Idiocracy seem more and more plausible!
The Bolter, ponce personified…if ever there was an individual full of their own importance and pompous patheticness, he wins hands down…a knob of the first order.
Incidently Akerman has responded to the towelling he received on Media Watch last Monday and articles elsewhere and here in Crikey
http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/piersakerman/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/malicious_bullets_fired_by_the_global_warmists_guns/
It looks like a few people are a little worried about the Price/Bolt combination.
I’m not particularly fond of Price, definitely has small man syndrome, nevertheless Bolt will stir the pot and keep the left wing loons on their toes. Good on him for doing it too, the Stalinists on here will be fuming!
Funny you should bring up Stalin. Stalin liked to invent science or twist it to suit his ideological preferences. Bolt does the same thing to a degree that Stalin could only dream about.
2 David Sanderson - you bet @ Johnnotfromanyplanetanywherenearearth -stalinists?! heeheh you are funny! Bolt will stir the pot eh -yeah the intolerant, illiogical, racist, climate denying, anti poor, anti everyone who doesn’t worship the god of money pot. gimme a break, anyone who believes in Bolt needs their head read,…