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.
Do you know how much money The Bug would have in its one and only bank account if we’d put a dollar in there for every time we have taken the mickey out of Nine News Queensland for its ridiculous overuse of “heart-stopping” in reports.
It would be exactly that amount! Which, of course, is rather sad, isn’t it? The silver lining? The Bug being stone-motherless broke certainly needs to be factored in by anyone thinking of suing us for blatant bad taste! But we digress.
Nine News Queensland co-anchor Melissa did indeed begin her lead-in to the day’s Melbourne Cup yarn with the exact words shown at top and below…
Firstly, let’s bring out the screens onto our virtual track and put down the notion that the Melbourne Cup is a race that still stops a nation. That notion bolted long ago, along with Australia riding on a sheep’s back, Australia dominating world tennis before other nations bloody well built their own courts and David Jones’ window Christmas displays being a highlight of the festive season!
In fact, the last poll seen by the compilers of Mediocre Bytes reveals that more than 63 per cent of Australians could not care less about the Cup. We just made that up but it’s pretty compelling, isn’t it?
Back now to our main point. What the fuck was so heart-stopping about Tuesday’s big race? As the image below from the Brisbane Nine newsroom’s opening summary on Tuesday night shows, the winning margin was probably the largest at the Cup for quite some time, certainly at least for this year.
We can’t see any of the connections of Point of Law – unless they have a very serious existing heart condition – toppling over with concern that the three-year-old entire stallion could possibly be run down in the moments before he saluted the judge’s cameras.
***
Another popular topic for Bytes aficionados is the silly little fuckups in the news strips at the bottom of TV bulletins. We particularly liked this one from the ABC’s coverage of the Mid-Terms.
Clearly, whatever Trump sneded to voters didn’t stop the blue wave but as usual, we were not that concerned with a simpel little spelling mistake being made. Anyone can do taht from time to time. As always, we were more interested in whether anyone in the newsroom had any interest in fixing it.
The strap stuck with sneds for quite some time; it finally disappeared, rather than be corrected.
SNEDS! Considering our first item today, Sneds sounds like an online horse-race betting agency. Maybe we should copyright it?
Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign 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!
