The Bug‘s Media Glass House occasionally rues its decision some years ago now to scrap its annual media beat-up-of-the-year award.
We still think the decision was a fair one at the time – there were just far too many potential winners in any given week across the nation’s mainstream mediocre, let alone a year – but items like the final story on Channel 9 News out of Brisbane on Wednesday night make us wonder whether we should have kept the award going.
We are referring to an item plugged relentlessly from the start of the bulletin, right up to its actual screening just before 7pm. And the hot story of the night? Warehouse supermarkets beating Woolworths, Coles and Aldi “guaranteeing you better value for money on a range of items”.
Now, as you can see from Melissa Downes’ lead-in to camera above, the secret to this amazing chance for families struggling with cost-of-living pressures is to buy in bulk! Wow! We suspect this story has been run probably as many times as Nine News has wrapped up a bulletin with the latest back-pain miracle solution or diet success breakthrough.
We’ve checked on 9Now and we don’t think the words bulk-buying were used in any of the earlier promotions for the segment. Pretty sneaky, hey? Still, hat’s off to catch.com.au, whose main products a year ago were Birkenstock shoes and ASICS runners but now are bulk-buying groceries, for conning Nine News into thinking this was a fresh news story! By the way, anyone else wondering how many Birkenstock sandals you’d have to buy to make a bulk-purchase killing?
We are then invited into the home of a couple with three children and as you can see, they’ve saved heaps by buying their toilet paper in bulk. Without counting the number of rolls in that monster pact, we suspect that each and every member of this family with need a dozen arseholes each to get through that bargain-basement purchase in the next six months.
The story also made it clear that families like this one would still have to make the trip to their local shopping centre for their fresh fruit and vegetables. Still, while there they can check out specials other than bulk buys of cat litter, dishwashing tablets (admittedly, they are super expensive!), museli bars, chips, milk powder and those monster dunny roll bundles.
That’s one big catch. But here’s the main catch. As reporter Eliza Rugg points out: “Buying in bulk, instore or online, is not as accessible for low income families if they can’t afford to fork out more upfront”.
Bingo. It ain’t much of a concept for families who are making weekly decisions as to what items to leave off their shopping list if they’ve just had to fill up their car or pay rent or a utilities bill.
Still, there is a solution, as an unidentified bloke with white hair, glasses and neatly trimmed white beard who had appeared earlier to explain bulk buys are cheaper because of less packaging, etc, returned to point out that an option around not having the reddies to splurge on enough cat litter to last Fluffy six months would be for a co-op of family or friends to band together, buy in bulk and then divvie up the goods and pay their share.
Lots of luck with that idea, all you single mums out there struggling to survive day to day, week to week.
NOTES: The MGH being the decent, fair, column written by people who used to be real journalists accepts that the bloke with white hair, glasses and neatly trimmed beard might have been identified in the bulletin put to air the other night, just not on the 9Now version we’ve relied on for this report. We’re also kinda glad that the retail company being plugged was not Costco, which has been Nine News’s darling of choice over recent months for shameless, news unworthy, free plugs.
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