22 March 2010

Salt in the wound

Just two months after publicly calling on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to submit to a vote of confidence, two former Cabinet ministers are now finding themselves on the outside looking in, with thanks to a Channel Four undercover camera.

Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt, who circulated a letter in January encouraging the Labour Party to conduct a secret ballot on Brown's leadership, were dismissed from the Labour benches yesterday after being caught in what appears to be a "pay-to-play" type scheme. Blairites Hoon (who was minister of defence at the onset of the US-led invasion of Iraq) and Hewitt, along with former transport minister Stephen Byers, were cast to the wilderness of the non-aligned benches.

The situation came public by way of an episode of the Channel Four documentary series Dispatches. In this week's episode, a filmmaker teamed up with a reporter from The Sunday Times created a fictitious company based in the US and portrayed himself as a lobbyist looking for favourable treatment. Byers of North Tyneside called himself a cab-for-hire at a rate of £5000 ($7500) a day, while Luton's Margaret Moran, already ousted from the Labour ranks following her excessive expense claims, said in the initial Times expose that she could get a "girls' gang" of high-ranking female Labour MPs to vote however the company wanted with regards to immigration legislation.

And worse for the already defrocked MPs, several of them admitted to the pseudo-firm that they had done so in the past. Byers bragged about how he convinced Lord Mandelson, the business minister, to delay and later amend legislation at the behest of supermarket giant Tesco, and also helped National Express dump their rail franchise in East Anglia. Both Tesco and National Express deny the claim, and Byers has submitted himself for investigation by a parliament inquiry.

The sting programme also made contact with nine other Labour MPs and seven Conservatives. Of those, one unidentified Conservative MP (reported to be Sir John Butterfill) said he could introduce clients to influential ministers for an annual fee of £35,000 ($52,500). It is surmised that he would do this as a member of the House of Lords, as he may be appointed to the upper legislative chamber after the election.

Butterfill, along the four exiled Labour MPs, had all previously announced that they would step down at the next election. In spite of their lame duck status, it appeared on Dispatches as though these MPs were ready to make one last stab in the heart of ethical and transparent government for the sake of personal gain.

17 March 2010

Next on Sky Sports: Cameron's Picks for Premier League Champions

I can picture it now.

Fresh after a tense meeting with his new Chancellor of the Exchequer Vince Cable (the way the polls are going, the Tories just might throw George Osborne under the bus to gain the Lib Dems' support in a hung parliament), the new Prime Minister David Cameron walks into a foyer well-prepared for a high profile TV interview.

Standing by an easel is a face well known to TV viewers across Britain as the man who enlightens his steady followers six days a week: Jeff Stelling, the host of Channel Four's Countdown and Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday.

As the cameras roll, Jeff and the Prime Minister discuss the teams recently promoted from the Championship League: Newcastle, West Brom, and Leicester City. While commenting on the exciting playoff victory Leicester achieved over favourites Nottingham Forest, the Prime Minister makes quick mention on Newcastle's return to the top level, invoking the spirit of longtime manager Sir Bobby Robson. After expressing (otherwise manufactured) shock at the dismal seasons of Plymouth Argyle in the Championship and the woes plaguing the bankrupt, relegated Portsmouth, the two proceed to the key fixtures of the 2010-2011 season.

But before starting, Jeff quickly asks the Prime Minister, who became a fan of Aston Villa when his uncle (a chairman on AVFC's board at the time) took him to a game when the future PM was 13, whether or not any bias for AVFC will show. A brief laugh, then onto the schedule.

Over the course of segments shown throughout the day on Sky Sports, Sky News, then pared off to BBC News (and at least two clips spoofed on Harry Hill's TV Burp and Mock The Week), we find the Prime Minister suggesting how new players to Chelsea's lineup will help them stay strong throughout the season, the great potential for Man City upending Man U in both ends of the Manchester Derby, and his firm belief that Rafa Benitez' time at Liverpool is nearing an end.

All the while, families observing this on Freeview are wondering what the heck the Prime Minister's doing spending several minutes talking about football when he should be fixing the economic mess in which the UK remains. Already he's attempting to maintain a tenuous coalition, needing the support of the Lib Dems to ward off a joint Labour-SNP call for a snap December election. Last-minute jitters in the voters' minds about a new Conservative government, which resulted in the election of the unseating of the Speaker by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, one Green victory in Brighton, and three BNP members coming within 600 votes of winning their races, have weighed the Sterling lower against the Dollar and barely at par with the Euro. And here he is talking about football.

Sound crazy?

If Cameron's aiming to sweep the Conservatives into power with a playbook that emphasizes a leader's image and personality, then this just might happen. With the election two months away, the race for control of the 650 seats of the House of Commons is boiling down to a contest of the party leaders. (And as pointed out in many of last Sunday's newspapers and BBC's Andrew Marr Show, their wives.) Laced throughout the party manifestos are pictures of each party's leaders, more prevalent than their high-ranking officers who hope to become state ministers. And when the election's finally called, three televised debates between the three major party leaders will take place.

It's a playbook that closely mirrors those that turned a state senator from Illinois into the figurative leader of the Free World and a one-time sports reporter into the poster child of the fervently religious right. And that playbook includes the comfort-content interruptions such as filling out your college basketball brackets (and in President Obama's case, backing out of picking a Mizzou upset over West Virginia — there goes his chances of picking up our 11 electoral votes in 2012!) Despite Obama's push to have a health care reform bill rammed through Congress before week's end, he's also taking time to fill out a women's bracket.

So, if push comes to shove and it becomes necessary for Cameron to pull a PR stunt to stave off a snap election just as he's settling into 10 Downing (or, in the case of Gordon Brown pulling off a Truman '48, yet more rumors of a leadership challenge actually fomenting into a backbencher push to install one of the Brothers Milliband), he just might want to have Sky Sports on speed dial.

And make sure he doesn't mix up Liverpool for Everton. Anfield already have a seething dislike for his supporters at The Sun.

16 March 2010

Erin Go Braugh in HD

If you're in the Kansas City area and haven't found a new "station" broadcasting, you might want to check 103.7 FM tomorrow. It'll definitely set the mood for St. Patrick's Day, as it's broadcasting music to celebrate the holiday. However, you don't want to leave it on too long, as the playlist is repeating every hour or so.

The signal (K279BI) is a 250-watt rebroadcast of content now airing on a digital subchannel of Cumulus' classic rocker KCFX. This is the first I've heard of a translator (the legal term for a low-power rebroadcast of another station's signal) rebroadcasting a digital-only feed; however, I suspect it might becoming increasingly common as stations seek to draw more attention (read: listeners and revenue) to their digital services.

Of course, the folks at Cumulus, fast enjoying higher ratings at many of their stations from the Arbitron's new Portable People Meter system, will have to roll something else out Thursday.

11 March 2010

International Response to KCMSD's School Closures

And right now, the top story on education on most international media's radar isn't yesterday's 5-4 vote to close 29 of the 61 schools currently in the Kansas City (Mo.) School District #30. It's a Mississippi high school's decision to cancel their prom, potentially in response to a request from a student to bring their lesbian girlfriend to the dance and show up in a tuxedo. In fact, the BBC, Daily Telegraph, as well as Canada's Globe and Mail and Toronto Star have yet to post a story about the situation in KCMSD.

Meanwhile, two major British papers have carried the story. The Guardian featured a commentary from liberal think-tank fellow Sasha Abramsky of New York, where he describes the situation in KC as the event schools in California want to avoid. He writes: “Kansas City might well represent a glimpse of a depressing American future: one in which those with resources opt out, en masse, from any and all public services, leaving the public sector to stumble drunkenly from one crisis to the next, a miserable-looking shadow of once-great glories.”

The Murdoch-owned Times published a straight-forward brief from their Washington correspondent.

If you find any articles in international press (even if it's a rehash of wire copy), please feel free to comment with a link to it.

08 March 2010

Ruminations upon the loss of a distinctive voice

Editor's note: issues with the built-in player resulted in the wrong sound clip loading up for some readers. The player has since been replaced with a link to the correct sound clip. Apologies for any confusion.

You've probably heard this voice on multiple adverts and Stations IDs, particularly if you've lived in the Kansas City area:

The man behind the voice, Richard Ward Fatherley, died today in a KCK hospital after suffering a heart attack a month ago. Fatherley came to the Kansas City area in the 1960s to become programming director of Top-40 giant WHB. That, along with his start at WHB's cross-state sister KXOK in St. Louis, gave him the chance to perfect his voice into the consummate radio salesman. When Fatherley retired from radio, he began his own voice-over company, AdVoice. National brands like Baskin Robbins and Simplicity Vacuum Cleaners hired Fatherley to provide his distinct, booming voice for their ads.

Not only was Fatherley a gifted producer and salesman, he too was a historian in his trade. Along with Ray Otis, a fellow former program director, Fatherley researched, wrote and produced an hour-long audio documentary into the role WHB owner Todd Storz played in developing and proliferating Top-40 radio. As Fatherley summarized in Radio's Revolution:
“[Top-40] germinated in the heartland – Omaha – moved quickly down the Mississippi Valley, was perfected in Kansas City, and copied from coast-to-coast. The Storz formula for a successful radio station became the antidote to combat television's raid on radio's revenues.”
Fatherley's account of Storz's contribution, including the story that disproved the fable involving the barroom jukebox in Omaha, would ensure Storz' place in history as the man whose innovations would catch on in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, and even prompt the BBC to debut Radio 1 and Radio 2.

As part of this ongoing endeavour, Fatherley built a tribute site to WHB and helped establish the Great Plains Radio Symposium at Kansas State University in 2006.

In a roundabout way, it was because of Fatherley's work as a historian and not a producer that attracted me to radio. I came across his work in the fall of 2005, when I was working on a research paper about WHB. I made use of materials Fatherley sent to Truman upon hearing of my project, including a hard copy of Radio's Revolution. As I dug into this material, and other Web sites such as Reel Radio, I found myself drawn more and more into the unique craftwork that is radio production.

By trade I'm a journalist, a current events junkie, rooted in newsprint from as far back as wanting to be on the junior high newspaper in 8th grade even though it was a freshmen-only class. But hearing this production by Fatherley, and other clips he uploaded, lured me away from the grind of weekly print deadlines and into the land of overheated equipment rooms, strung-out wires, and outdated cart-playing software crashing on me every fortnight. Fatherley extended an invite to me to the first symposium in April 2006, but a death in the family prevented me from attending, and thus I never had the chance to meet him.

I'll remember Richard Fatherley, not just as a great voice and radio professional, but also as a historian who preserved the stories of his colleagues and provide an insight into how radio evolved into what it is today in North America. And for that, I say thank you to "our Fatherley friend".