‘Stop f***ing with this wonderful medium’: Adam Ferrier makes powerful statement at HEARD

For the first ten minutes of his talk at Commercial Radio & Audio’s HEARD 2024 conference this morning, Ferrier had the lights off in the room, and didn’t even come on stage – all to stress the importance of the power of audio.

It was an effective demonstration of the show-stopping power of the medium, as was Ferrier’s blasting of NWA’s infamous Fuck Tha Police. He recounted how he felt when triple j played the song nonstop for 24 hours in 1989 to protest music censorship – like he was “a part of something”.

When he finally did come on stage, he felt he himself was a distraction to the talk.

He tried an exercise toward the start he admitted could go “balls up”, where he asked people to stare at the person next to them while he talked – in order to tap into what they are seeing and feeling.

The point, for advertisers and creatives?

“To get back to trying to capture the feeling of radio,” Ferrier says, “and if you’re an advertiser, using that in a really powerful sense – because it is arguably the most emotional and powerful medium, if you think about any revolution, or ‘Fuck Tha Police’ and all that kind of stuff, they’ve got so much emotion.”

HEARD 2024 is running this morning, at the Ivy in Sydney. We’ll have more coverage of the event in coming days. Keep an eye on the site.

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topics Adam Ferrier HEARD 2024 NWA Triple J

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Comments: 1

Dr Dre 15 Feb 24

triple j played ‘Express Yourself’ for 24 hours in 1990. They were told not to play ‘Fuck Tha Police’ and protested with a different N.W.A. track. Doesn’t change Adam’s point, but lots of people misremember what happened.

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