Media Watch’s new slogan: ‘We don’t do last minute’
While Dr Mumbo’s proudest possession (until somebody nicked it) was his Media Watch 20 year anniversary mug with the slogan “Everybody loves it until they’re on it”, he suspects that host Jonathan Holmes has just coined a new one.
In a series of testy exchanges with viewers puzzled why one of the most dramatic days in 21st century Australian media had passed without mention on the show, Holmes had an intriguing explanation for the lack of Fairfax coverage: “We don’t do last minute at Media Watch.”
Jonathan Holmes vs Twitter
Media watch host Jonathan Holmes gets increasingly testy with Twitter followers as they criticise the lack of coverage of Fairfax’s restructure on ABC1’s Media Watch
Storified by Tim Burrowes · Tue, Jun 19 2012 02:50:07
Even with their outrageous staffing levels, still couldn’t pull something together to fill a full 15 minutes.
Must be tough working in the public sector…
I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal that Media Watch didn’t cover Fairfax. The story’s not going to go away next week, and it’s not like there was a shortage of coverage.
Count the staff on MediaWatch’s credits – they have, like, 30 people listed. Maybe they could transfer a bunch of them to News24 – who does do ‘last minute’ news with too few resources
Testy or not, I like the fact he’s engaging with his Twitter audience.
Agree with the above comments, MW is incredibly well-resourced compared to other shows, there are many ABC staffers who are very jealous of MW resourcing.
It also shows lack of foresight, the FFX announcement was on the cards for yonks and in the diary for at least a week. MW would have known this would be big, should have planned for HOW to cover it and deliver what audiences expect, even as a lead into Lateline, which would have been a boost to Lateline as well.
Let’s hope that The Powers That Be read this for what it is, MW being a little too comfy and spoiled, and give them a good shake-up!
There’s a very good piece about this on the TV Tonight website. In short, MW would not have added anything to the story that had not already been canvassed on the 7pm News (particularly Alan Kohler’s excellent comment piece) or on 7:30, and subsequently on Lateline.
i think you’ll find that many of the staff on the credits are backroom staff – librarians, sound people, etc. The cleaners might even get a guernsey. Jonathan has said publicly that he has three researchers who help him prepare very detailed and thorough scripts every week. Don’t think you could really call that ‘outrageous staffing levels’.