The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; that pays homage to those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset over the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.
…. SYNDEY!
Mediocre Bytes thanks Monday night’s 6pm bulletin from Channel 9 News Brisbane for this little gem!
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Staying with that news bulletin, here’s a claim that one of the bitter, washed-up hacks who compile this column immediately called in doubt but to be fair, as we always are, we’re not sure who’s right.
Reporter Olivana Lathouris told us that the Monday crowd at the Royal Queensland Show at more than 45,000 was “one of the biggest Ekka Mondays in the show’s history”.
That particular hacks who froze his hairless balls off sitting on Machinery Hill in the 1950s immediately jumped up and yelled “bullshit” but to be fair the silly old bastard then spent some time trying to find out some Monday attendance figures at the Ekka over the decades without any luck.
But he does remember times in his boyhood when the showgrounds on the Monday were pretty chokas, and that was when the showgrounds were quite a bit larger than they are now.
And by the way, we’re not having a go at young Olivana who has only relayed what the show people have told her. In a way, we’re hoping the Monday figure is a near record; it might dissuade some at The Bug of the view that the show is dying in the arse.
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Why is it that we can sometimes create an entire Mediocre Bytes column out of one Nine News Brisbane bulletin?
A little bit later last night, co-newsreader Melissa Downes said of the looming Pacific Air Show on the Gold Coast that those on the ground would be watching “some of the most spectacular aerobatic manoeuvres known to man”.
Man! This is the 21stCentury and the #metoo movement has been around for ever! Whatever happened to “humankind”? Picky, picky? Maybe.
But some picky, picky, advice to tyro reporter Bronte Gildea. Soaring aloft with the Air Force Roulettes does not make you “an Air Force pilot for the day”.
Words are important. Even colour pieces should stick with facts? A “pretend” airforce pilot, perhaps?
Luckily for everybody concerned – aloft and on the ground – Bronte was not in the front-seat as Andrew Lofthouse suggested, but in the back seat where she belonged and where there was absolutely no chance she could get her hands on the controls.
Or are we unfairly trying to limit a little fanciful flair in a colour piece? Discuss.
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Finally, Mediocre Bytes will never tire of taking the mickey out of that design feature introduced some months ago by Nine News around the country and one that should not have lasted the week: as shown in our top story, filling the screen with a map showing where the reporter is placed, and then repeating it in the right, bottom corner.
Here are two other examples from last night’s Brisbane bulletin…
It’s bloody embarrassing and altogether meaningless. Stop it!
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