Should the audience of a Brisbane nightly TV news service have any interest at all in the launch of a “luxury housing estate” in Gledswood Hills some 60 kilometres west of the Sydney CBD and being plugged mercilessly by its designer Greg Norman, who apparently used to play golf?
“Not a fucking jot!” was the general opinion of the compilers of this column. But that didn’t stop Nine’s 6pm bulletin on Friday night out of Queensland capital plugging the yarn endlessly from beginning to end, where this yarn was deemed by news executives at the station the perfect story tease to keep viewers watching until just before 7pm.
(Our first MGH aside: given Norman’s record as probably the world’s most egotistical man – “isn’t my naked body still gorgeously sexy!” and his love of making a quid while trying to wreck world golf in the process surely makes this more cunt bait than click bait?)
Take it away, co-news reader Andrew Lofthouse after the final ad break: “Few might know that Greg Norman is a global property shark who is here to open his first luxury housing estate…”
Liz Daniels quickly takes up the baton: “Greg Norman is a household name around the world and now his name is on the houses. The golfer’s new game, global real estate, designing Norman estates in Mexico, the US and Dubai; today it was Gledswood Hills near Camden.”
(Just another subtle aside: The MGH team knew Norman was into golf course/real estate development around the world for a long time. Why did Nine News think his name is just NOW on houses? And a household name, Liz? You don’t perhaps write the promos for “must see” episodes of My Dad. Your Mum?)
Still, Nine News viewers in Brisbane were probably searching for their cheque books as Daniels explained that Norman Estates was a 190-home “country club-style community”, brought to fruition with a Japanese builder partner, with properties starting at $1.2 million.
And any thoughts those viewers might have had to perhaps wrangle a bit over the prices would have evaporated when Daniels explained that “a lounge, pool and tennis court” were at the project’s heart. Is there any limit to the Shark’s generosity?
(Another subtle aside: it might pay that if residents of Norman Estates want to book the pool for darling little Trent or Tifanee’s fifth birthday, they’d better get in fast. Ditto for the tennis court!)
Reporter Daniels also advises the estate is surrounded by a three-par golf course designed by Norman, obviously, which might suggest that, given the course will supposedly be for the use of players only, the small patch of grass shown below in the lounge, pool and tennis court area might be the main if not sum total of open green space for all the residents of Norman Estate.
This, the MGH suspects, might not be world record for the amount of available green space ever devoted to a residential community project of this size but Norman deserves some credit for at least giving the concept a fair go. We just hope Trent and Tifanne don’t burn their feet or get hiut by a car as they make their way to that wonderful recreation area at this project’s heart.
But the MGH’s main argument here remains this: why on earth would this piece of promotional bullshit be of any great interest to people in and around Brisbane, let alone the billing Nine News Brisbane gave it at week’s end?
Or is it just the simply fact that Norman and Nine Entertainment Co. chair Peter Costello are good buddies? Their politics are certainly in lock step.
Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!
The Bug Online 