Frank Avis's Memoirs of 42 Years in Radio

FRANK AVIS continues his post-radio memories

2010-04-24T12:00:00+10:00

Actually I have to go back a few years, before I got into the radio game.

I was around 14, going to Ashfield High School, when I first got involved with Aussie Rules.

I was a reserve for the School Rugby League team and just couldn't get the hang of the game, really. Don't know why. I was fast, especially in Footy boots but the two of us just didn't get along for some reason. Anyway the captain of the school team was my best mate John Harmer. One day we had a school visit from an Australian Rules delegation who were starting a school competition. For some reason John decided to opt out of league and give Rules a go. I was quite surprised to be honest but decided to follow my mate's lead. I loved the game and spent the next couple of years playing for Western Suburbs Juniors and then for the Reserves. I played pretty well although my kicking needed a lot of attention. Anyway, I don't know whether I've already told this story, I could have? One day a man came up to me after the U-17's game and said I was chosen for the NSW U-19 team to play Victoria and I had to be at Trumper Park by 10:30 the next morning. I played on the wing and it's not that I played badly it's just that the ball simply never got out near me. I hardly had the opportunity to have a kick.

I do remember dashing up to the half forward line in the second half and being whacked by a chest charge from a big Victorian ruck-rover. It hurt but I didn't think much about 'til after I'd had my annual TB x-ray. Suddenly, there in the mail was the dreaded brown envelope, advising me to see a specialist because they'd found something suspicious on the x-ray. When I saw him he looked at the x ray and said, "Why didn't you tell somebody you had a couple of broken ribs... You're just wasting our bloody time?" I looked at him amazed. I didn't know I'd had two broken ribs. No wonder I was a bit sore.

Anyway, our hero in Australian Rules at that time was the Sydney full forward star Terry Ingersoll who regularly kicked a 100 a year. He got an offer to join Hawthorn in the VFL and had a reasonable first year but I think came home after the second season wasn't very productive. From that moment I was a Hawthorn fanatic. You can imagine what it was like going to Melbourne in the 60's and going to every Hawthorn match. The funny thing is when I came to Sydney I started to follow the Swans who had just shifted north. One Friday night the Swans were hosting the Hawks at the SCG and the Swannies were mounting a huge final quarter charge, eventually winning the game. I remember Capper taking a screamer and booting a goal to put the Swans in front with 10 minutes to go. There I was standing up screaming and I suddenly stopped and thought, "Hang on, I'm a hawks fan!" I realized then that I'd switched allegiance after over 35 years. They don't do that at Man U. And it definitely doesn't happen at Collingwood.

The thing is I've seen a stack of great games, especially finals, and interviewed hundreds of players.

So it's only fitting that I should make a complete galah of myself and in the spirit of my BEST AUSTRALIAN CRICKET TEAM OF ALL TIME in a previous entry now journey into THE BEST AUSTRALIAN RULES TEAM OF ALL TIME, in this episode.

If you disputed my cricket side you will be bordering on apoplexy with this lot. There are several friends including Ian Woodward, Col Denovan and Ian Nicholls who will probably take me off their Xmas card list.

Aussie rules has that effect on people especially Essendon, Collingwood and Richmond supporters.

You want to wallow in controversy? Go for it because here's my best ever team...

(If you aren't into the AFL believe me you don't want to read any further)

BACKLINE: JOHN NICHOLLS; JACK REGAN; LEIGH MATHEWS

I know the full back position is going to be difficult but I opted for Collingwood's "Prince of Fullbacks". Regan could take a specky, was mobile once the ball hit the deck and had a super kick.

I really didn't want to put Big Nick and Lethal in the backline but when you look at the forward structure you'll see why my options were limited. I chose Lethal as a ruck-rover to Nich's ruckman. It's a pretty good backline. Obviously,critics will wonder what the hell Lethal is doing in the back pocket? My only defence is the observation that – if you were a rover in the forward pocket, you'd just picked the ball up and you were heading for goal and suddenly you looked up and there,just a metre in front of you and with a full head of steam up,was Leigh Mathews... How would you feel? Do you feel lucky, punk?

HALF BACKS: ALBERT COLLIER; TED WHITTEN; REG HICKEY

Well, I could have played Mr Football up front or back,or anywhere really, but he'll be magnificent in this key defensive role, aided by Collier and Hickey. Reg Hickey was the embodiment of the VFL ethos. He played it hard, but fair and was a wonderful leader and team mate.

Collier was one of the first defenders to adopt an attacking style, taking a great mark and then suddenly roaring across the centre at full pace to drive the team into attack. And he was tough. Anybody thinking they might slip a couple of right crosses into Ted Whitten while he was going for a big mark would be inclined to get a second opinion if Albert was anywhere nearby. They didn't call him the "protector" for nothing.

CENTRES: HAYDN BUNTON; DICK REYNOLDS; FRANCIS BOURKE

BUNTON was a freak, brilliant with courage to spare. When he died from a car crash while only in his 40's the football world went into mourning. Fans of the era regarded him as "greatest player to grace the game". Modern fans probably don't realize how big he was back in those early days.

KING RICHARD picks himself in the middle, although he has to ward off a stack of wonderful players laying claim to the position. And he wasn't even a centreman. Reynolds was a great rover who could play wing or half forward or – in my team because I've got to fit him in – across the centerline. You want to argue about that... So sue me!

BOURKE wins his spot from a stack of wingers because he could mark, he could run,and – oh boy – he was courageous. You may well think you could come up with a better centerline but mine'll beat yours anytime.

HALF FORWARD: ROY CAZALY; WAYNE CAREY; DARREL BALDOCK

We are really going to get into a big debate here folks because the centre half forward post is one of the most treasured in our game. And we've had some beauties. But if you forget the off field drama of recent years and have a look at CAREY's track record you'll understand. I remember talking to an old footy follower, discussing the merits of three greats: Carey, ROYCE HART and LAURIE NASH; and asking him who he'd choose in his team. He gave me a sideways glance and a bit of a wink (because he was a Richmond follower) and replied, "Give me Carey. He's the best I've seen."

CAZALY, well how good do you have to be to have a song written about you?

Was the legend as good as the folklore? OOOOH YES! He was actually a ruckman in his heyday but I've got him on the flank and he will rip ‘em to shreds. As for the other half forward, excuse me, is this guy Baldock good or what? I just loved to watch him, "Mr Magic". He'd slide through the mud with the ball on a string, do a soft shoe shuffle to sneak past a defender and you'd be watching three defenders, all over 6'3" going up for a mark,when suddenly Darrel would rip through the pack and pull down a screamer. He was only 5'9 to 5'10 but he played centre half forward most of his life. I still dream about seeing a team with Cazaly and Baldock together on the half forward line. Don't you just love it?

FORWARDS: RON BARASSI; GARY ABLETT; BOB SKILTON

I absolutely dreaded making this decision but GOD has won preference over some of the most famous names in our code. Ablett gets the better of JOHN COLEMAN, PETER HUDSON, GORDON COVENTRY, TONY LOCKETT and BOB PRATT. Ablett was a magnificent mark and was made to kick goals. The thing that wins the spot for me is that he was so charismatic. How could a team not be lifted with Ablett running riot on the forward line?

BARRASSI is probably going to be our captain. Look,he wasn't that fast and you can't say that he was pretty to watch. But for desperation,100% courage and will to win this bloke was like an exploding volcano. He was just born to lead. BOB SKILTON? Well, are you really going to leave him out?

I remember one day against Hawthorn he was KO'd in the first half and promptly went on to kick half a dozen goals and lead South home to victory. I caught up with him after the match and said, "Skilts, if you had to kick 6 goals why did you have to do against the Hawks?" "Did I," he replied. It wasn't just that he'd forgotten the goals... He couldn't even remember the match! How many guys can win three Brownlow votes while unconscious?

RUCKS: POLLY FARMER; JACK DYER; BARRY CABLE

Oh God, I love this forward line. FARMER was just so dominant and when he got his hands on the ball he could handpass 30 metres straight to the chest of his rover. I had to leave out so many wonderful ruckmen but Polly, you were so good mate. Had to have you there.

As his ruck rover, the most feared man ever to play the game, ladies and gentlemen, I give you "the living legend" Jack Dyer.

Farmer gets the ball out of the ruck and looks up expecting to see half a dozen opposition players bearing down on him. Funny though, all he sees is a great big gap where the opposition should have been. "Where'd they go?" asks Polly. We know where they are Pol... On the ground nursing their sore heads and other associated parts of the body, that's where. You think they called him CAPTAIN BLOOD because he was gentle? One day Jack ran straight through an opposition winger. He hit the deck and didn't move. One trainer came out, then another. Finally all the trainers came out and carried the poor devil off on a stretcher. And as they passed Dyer, one of the trainers carefully pulled the blanket over the victim's head,and put his hand on his heart. Dyer was beside himself. He ran up to one of the mates and said, "Jeez… I think I've killed him." His game fell to pieces. He was actually getting out of the way or rovers for the rest of the game and apologized to the full forward at one stage because he thought he might have accidentally touched his shoulder. Richmond trooped off with Dyer's head down around his ankles. Then as he walked into the sheds,there—large as life—was the "dead man", sitting on the opposition's benches and sucking on an orange. Dyer looked amazed and said, "I thought you were dead!"

"Yeah," replied the cheeky devil. "We were hopin' you would."

Why isn't KING RICHARD the number-one rover? Harry Collier? And several others.

Because of Barry Cable,that's why. I was lucky to see the '66 Carnival in Hobart when Cable arrived from the West as the biggest thing in footy. "Best player to come out of WA," they said, "not just by a narrow margin, but by a length-and-a-half." That put him ahead of a pretty good group of players.

And he was. My first sighting of Cable was in WA's opening game. Not sure who they were playing but it was I think on North Hobart Oval. Cable got the ball in the back pocket and I happened to glance up and saw the WA full forward (might have been Big Bob Johnson, not sure) starting to lead. "What's this joker up to?" I said to my mate. Then I found out. Barry took one bounce and then hit a drop kick you'd kill for. It carved its way up over centre and just kept going. We followed the path of the ball all the way to see Johnson arrive at Centre half-forward just in time to take the mark on his chest. I haven't seen a lot of full forwards start leading when a player has the ball at back pocket.

Cable came to North Melbourne late in his career, terrible pity, and he played with a leg injury for the first 4 to 6 weeks. First of all, HE PLAYED. He didn't sit on the bench and winge about his bad luck. He couldn't kick so he just got the ball and did a Polly, hand passing it for 25 to 30 metres smack on target.

"He can't kick," said the scribes of the day. I just smiled knowingly. I'd seen the condition of his legs. I knew why he wasn't kicking and I knew from '66 that when he started to pump those drop kicks down the field, they'd find out whether he could kick or not.

He was in his late 20's when he gave VFL a try and anyone who saw him play knows they were watching one of the classiest rovers ever. And how about that combination? Cable roving to Polly with Big jack standing guard!

I'm naming just the two reserves, standing by the long tradition of our game.

IVOR WARNE-SMITH. He was a wonderful centre but I could bring him on to plug gaps anywhere. In the 20's and 20's WARNE-SMITH was the King of Melbourne.

My final choice? Well, not a lot of full backs win Brownlow Medals, but FRED GOLDSMITH did and he'd be a fantastic reserve able to be called into the backline if we were in trouble. "Fireman Fred" could mark up there with the best, spoil superbly and then hit the ground and kick across the centre.

I can't look at the big names I've had to leave out... I'll lose sleep over it... But take the time to wade through the Frank Avis 20 and come up with a better combination. I dare ya!

FRANK AVIS continues his memories of radio and other stuff

2010-04-24T12:00:00+10:00

This web site is clearly set up to recall my radio career but the reality is that my reporting touched on so many different areas and I obviously interviewed so many celebrities that my memories are going to leak over into other fields.

This time we'll start with cricket.

When I did my AFTRS lectures in the 80's I remember telling a group of students that they had to know about cricket because "it ran through the nation's veins". I said it was in our blood: it was part of what being an Australian was. I also remember that half a dozen girl students couldn't stop themselves from laughing out loud. They thought it was preposterous.

I spent the next half hour trying to explain to them that cricket preceded our nationhood. We were actually playing test matches against England, as Australia, before we became Australia. For many years it was virtually impossible to convince the colonies to break their ties with England. There was so much rivalry between the colonies that the idea of getting them all together to form a nation spent considerable time in the "too hard basket". But it became a bit hard to ignore once we started putting an Australian team in the field for the legendary Ashes series from the 1870's. Cricket was a critical prime mover in the successful battle to convince the colonies to become states in the Federation of Australia.

It's a bit like baseball in the United States. It's spring and you're driving near a park when you hear that iconic sound, a bat hitting a ball. It strikes a chord in most Australians.

Boy, have I interviewed a few cricketers in my time. Back in 1961 I was able to sit down and reminisce with one of the legends of Bradman's 1948 Invincibles, the great left-handed opener Arthur Morris.

Arthur was very much like Victor Trumper. You can't find anybody with a bad word to say about him.

I'm still looking at Arthur's list of the Best World Team of His Time. It's sitting in front of me in his own handwriting.

For cricket lovers here it is in batting order:

Sid Barnes, Len Hutton, Don Brandman, Neil Harvey, Gary Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Ray Lindwall, Don Tallon, Bill O'Reilly, Alec Bedser, Sonny Ramadhin. Arthur desperately wanted to include Keith Miller but he could only get him in as 12th man. H e hated omitting Everton Weekes.

I remember sitting down with him in a 7HO studio as we went through all of these great players.

Suddenly at the end of the interview, I turned to Arthur and said, "hang on, the one player we haven't discussed in depth is the captain, Brandman!" Arthur's eyes took on a dreamlike quality as he turned to me, smiling slightly, and said, "Ah, the Don... The Don." No more was needed.

For devotees of the game I also include Don Bradman's list of the Best Australian Team, postwar, issued in 1975
.
He goes for Bob Simpson, Arthur Morris, Don Bradman, Neil Harvey, Ian Chapell, Greg Chappell, Keith Miller, Richie Benaud, Alan Davidson, Ray Lindwall and Don Tallon with Lindsay Hassett 12th man.

He didn't like leaving out Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh. Bill O'Reilly only played one test after the war so Brdman couldn't really fit him in. But just for the record, The Don regarded O'Reilly as the "greatest bowler he ever saw".

So now allow me to present the Frank Avis list: The Greatest Australian Team of All Time.

See what you think of this lot, again in batting order:

Victor Trumper, Bob Simpson, Don Bradman, Greg Chappell, Stan McCabe, Keith Miller, Adam Gilchrist, Ray Lindwall, Shane Warne, Dennis Lillee and Fred Spofforth. Bill O'Reilly is 12th man.

If Bradman is the greatest batsman of all, then Trumper is the most loved. He personifies cricket. In fact he probably personifies that era in Australia when we were laying down the roots of nationhood.

Leaving Trumper out of an Australian cricket team would be like talking Rugby League without Dally Messenger or Aussie Rules without Roy Cazaly. Trumper could bat anywhere in the list but I've settled on the opening spot because it allows me a certain amount of latitude in the batting order. Trumper may not have had the best average but he played on some pretty sporting pitches and is credited with some of the greatest innings played in the game. His 185* in England in 1903 is generally regarded as a masterpiece. He is the most admired player in our cricket history.

The selection of Bob Simpson as his partner will probably raise the odd eyebrow here and there but Simmo made nearly 5,000 test runs, took 71 wickets with his leggies and pocketed 110 catches. He is the best slip catcher I've ever seen. Ask Richie Benaud about a couple of catches Simpson took in the 1961 series. He'll set you straight. Can you imagine Simmo farming the strike out to Trumper while Victor pounded out a century before lunch and doing the same with Bradman in the afternoon?

Brandman obviously chooses himself as no. 3 and Captain. Enough said except that fans these days probably don't realize that he was a very good field.

I could have chosen either of the Chappell brothers to bat number 4, but who could resist the classical, upright stance of Greg caressing the ball through the covers? Handy bowler, top field.

McCabe doesn't have the most wonderful average you've ever seen but two of the greatest innings in test history have come off his bat. 187* in the Bodyline series of 1932 and his 232 in England in 1938. At one point Bradman pulled all of his players out of the dressing room and told them to watch, noting that they'd never see batting like this again. He also took 36 wickets and 41 catches.

I couldn't leave Keith Miller out of my eleven. He was an astonishing character, a superb batsman and one of the most feared bowlers in history. Both Bradman and Morris agree that for 4 or 5 overs Miller was actually faster than Lindwall, and take it from me, Lindwall was just a shade on the quick side.

Miller, when the spirit moved him, was devastating. One day he came straight from the night club to the dressing room, looking slightly the worse for wear. Bradman was not impressed. He looked at Miller whose skin colour was varying somewhere between white and green and told him that he could take the opening over. Miller produced one of the fastest spells in history, picking up 3 wickets in four overs.

One shell shocked England batsman returned to the dressing room, announcing that Miller was "bloody lethal".

Don Bradman would opt for Tallon as the keeper while modern observers might still lean to Rodney Marsh but Adam Gilchrist was a fine keeper, taking some spectacular catches off extremely demanding bowlers. He wins the spot because he is the equal of most keepers and happens to be one of the most amazing batsman of modern times. Trumper, McCabe and Miller may well have dismembered bowling attacks but Gilchrist was capable of annihilation. He drove bowlers into early retirement. Well he actually hooked and pulled a lot into early retirement if you want to be technically correct. You've heard of batsmen who changed the course of a test in a session: Gilchrist could do it in 35 minutes.

When he was hitting the ball cleanly the only man with a chance of catching him was the bloke in the grey hat, sitting in Row 38 behind midwicket. Anyone actually on the field, forget it.

Ray Lindwall is the Prince of fast bowlers. No one leaves him out of an Australian team and he was capable of pounding out a test hundred, just to sew up his spot in our best ever eleven.

Oh man I agonised over putting in Shane Warne ahead of Bill O'Reilly, regarded by Bradman as the best bowler he ever saw. But I think you'll find most critics these days agree Warne is the finest leg spinner the world has ever seen. I feel sorry that Bill is down the list, carrying the drinks, but the case for Warne is overwhelming.

Dennis Lillee comes in next and he was as fast as Lindwall. He was also mean and ornery. Ask the England tourists of 1974-75. What he and Thommo did to England that series is almost certainly banned under the Geneva convention. What would Bradman do? Open with Lindwall and Lillee or put Miller on for 4 quick overs and then bring in Dennis? What a dilemma to have!

Now we get to some real controversy because I've given the remaining spot to Fred Spofforth... The Demon. I know, I know he took just 94 test scalps at 18.4 and the less said about his batting the better.

But when you read accounts of the day he was a mixture of Lillee, Miller and Thommo. He was ferocious, absolutely menacing. Talk about changing the course of a test match. This joker wrote the book. His exploits in the Oval test of 1882 are the stuff of legend. This is the most famous Test match in history, the game that gave us "The Ashes". It was Australia's first win on English soil. Fred took 7 wickets in the first innings but Australia had a shocker in their first knock and made only 122 in the second. England was home and hosed, needing just 85 for victory. Spofforth then simply took over the match. It's not just the wickets he took but the way he imposed himself on the match. It was as if a marauding creature had been let loose. He bowled at great pace on a dubious pitch. His breakback ball which cut back sharply from off stump was unplayable.

The tension was unbearable. One man gnawed through his umbrella handle, a second died from a heart attack. And they were just the spectators .How do you think the next batsman in was feeling?

In the end Spofforth took another 7 wickets, 14 all up, and Australia got home by 7.

In England, they still talk about Fred Spofforth in whispers. So he comes into our side although where Don is going to bowl him is beyond me. Luckily I'm just a selector.

Our pace attack is composed of Lindwall, Lillee, Miller and Spofforth. Maybe we could make Spofforth first change and talk Keith into tossing down a few leg spinners, in harness with Warnie!

Can you imagine being a batsman,seeing off Lindwall, Lillee and Miller and then looking up to see The Demon Spofforth coming into bowl?

One of the other great mental exercises is to select the Best Batsman You Ever Saw.

This is the sort of stuff you dream about when you wake up at 2 O'Clock on a rainy morning.

Critics I respect keep going for Gary Sobers or Graeme Pollock. Sadly, every time I went to see them they failed. I had the same impact on my hero Norm O'Neill.

I looked closely at Sachin Tendulkar and Brian Lara and I still treasure a couple of 100's I saw from Ted Dexter and Colin Cowdrey in the 60's. But I'm going for a West Indies dasher, Viv Richards. Viv didn't really walk to the wicket. He sort of glided. And as he made his way to the middle he looked at the bowlers and the fielders with a quizzical glare wondering, "What are you doing here? No one's here to see you guys… They're here to see me, man... Me!" Richards had this incredible self belief and he needed it because he had to face some pretty good bowlers in his time. He was imperious. He'd pull a fast bowler from just short of a length through mid wicket and then wonder why the spectators were making such a fuss. I think that was the thing that got to the bowlers,that Viv was so dismissive. He didn't even acknowledge that he'd played a superlative shot: he just took it for granted.

One day I saw him hit Lillee for a magnificent 4 through square leg. The crowd went mad, Lillee stood midwicket with his hands on his hips glaring like a prize fighter, the slip field tried hard to gaze into the distance, hoping Lillee didn't see how much they admired the shot. But Viv didn't even look at anyone. He just stood there as if it was just an everyday shot. In fact he didn't even move to run. He just dismissed the ball and then set about chewing harder on his piece of gum. Viv Richards just owned the wicket when he was out there. The possibility that anybody else could share the spotlight simply didn't occur to him. Best batsman I've ever seen.

Look this is getting a shade embarrassing. I'm supposed to be writing about radio and here we are having long discussions about cricket and the movies. I promise It's just that honestly I can't find anything to write about. When I do you'll be the first to know.

So we'll say au revoir to this lot with the warning that one of my other specialties was VFL/AFL footy, dating back to the 1950's. I couldn't possibly let the occasion pass without some reference to Aussie Rules when we next meet.

Frank Avis Post Radio

2010-02-24T12:00:00+10:00

There's not a lot happening in my old trade: it's mostly superficial.

I guess the big headline in recent weeks is the legal action by veteran journalist Ray Chesterton who has taken John Laws and 2UE to court, alleging defamation.

As mentioned previously I used MOVIES as a central plank in my news content. I always ran the highest grossing US and Australian films weekly and actually did 30-second movie previews at some stations, eg 3MP which was regarded as pretty adventurous in those days.

Not only that but when I ran a story about a major movie coming out in the US I always tried to answer the audiences' question: When can I see it here? My staff and I always attempted to put ourselves in the position of our audience, so that we were able to fulfill their expectations. We really tried to "own" this whole movie-theatre entertainment area. Indeed I remember when Cats was opening in Sydney we managed to track down one of the top cast members from New York so that in the 6PM news on Sydney's opening night our audience heard the star say, "Hi. I'm so-and-so and I play so-and-so in the Broadway production of Cats. Everyone here in New York wishes Sydney a magnificent opening night. May you run as long as we have here on Broadway." It was about targeting the audience and happily reminding them about that. Often.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that showbiz has always been a major interest. With that in mind I offer another list: Frank's Top Ten Movies.

The Third Man
Gone With the Wind
Casablanca
The Maltese Falcon
Shane
Dr. Strangelove
The Best Years of our Lives
The Philadelphia Story
On the Waterfront
Some Like It Hot

I hate leaving out Henry V (Oliver's), The Red Shoes, A Streetcar Named Desire, Rebecca and Singin' In the Rain.

The "arts sector" will never forgive me for omitting Citizen Kane while I apologise to lovers of European movies for failing to include Z, Bicycle Thieves, Rififi and The Cranes are Flying.

Strangely enough my top choice, The Third Man wins by a length. Few will agree with me I know.

An astonishing script, Carol Reed's direction sneaking through the bombed out streets and tenements of Vienna after WW2, a wonderful cast headed by Orson Welles and Valli plus the most extraordinary gathering of minor characters ever assembled and finally, oh yes, that pervading zither of Anton Karas as it leads you further and further into the sewers of Vienna.

Never watch The Third Man on TV. Wait 'til you see it listed for a reprise on the big screen. Four of the greatest scenes in movie history are up there in just this one film: Welles lecturing his friend Joseph Cotten up on the ferris wheel; the first sighting of Welles hiding in a doorway; the shadows of Welles as he tries to escape through the sewers; and, the most wonderful closing shot, along a Vienna boulevard. If you're a real movie fan just sit back and enjoy the camera as it captures Cotten waiting for Valli as she walks towards him. He knows he hasn't got a chance but waits for her still hoping. She doesn't give him a sideways glance, and the zither plays out to the end.

Most of the others are obvious. GWTW is the iconic Hollywood movie. I mean how could anybody make that in the 30's? Casablanca is everyone's favourite - somebody designed Bogart and Bergman to make that movie. The Falcon is another masterpiece with Bogey.

If anybody ever asks you how to direct a movie just tell them to get a copy of Shane by George Stevens. It's virtually a blueprint of how to do it.

Dr Strangelove... Ah, Doctor... There's black comedy and then there's this amazing film. I always love the line when the US President has to stop a brawl breaking out saying, "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here... This is the War Room."

Ok so Best Years is corny I know, but it is so good. Even tough men have been known to reach for the handkerchief.

We had to get Jimmy and Katie into the top ten and what better vehicle than Philadelphia Story. I think critics of the day would have called it "smashing".

No one's made a better movie than Waterfront and has any actor been more brilliant than Brando as the longshoreman who takes on the union?

I don't think Some Like it Hot is the best comedy I've seen but overall when you look at everything that makes up the film it is very, very good. Few people forget it and I love Tony Curtis sending up Cary Grant.

(I'm not sure I should put this in writing but when it came to film comedy I would have liked to have included a Marx Brothers epic or, don't you dare laugh, Arsenic and Old Lace. There I've said it in public at last!)

In TV my favourites include:
Waking the Dead, Seinfeld, Prime Suspect, Fawlty Towers and MASH.

I hope I can get away with adding another unpublished golf story, written in early 2009. Maybe somebody will read this stuff years later and actually publish it.

The Curse of the 59'ers, by Frank Avis, Jan/Feb 2009

If you're a golf fan like me I guess you were glued to your Foxtel recently watching veteran Harrison Frazer fire an extraordinary 59 in the season's Q School, that annual battle to win a card on the rich PGA tour.

59! Harrison, what were you thinking? Hasn't anybody warned you about the dreaded "Curse of the 59'ers"?

Only four players have broken the magic 60 in elite competition and only one managed to survive "the curse".

Al Geiberger (Mr 59) was the first, firing a 59 in the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic of 1977. His once-in-a-lifetime round came on one of the toughest courses on tour with the temperature over the 100-mark and is regarded by many as the greatest round of golf ever played.

But it took just a short time for the ill luck to set in. Geiberger came down with a severe bowel disease not long after his magic round,which made it impossible for Al to play at his peak. He recorded several titles in the Seniors, playing under some difficulty, but only captured one more championship on the regular PGA tour. It was the start of the curse.

Chip Beck recorded the 2nd 59 in PGA Tour history during the Las Vegas Invitational of 1991. From that point "the curse" gave Chip a nice old working over. At least he managed to get one more PGA victory on his resume before the wheels fell off. After that final victory in 1992 Chip Beck virtually disappeared off the radar. He bobbed up from time to time as "the man who shot 59" but his game basically just vanished.

If Chip's collapse was mysterious what happened to David Duval borders on utterly bewildering. Duval shot his 59 in the 1999 Bob Hope Classic at La Quinta. And he fired it in the final round, with all the pressure on. As a matter of fact he canned an eagle putt on the final hole to join the short but magic list of those who went under 60.

For a time Duval was up there with the golfing Gods. He made two Ryder Cup teams, captured the 2001 British Open and, for a brief time, took over as the World Number 1. But The Open was his last PGA Tour win. Duval disappeared into a black hole. At one point he was fighting to keep his world ranking in the 800's. It was the sort of thing Stephen King writes novels about. I remember one day watching a PGA Tour event and seeing Duval break down in tears while being interviewed. Wow, I thought, David has just won on the Tour again. Nope. He'd actually just made a cut. You've got to hand it to Duval. He just keeps soldiering on,working desperately to recapture his winning form on the US tour. Never complains. Just keeps on trying. But his collapse is almost without parallel in golf: possibly in any sport.

Only one player has managed to defy "the curse" at the elite level. The superstar of Womens' golf Annika Sorenstam broke 60 on the 2001 LPGA Tour. She not only defied the curse but she looked it firmly in the eye and just kept on winning 'til her unexpected retirement 8 years later.

Several men have managed to return a 59 at the next level of competition. Notah Begay, Doug Dunakey and Jason Gore have done it on the Nationwide Tour. I hope they'll forgive me if I observe that none went on to become a household name.

"Lefty" Phil Mickelson smashed his way around 18 holes in 59 at the 2005 PGA Grand Slam,but this is not regarded as an official event,being played over just two rounds in what was virtually a glorified exhibition match.

And don't forget David Gossett had his fantastic 59 at the 2000 Q School, the same place where Harrison Frazer repeated the dose in recent days. Again, Gossett hasn't exactly set the house on fire on the PGA since then so the dreaded "curse of the 59'ers" remains reasonably secure.

What about Harrison Frazer? Is he destined to be the first man to stare down the curse and prevail on the main tour?

Well, I remain unconvinced. It's never easy to make predictions about golf but if pressed I'd be suggesting Harrison would find 2009 a pretty tough old assignment. You need to stay in the top 125 money earners for the year to keep your full playing rights for the following year. My feeling is he won't make it. Sorry Harrison but the curse is the curse. If David Duval couldn't beat it what hope do you have!

Frank Avis, 2009

(Editors note: Actually Harrison Frazer had the last laugh on Frank. He didn't make a lot of headlines in 2009 but he still managed to finish 112th on the money list, retaining full playing privileges for the next season.)

Well dear reader that's probably enough of my regular ramblings. I'll be back in a while with some cricket trivia including the best test team, as assembled by the legendary Australian opener Arthur Morris. I'll even toss in my best ever team and name the best cricketer I ever saw. If you disagreed with my movie choices imagine the fun you'll have with this lot!

Frank Avis Post-Radio

2010-01-24T12:00:00+10:00

I continued my attempt to find a niche in the golf writing business but with little result. They loved all my "Letters to the Editor" (I won several packs of golf balls) but my articles rarely made it up the ladder.

So forgive me if I include a couple of pieces that I felt were pretty reasonable again as a record of my post-radio work and just in case somebody finds them of interest sometime in the future.

The Shark and the Demons, by Frank Avis, 2006

This is the 10th anniversary of the famous "Augusta melt-down" by Australia's Greg Norman. The Shark who turned 51 in February, may tackle the occasional British Open and the odd event on the Seniors and/or Regular Tour but that's probably pretty much it. Even his most devoted fans now realise it's over - it just wasn't meant to be. I'm going to argue in this article that when they come to write the history of this golfing era Greg Norman will emerge as one of the legends, not just because of how he dominated the game for so long, winning two British Opens on the way, but for how he came to lose half a dozen other golfing majors. What fate did to Norman is already part of sporting folklore. I suspect it will become even more fascinating to golf fans 50 to 100 years from now. Detractors will continue to argue that The Shark just didn't have "the right stuff" on Sunday afternoon and to an extent that's obviously true. But honestly, when you take this journey with me and look at those astonishing defeats I believe you'll wonder, as I do, why fate couldn't have been just a little kinder.

The 1984 US OPen, Winged Foot

This is the Championship where Fuzzy Zoeller waved the white flag of surrender believing Norman had nailed a 40-foot birdie at the 72nd. Actually it was a par and pushed the two into a play-off 24 hours later. Norman returned the compliment, waving his white flag as Zoeller gave him a good old fashioned working over, 67 to 75.

The "white flag" routine remains one of the most endearing memories of the 80's.

The Shark's play-off round was obviously way below Norman's expectations but remember Zoeller chose this moment to play a superb 67. How many players do you think have won a US Open play-off with a 67? I'm prompted to ask, "Why Fuzzy? Why did you have to do it against Greg?"

This is a question which will return to haunt us in the following pages.

The 1986 Masters, Augusta

Norman was leading the final round with the greatest of them all Jack Nicklaus, at the end of his illustrious major dominance, back in 9th place. Nicklaus was 46 years old and no one, not even his most ardent fans, entertained the thought that there was the remotest possibility of one last famous charge by the "Golden Bear". Jack made the turn in 35, managing a birdie at the 9th, and then proceeded to take Augusta apart with a finishing 30. That included eagle, birdie, birdie, birdie. It remains one of the most devastating finishes in golf. By the time Norman got to the final hole he needed a birdie to win and a par to tie. He pushed his 4-iron wide and couldn't get up and down. But let's remember Greg still fired a final round 70, normally more than enough to win the Green jacket (What wouldn't he have done for a 70 in 1996?). But it didn't happen this afternoon not with the Bear launching one of the greatest back-9 assaults in Masters history. That most respected of commentators Peter Allis in his book "The Open" says, "In my opinion... Jack Nicklaus is by far the best last-round player ever born." No argument at this end, Peter. Not that we begrudge Jack his '86 title. Such a genius is entitled to make one last charge but funny isn't it that he chose to do it this particular day, this year against Greg Norman.

The 1986 PGA, Inverness

Norman should have had this one all sewn-up well before the amazing drama of the 18th. He led by 4 at the start of the day and was still 4-up at the turn. But the Shark had another episode of those infamous "major wobbles" and found himself all square with Bob Tway by the 14th. The two were still locked in combat four holes later. Tway hit his approach into the bunker while Norman made it on to the fringe of the green. Anybody with a spare $100 would have put it on the Australian. After all this was Bob Tway in the bunker, not Seve Ballesteros. But the young American up-and-comer proceeded to hit out of the pot sending the ball 25 feet straight into the cup.

Michael Williams in his book Grand Slam calls it "one of the most savage acts of fate the game has known".

I don't want you to think I'm turning paranoid here but do you detect a pattern developing?

The 1987 US Masters, Augusta

You thought '86 was a bummer at Inverness? Wait till you got to '87 at Augusta. This time the Shark came home with a 72 to find himself all tied up with Seve Ballesteros and young American, Larry Mize.

Seve had to trudge back to the clubhouse after the 10th leaving Norman and Mize to fight it out on Augusta's most difficult hole, the 11th. Everybody knows now how Mize hit his 3rd from well off the green, sending it 46 yards bang, smack into the cup.

We see it over and over again on TV. It's one of the most replayed moments in sport. It also happens to be one of the most extraordinary shots in the history of golf. Fate is at it again.

1989 British Open, Royal Troon

Norman came home with a wonderful 64 to force a play-off against fellow Australian Wayne Grady and America's Mark Calcavecchia. It was all settled on the final hole of their 4-hole playoff when Norman went for the driver and smacked it 325 yards into a fairway bunker.

Critics still berate Norman for not playing conservatively but Wayne Grady says it was one of the greatest drives hes ever seen. No one had made it to that bunker all Championship - no one thought anybody could. Rarely has a ball been hit so well... Too well. Norman, typically, chose to attack only to see the famous claret jug handed over to Calcavecchia, when the Shark couldn't find the green from the sand. And we can't let this occasion pass without mentioning that Calcavecchia missed the fairway, crashing through the crowd into the rough. The American then proceeded to pull his Ping Eye-2 5-iron out of the bag and hit his recovery to within 6 feet. (No wonder they're banning square-grooves!) I don't need to quote a golf writer, I'll just quote the man himself, "It's the best shot I ever hit." (Mark Calcavecchia, 1989). There are dark forces at work here, folks.

1993 US PGA, Inverness

Norman closed with a 69 to go into a play-off against Paul Azinger. The Autralian, fresh from his victory in the British Open, had a chance to win on the first play-off hole and a chance to stay level with Azinger on the second. He lost the title courtesy of two dreaded "lip outs". Jaime Diaz ,writing in the New York Times, says, "Norman watched two putts in sudden death roll hard against the left edge of the hole only to spin out."

If you ever get the chance to watch a replay (and believe me you will) you'll see how he hits his putt on the first play-off hole just about perfectly. He's 20 feet away and a couple of feet out the ball starts turning beautifully towards the hole. Surely it's in, it can't miss can it? But right at the end, it hits the edge and does a big power "lip out".

Keep watching as the two go to the 2nd play off hole. Norman is 4 to 5 feet away, needing this putt to stay alive. It's looking good, really good, but it's déjà vue time. Again, it hits the edge and does a repeat "lip out". Surely, after 1986 Norman is entitled to a bit of fortune at Inverness, but no, the demons are at it again.

1995 US Open, Shinnecock Hills

35-year old Corey Pavin was four shots adrift of Norman at the start of the final round and still 2 shots away at the turn. But Pavin's 3 birdies at the 9th, 12th and 15th pushed him into the lead. He delivered the coup de grace on the 18th, electing to hit his 4 wood in order to carry the bunkers guarding the green. Has anyone hit a better 4-wood? I mean it's the final hole of the US Open after all, but Corey flushes it, the ball sailing on to the verge between the bunkers to hop on to the green, 5 feet from the hole. He misses the birdie but par is enough to upstage the Shark in yet another Major.

It's not Pavin's "shot of the day". Not his "shot of the tournament". Nor indeed is it his "shot of the year". It's the "Greatest shot of his life" and, yes, you guessed it, he played it against Greg Norman.

1996 US Masters, Augusta

By the time he gets to August in '96 the demons are playing beach volleyball inside Norman's head. But he launches one last attempt to get hold of that green jacket, including a marvelous first round 63, putting Greg 6 shots clear of the field going into the final round. The only thing is he's drawn to play the last 18 with his nemesis, the ice-cold Nick Faldo. This is the last person Norman wants to see on the first tee. Somebody made Nick just to win majors. On a Sunday afternoon he is relentless. Faldo won just 7 events on the US PGA Tour, 3 of them were the Masters. Try that for a conversion rate.

Actually, the Shark hangs on pretty well for 8 holes. All he needs is a break, a sign that Faldo is human. But the British genius is in the middle of one of his greatest ever final rounds. A tough, uncompromising 68. Finally, the pressure valve stops working and Norman self destructs with bogey, bogey, double-bogey. It's his last chance at the Masters and the critics are right: he blew it big time.

I can't help but add a PS here, more than a decade later.

2008 British Open, Royal Birkdale

I wonder did you happen to notice the final round in this Open championship, when a 53 year old Greg Norman led by 2 shots? Now the Shark fell away with a 77, to finish third behind Padraig Harrington and Ian Poulter.

Did you also notice how two "lip outs" in a row derailed Norman on the back 9.

Oh, and just for the record the winner, Harrington, also hit one of the greatest shots in Open history to wrap it up on the 17th. Faced with a 249 yard second shot on the par-5 he pulled out his 5-wood. Did he fade it slightly into a bunker, pull it into the cabbage on the left, to give Norman one last chance? Come on, you know the answer to that? You've read the script. Whack. Straight on to the green, finishing 3 feet from the pin. Eagle. All over Irish Rover.

Let me summarise this amazing tale. Norman was overrun by one of the greatest final rounds in Masters history, engineered by a man in his mid-40's. He then suffered two shattering defeats due to extraordinary chip-ins. Now if this had happened in a 10-year period on tour or indeed in the whole of the player's career we'd just shrug and accept it as "the rub of the green". But it didn't... It happened in just 12 months.

Zoeller, Nicklaus and Faldo all won their last majors against Norman. Tway, Mize, Calcavecchia, Azinger and Pavin all won their only majors against Norman. The Shark is one of only two players to have lost all four majors in play-offs.

I suppose there are dozen to 15 truly memorable incidents in the history of the Majors including the great Nicklaus charge at Augusta in '86. The Gene Sarazen albatross at the Masters in '35. The Larry Mize pitch-and-run at Augusta in '87. The Tom Watson chip-in at the US Open in '82. The Bob Tway bunker shot at the PGA in '86. Ben Hogan's 2-iron at the '51 US Open. The Corey Pavin fairway wood at the '95 US Open and of course the pitch by Seve Ballesteros from a "car park" at the British Open in '79.

As I say about 15-or-so truly memorable moments burnt into the history of Major Golf.

Did you know, 4 or them were executed against one man - Greg Norman. I rest my case!

In recent months we've had a couple of amazing stories relating to golfers' off-course activities.

There is the stunning Tiger Woods' saga which has seen the superstar retreat into a far corner of the house, pull all the curtains shut and threaten to stay there for the foreseeable future. As I write this the 2010 season is underway, Tiger is still incommunicado and PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem is probably thinking of retreating to the far corner of his office and pulling his curtains shut.

I know the other players hate losing to Tiger all the time but boy, do they want him back. Like desperately. I share Retief Goosen's view and express surprise that Tiger has taken so long to go public. The longer he locks himself away the harder it's going to be. He should get out there as quickly as possible, face the flack and win a couple of tournaments. Then it'll all be history. At the risk of being grotesquely politically incorrect, let us all remember, "Men are engineered to be overwhelming attracted to women, women are engineered to like men being overwhelmingly attracted to them. That's how it works. Get over it." (By way of an aside I was talking to a few mates prior to hitting off at Wallacia during the middle of this drama and we were talking about a weekend newspaper which ran pictures of all 14 of Tiger's alleged mistresses. One of the blokes looked at the whole page of photos and remarked, "Hey, look at that... They're all white." Woooo, where were the black lovers?)

Prior to the Tiger's demise we had the absolutely awful Greg Norman-Chris Evert affair.

The two came down with an over the top attack of mid-life hormones. Norman walked out. Chris walked out and they spent over a year publicly swooning over each other. But as anyone who's done Year 1 genetics will tell you the sex-attraction hormones last only 18 to 24 months. After that you're on your own. And after 18 months or so it suddenly stopped for Greg and Chrissy. I have to say that Norman's behavior after that was a pretty good lesson for Tiger. Greg actually had to Captain the President's Cup team shortly afterwards and he bravely walked out into the spotlight and took it on the chin. This was a totally class act from one of the golfing good guys. A pity the same class hadn't emerged when he so publicly dumped his loyal wife Laura. To be honest, I can't believe how Greg and Chris behaved. They were everywhere in public. When they decided to get married it was like the filming of Elizabeth Taylor's "Cleopatra". They took over a whole island resort, closed down the local airspace and turned on the most opulent ceremony since the last most opulent ceremony (whenever that was). What was even more stunning was that Greg had his daughter in the bridal party and his son as best man. It's difficult to know just what impact this had on his ex-wife,who had to sit and watch all of this happening with her two children by her father's side.

I can't think of any act more crass in recent years. And I still can't believe Greg allowed this to happen. Clearly Chris wasn't bothered by all the hoop-dee-doo and we have to assume that Greg was so infatuated that his normal good judgment just went out the window. But where were his friends with some honest advice? Surely there was a gatekeeper somewhere in the inner circle who could have intervened. We know they were madly in love and wanted everyone to know it but this was a time for public dignity, something low key and personal. Someone needed to point out to Greg and Chris the old adage "less is more". Where in heavens name where his parents? What were they thinking to allow their son to publicly humiliate his former wife? The bottom line is that the whole affair did significant damage to the public image of two great sports icons. Fortunately both are normally such class acts that they will quickly regain their public standing but for that brief time, to those of us watching from the sidelines, it all seemed so wrong. (The Palm Beach Post, in Florida not Sydney, has just reported that Greg and Chris have completed a quickie divorce.)

Look this is all getting much too long and complex, so it's time I think to wrap up this particular chapter and prepare for the next.

Just a late note, as we go to press Mike Carlton has retired from the business to tend his family and the "hot goss" in Sydney this week is that radio legend John Laws will actually come out of retirement in 2010 to join the 2SM Super Radio network run by Bill Caralis.

Radio is sort of like the universe – volatile. We'll keep you posted on these and other moves in the months ahead.

Frank Avis... Post Radio

2010-01-01T12:00:00+10:00

I interviewed a lot of celebrities and news makers in those 45 plus years but my three favorites remain: Sir Edmund Hillary, Neil Armstrong and Harrison Ford. Now there’s a trio for you.

And the one link that pulls them all together is humility. Each man was humble. Whether this was genuine or not I can’t say for sure, but if they were acting all three were pretty good. They convinced me.

Hillary was the first person to walk on the roof of the world, as co-conqueror of Everest in 1953.

He was genuinely self effacing. We kept prodding him to tell us who really got to the top first... Was it him or Sherpa Tenzing? Hillary never blinked an eyelid. And he kept saying that the only reason he was first to the top was that his name, along with Tenzing, just happened to come up on the roster for that day.

He reminded us how many other people were involved in the conquest.

Armstrong seemed to be an incredibly introspective man. There was little doubt that he didn’t want to be there in the middle of all of the publicity about the landing on the Moon. He was very convincing, telling us over and over that while there were three astronauts up there making history, there were thousands of others down on the Earth keeping the lifelines operating. And he said that if any one of those failed the mission would probably have been a disaster.

Ford: We all loved him. He was a major star when he came out here to publicise Witness (excellent movie by the way) and it was just like talking to the bloke next door. When we asked him about movie stardom he said that every time he felt he was getting too big for his boots, and he noticed his head starting to swell, he’d go down to his workshop and start building a birdhouse. When he’d finished he’d look at it and say, "There, I’ve actually produced something real... Something that has a purpose." A bit of carpentry quickly brought him back to Earth.

I promised my top five list of best-ever voices. Here we go:

1. Mike Carlton
2. Brian Henderson
3. Steve Leibman
4. Michelle Aleksandrovics
5. Denis O'Kane

(Note: Obviously there are several voices I would have liked to have included. Two come to mind immediately: John Bailey, as I’ve said in previous chapters, "One of the best presenters I’ve heard anywhere," and an old 2SM name Terry Mabb whose voice was made for radio.)

I’ll take if from number five. Denis (I christened him DOK) had a wonderful voice. I guess he’s not as widely known as some of the others but he read news conversationally without losing any conviction.

He kicked off in Sydney - I think with 2SM - and moved south to Melbourne for the second half of his career.

Michelle: I’ve already written about her natural style and charisma.

I’m not sure where she is now... It’s my fault we’ve lost touch because I’m getting too lazy... But the truth is she was really, really good and should have been one of the best known women in modern radio. (Ed’s note: the two have now been reunited, well by phone anyway. Michelle is working as a Senior producer at SBS. Frank and Michelle have promised to have coffee in the new year and it may be appropriate that we publicly announce the time and place so that any parties interested can join their table... Er, just kidding!)

Steve sounded great during those heady days at 2SM. He had the voice and the style. In many respects you remember Steve as the voice of that era. He didn’t do himself any harm at Channel 9 either. Still going strong on TV.

Hendo: This guy was a radio marvel before he became a God on TV.

He didn’t lecture you when he presented this news. It was like he was sitting in an armchair next to you and telling us what happened today. I absolutely loved Hendo when he paired with Mike Gibson on 9 News. This was perfect TV news.

Mike Carlton: He has this classical, international accent combined with a strong, male presence.

I worked with him when 2UW switched to MIX 106.5 but you wouldn’t say that we were close, although I worked my tail off at 4.30 every morning to find funny/unusual stories which would add something different to his show.

A bit of a footnote here. When Carlton left MIX he made the strangest decision I could imagine by taking over the drive slot on ABC Radio. I was genuinely astonished that he’d make this move, something that the commercial sector would generally regard as just one step short of career suicide.

It turned out to be a huge success. Mike was perfect for Aunty, giving the ABC this lovely commercial/street smart "edge". I gave up on radio to be honest in the late 90’s because it became so engineered and plastic it wasn’t worth listening to, but I couldn’t get by without my "Carlton Fix" on good old ABC Radio in the afternoon. It was tragic that he opted to go to UE. I know the money was huge but it was a bit like Mike Gibson quitting 9 to go to 10 for the money. Carlton and ABC afternoon radio were made for each other. I can no longer listen to ABC Radio, sadly. I hope you don’t mind another tirade here and remember that you’re listening to an old man, no longer in the trade, who thinks the golden era of radio was back in the 50’s.

You also need to take into account one of the unwritten rules of life: that the older generation always regards what the new generation is doing as absolutely awful. Nothing compares with the old days.

But seriously, most radio today is dreadful and ABC radio may be even lower than that - Appalling - is that what I’m looking for? When you listen to some of the stuff, well here in Sydney anyway, it’s as if a senior bureaucrat walked into the front office at the ABC and picked the first six people he saw to go on the radio. I don’t know exactly how to describe the overall image of ABC Radio in 2009, it just seems to be so colourless. I know this opinion is not shared by ABC listeners. They remain loyal through thick and thin.

Well, it’s a bit on the thin side at the moment. I should add, as an afterthought, that watching ABC News on TV is just as frustrating: it’s almost as if the presenters are petrified that some viewer might discover that the reader is actually human.

When you go back to the days of Michael Charlton, who hit the screen like a guided missile, you’ll understand the extent of the loss. Even good old James Dibble is looking like as extrovert.

Sorry about that. I should have just shut up. None of my business really. And to be fair to the ABC I have to add I was forced to watch one of those breakfast shows on commercial TV recently and my feeling was it was probably written for a bunch of 14 year old giggling high school girls. So the malaise seems to be general or is it just me? Anyway, getting out of radio I kept looking around for something productive to do and I finally decided to put two interests together, journalism and my love for golf, to see if I could do something in that direction. After all, I’d interviewed many of the golfing greats of the last 40 years so surely I’d picked up something? (The answer to that question by the way if it means does watching and interviewing elite golfers actually help you to play the game? No.

I decided to do a story on 18 holes on 18 separate golf courses and call it "The Sydney Challenge". I personally checked all of the holes and they even wanted to toss me out of Bayview when officials found me on the course, checking out a famous par 4 one day. I’d got permission from the Pro Shop but the official decided that wasn’t good enough and gave me a bit of a lecture.

Anyway I thought the concept came up rather well and was very happy when it found its way into print in the comparatively new publication Inside Social Golf. I’m enclosing the article for your perusal, with a warning that the next few pages are really pointless unless you’re addicted to sports/golf journalism.

Well, what did you think of that? If Col Denovan is reading this in Victoria he might like to pack his clubs into the car and come north to give the "challenge" a try. Okay, I’ll even caddy for you mate.

I’m now advised that that the length of this entry has entered the red zone so may I thank you for reading my latest effort and promise another page or two in the near future, when I’ll print a few more of my articles (yet to be published) and continue my ramblings. I should also warn you my career included a lot of cricket and VFL/AFL coverage, along with a love of movies, so you may well get a bit of that stuff along the way, including my 10 Best Ever Movies of all time (Alex Shabs will no doubt have his say about that).

Frank Avis Departs 2 DAY FM, and Spends a Little Time at 2SM before 2UW/MIX

2009-09-24T12:00:00+10:00

During my time at 2DAY Grant Goldman asked me if I'd do some news lectures at his radio school. It was a really interesting assignment and I threw myself into the role. It allowed me to come up with a programme which proved really useful when my teaching career took off in another direction.

A short time after I finished my lectures with Goldy's group Lois Baird, head of the Radio Division at AFTRS (Australian Film, TV, Radio School at Macquarie) rang to ask if I could do some guest lectures.

These ended up going for a couple of years and they were very enjoyable.

AFTRS was a separate organisation but just next door to Macquarie Uni and was a very "hands on" operation.

My programme usually operated in this format:

THE BIG STORY. We all sat round a desk, playing radio journos, dealing with a big story.

I usually gave them an initial report, for example, two planes have crashed in the Canary Islands, or Prime Minister Harold Holt is reported missing while surfing at Portsea, etc. They spent the next couple of hours writing updates and bulletins and figuring out how they were going to chase the story.

It worked really effectively. I also explained to them that, as the story unfolded and they realized it was going to be really big, it was their duty to be on the lookout for soundbites which they could reserve for the newsroom history tape (if they had one) for future use. I gave them the example of the listener who rang me at 3XY back in the 60's to report on the Westgate Bridge disaster. I said how his report on watching the bridge come down contained a lot of static, but that I opted to leave the eyewitness report uncut, preserving the static. I hear the report from time to time and the static in between the man's sentences gives it an amazing authenticity.

We also always checked the morning news. Each student had to tape the 8 AM news on a particular station and we then sat down that night and compared the product and debated what the various newsrooms decided to do and how they did it.

We ended the programme with everybody doing their own bulletin and reading it. I think that anyone going through the process would have emerged with a very realistic understanding of how a radio newsroom works.

I'd even use background tapes as they tried to prepare their bulletins so that they'd be happily typing away only to find themselves constantly pressured by announcements coming down the line from Police PR, Ambulance, Fire Brigade Central Control, Weather stats, etc, etc. One thing I can tell you is don't go into a newsroom unless you can deal with a lot of intrusive noise.

We enlisted a range of top names on the final night to critique and just plain rap with the students which was excellent exposure to the trade. These included Steve Blanda, Arch McKirdy and some of my own staffers, like Michelle Aleksandrovics and Toni Anne Mathews, who were able to give the class a realistic view of what they were looking at if they chose to go ahead and seek a career in radio news.

One of the key Frank Avis teachings was the use of "INDICATORS". I've been using them since my days at 7HO in Hobart and the key reason is the belief that a journalist should not only report the news but should, where possible, put it in CONTEXT. This is the reason I always dragged my Frank Avis files with me from newsroom to newsroom. Because I always wanted to keep information IN CONTEXT.

The theory is extremely simple. Let's say Sydney had an incredibly cold night in mid winter and actually recorded an official snowfall in the city. It's obviously a good story but gets even better if you know that it's Sydney's first snowfall since 1868. So your story suddenly becomes something else... That Sydney has had its first snowfall in 141 years. (PS. I'm only making up this information by the way so to give you an example. I haven't checked Sydney's snowfall figures, though I suspect it's quite rare).

It's not just the fact that our temperature overnight was minus 6 but that the city has had "it's coldest August night in 110 years".

We used to discuss this sort of thing a lot at 2DAY FM and MIX 106.5. I remember we were always looking for information which would stick in our audiences' mind. Classically, we were looking to build up this basic trust with our listeners so that they could depend on us to give them critical information, providing them with a weapon in the constant battle for one-upsmanship.

Just imagine four people are having their morning coffee at work, sitting round discussing the day's events. They get to saying "how cold it was last night". Three of them then go into great detail about how it got down to minus 6. Then the fourth member of the group, the one who's been listening to our station, is able to slip in and say, "It was our coldest night in 110 years." Cop that guys, that's a real clincher. It tells you not only that it was cold but HOW COLD. It is an INDICATOR that puts the information in context. You can use these INDICATORS effectively on a wide range of stories.

I recall something really nice happening after my classes. I'd been talking to students about making sure you get the interview at the scene and I remember telling them that if they were in a situation where the TV crew went in one direction and the other journalists in another, GO WITH THE TV CREW. It wasn't that the TV crew would always get their eyewitness, but rather that the eyewitness would always find the TV crew. Everyone laughed at the time, but somebody must have been paying attention because one morning I got a call from a student, I think it was Catherine McGath, who said she'd been working in I think it might have been Wollongong radio when she faced exactly the situation as described. All the journos went running in one direction and the local TV crew went in another. She took a couple of steps in the direction of her opposition journos and then remembered the AFTRS advice. She stopped and ran after the TV crew. She was the only radio journo to get the eyewitness. Boy her boss was impressed. I just love phone calls like that.

The other thing that happened while I was at 2DAY FM was that I joined a tour by travel reporters for a month in India. The trouble was the whole thing was a bit of a mess and 28 out of the original 30 journalists canceled out. That left just yours truly and Ted, a cameraman from the Courier Mail, who actually took the trip. We both wanted to cancel but organizers begged us to carry on. We did so, but it was so embarrassing as we arrived at City after City with officials looking at the two of us and asking, "Where's the other 28?"

I only mention this because it was quite a highlight seeing this incredible country and it allows me to pop in a couple of shots of Ted and Frank in India (with apologies to our high tech team at Production Headquarters).

So back to radio. Oh yes and I'm realizing my brain hasn't been working that well. I should also be remembering other identities at 2 DAY, including Warren Burr (went on to 2KY I think), Graeme Virgo (he did some work for me later at 2UW/MIX), Norris Smith, Richard Wilkins (you know where he is now), Rachael Mackenzie, Lee Wallis, John O'Donnell, Mike Hammond (now the "voice and face" of Foxtel), Mike Petrie and Matt McGrane (I was sitting at a bus stop outside Aus Film Corporation in Kings Cross last year and this tall guy sat down on the seat, looked at me and said, "How are you Frank?" It was Matt. How he recognized me from 2 DAY FM is beyond me but there you are).

I remember leaving 2 DAY FM. I think I was called in to the GM's office - as I recall Bob Scott, ex WS, had now taken over following Austereo's arrival - and we agreed that I'd be moving on with Glen Daniel, also ex WS, taking over as ND. It was all very civil and to be honest I was happy to move on. Well, I was just preparing to leave the newsroom for the last time when the phone rang. It was radio legend Ken Sparkes who had taken over assisting 2SM. He wanted to know if I'd do the breakfast slot at SM.

Frankly, I just wanted to take a couple of months off while I assessed my career. I was seriously thinking of setting up a syndicated travel show across Australia. Anyway I went down to Blues Point Road and had a coffee with Sparksey who told me he'd need me to start on Monday morning (It was now Thursday afternoon). I wanted to say NO, I knew I should say NO, but this was Ken Sparkes. A seriously nice bloke so I said YES.

Then I found out that the News Director Anne Edwards was on holidays in deepest Africa. I told station management there wasn't the faintest chance I'd start work without the approval of the ND.

Sometime Saturday Ken rang me to say they'd phoned her and everything was fine.

Oh God, it wasn't good. The station was on its way down to the canvas and was continuing with a mixed format which just wasn't going to hold up under the pressure of FM and specialist AM'ers.

But Ken and his associates were so committed and so keen to make it work that it was impossible not to want to help.

We all tried pretty hard, really, over the next 12 months or so.

I remember quite a few people there... James Knight, Bronwyn Martin, Gareth Macrae, Katherine Hynes, Normie Rowe amongst them… But I think we all knew the place was heading for a brick wall.

Eventually, they called us in to tell us SM had been sold and I had a chat to the new operators who said they planned to specialize in COUNTRY MUSIC. I nearly fell over, rolled my eyes and said they'd be destroyed in the Sydney market. They responded that they'd carried out a wide-ranging survey and found out that the people were desperate for Country music. (John Laws gave Brendan Sheedy the same advice about programming 2 DAY FM. PS He didn't take it.) I don't know where they surveyed but they could have saved themselves the money and just asked me. I think we all know what happened to that concept. I know I walked out of the front doors at SM muttering, "I've got to get out of this industry."

I have to admit that I would desperately love to programme 2SM, even today, when it has suffered untold damage in the marketplace. I've written several letters to the owner explaining how the station has to go into specialist programming and what that should be. But so far all I hear is silence.

Ah, but that's another story.

So bye bye 2SM. I sort of hung around for a while, did a bit of advisory work, potted around until I got a call from UW asking if I could fill in for some weekend news. I did this, probably just OK, and eventually I did some Breakfast news filling in when Ross Symonds went on holidays. Then UW and Pam Mackay parted company and I found myself back as ND at a metro station again. And it went reasonably well. I was hired by the GM John Williams, probably the best station manager I've worked with to be honest.

He spoke directly and honestly to me, never went back on a deal and always took responsibility when he felt it was appropriate for him to do so. I found him absolutely excellent. Cherie Romaro was back as PD and I also remember our Chief Engineer Bob Girdo, senior programmers Peter Sinclair and Dave Smith (I think Dave was the PD who nicknamed me "the Leg", as in Legend, which was very kind), Ellie Specht, along with news staffers David Glyde, Jacqui Dolan, Angie Nelson, Jenny May, John Kesby, Keith Chalmers, Ken Hose, Toni Anne Mathews (she now goes under the name Toni Mathews at ABC NEWS so I have to ring her again to tell her I love her full name), Deborah Knight, John Costello and Peter Switzer. With the full support of John and Cherie I set about cleaning up the joint. We dropped as many of the notorious "voicers" as we could and strove to use only genuine actuality. I think it made a huge difference. I know I had a really nice message one day from a senior programmer at the ABC of all places, congratulating me on the clean sound we'd achieved at UW News. I didn't even know the guy, so that was very, very nice to hear. It's amazing how you hear all the bad stuff but not a lot that's positive.

I also had a similar experience during the Great Bushfires that threatened to destroy Sydney in that period. We virtually had to run the newsroom from 5 AM to around 3 AM for a fortnight while the fires burned through Sydney. Anyway the first thing I said to the staff was to listen to the opposition stations and note the overall impression of "hysteria". Reports just happened, the stations ran from scene to scene with the obvious conclusion that the audience found it really difficult to understand just what was really going on.

We instituted a clear policy to START WITH AN OVERVIEW and then to cover the area geographically. The result was that our listeners had a regular update which summarized the situation and could then follow the rest of the hour with specialist information, area by area. I got a really nice phone call from a senior officer at Fire Control after everything had quietened down and he told me that we were the only station they were listening to, the only place that seemed to make any overall sense. That was another one of those unexpected calls which we all love to get.

The next amazing event was the decision to change UW from the AM band to MIX 106.5 on FM.

I'd already had the unusual honour of putting two new stations to air, 3MP and MMM, and now I could include switching an AMer to FM, a different beast indeed. We'd already been softening UW news so it wasn't a big step to move into an FM format which was looking for a strong female component, 25's to 45's. The one big decision was Breakfast news, especially with the unexpected decision to bring Mike Carlton back from London to launch the FM format in Breakfast. Our reader was Ross Symonds, a nice man, and a top news reader. The trouble was that we no long wanted a "professional reader", we wanted a conversationalist, someone who could pass on the news in a natural style without surrendering authority. The answer was Michelle Aleksandrovics, easily the best female reader I've heard in my career, and one of the top five, male or female. She and Carlton were not together that long but they were absolutely brilliant. Mike quickly involved Michelle in Breakfast as the two teamed up like a dream.

Before that though we had the great difficulty of discussing the decision with Ross who had worked long and hard at UW and was something of a figurehead there. Once again, GM John Williams stepped forward and took responsibility for this difficult assignment which I'm know he handled with great sensitivity.

The changeover went exceptionally well. I've got to say I was amazed when they told us Mike Carlton was going to do FM breakfast, but I've got to admit that after 6 weeks or so I saw tremendous potential in the presentation especially with Carlton increasingly using the softening influence of Michelle.

The problem was the show was cluttered with a lot of additional stuff, including a comedy group.

It was really difficult to be on the sidelines there, listening to the show, and wanting to say to the Management/Programmers that the whole thing had to be "de-cluttered". I wanted so much to say to somebody, "Just let the music, news and info roll and Carlton will do the rest," but I couldn't intervene at that level. Sadly, the experiment ended after that first year and we'll never know what would have happened. What I do know is that Mike could have carried a lot more of the load. He was a Sydney institution, he knew how the city and the nation clicked, had a great sense of humour (quite vicious if required) and all we had to do was run the music and the info and just let Mike be Mike. He didn't need all of the additional gunk, it just clogged up the arteries. Oh well, it's gone now but the original idea was not far short of the mark. This concept should have worked. Don't you hate that when it happens?

Just a promo for something I plan at the end of this series, when I'll name my TOP FIVE RADIO VOICERS. Be advised MIKE CARLTON will be top of the list. Best voice I've ever heard.

Finally, the end came at MIX when the station changed hands, to be taken over by the company that also owned 2WS. We then went through a long and difficult process when the owners tried to combine the two newsrooms, to save substantial costs obviously, which would have operated out of WS.

We fought hard and, if I remember correctly, John Williams actually eventually won the battle, convincing the company that we needed to be in Neutral Bay but something happened to me… I suddenly got very old and simply decided to fade away. It was a funny decision. Things were going fine and my staff was very supportive but, what can I say? I just ran out of steam. Wanted a rest. And so I walked off into the sunset. But I still miss going over to the Oaks in Military road, meeting John Williams, sticking a steak on the barbecue and gossiping about radio.

I didn't do a great deal after that. Brendan Sheedy hired me to fill in for Angie Nelson for a fortnight at SKY NEWS but, so typical of my life, I got this horrendous flu the night before. I filled myself with some anti flu pills and kept using a nose inhaler every couple of hours but I was a hospital case by the first afternoon. I tried to keep going but I was very ill and could hardly talk so it was an overwhelming relief when PD Huw Drury rang and suggested a few days off. Boy,did I need it. Anyway, I filled in for a few nights and that was it, thank God. I think it was a big hint from fate that my time was up.

My final installment next time will update my career, but how many times can you say, "Nothing's happening," and conclude with a few opinions including the BEST VOICES, my THREE FAVORITE INTERVIEWS, some assorted TOP TENS and a few examples of what I've been doing lately (none of which could be regarded as remotely important).

Thanks for staying with me.

Frank Avis Returns To Sydney - Mid-80's

2009-06-23T12:00:00+10:00

I returned to Sydney, along with Mike Jeffreys, on a Friday afternoon.We got word that we were to start on Breakfast the following Monday, which was a bit of a shock. I had to get into the newsroom to familiarise myself with the panel over the weekend.

My obligation was news on the half-hour, plus quarter hour "special input" with anything unusual/strange into Mike's brekky programme. There was just me and my assistant.journalist. I quickly sussed-out the audience 2DAY FM was targeting - the top-end of the 25-50 market - and got my assistant to start doing half-hour business updates, basically the Dow, Australian Dollar, price of oil, etc, etc.

I didn't get a lot of positive reaction over this with some of my internal critics suggesting that if we were going to put a specialist reporter on to something it shouldn't be in finance. But I thought it was a meaningful contribution: it provided critical information for a fairly large number of listeners and even if the audience wasn't directly involved a lot would have been content to hear this sort of content, in that they would have perceived themselves as among Sydney's "movers and shakers". It's sort of like the middle aged man you see get on a morning bus, going to work, with the Financial Review tucked under his arm. He never reads it but he feels better to be perceived as a FR reader (actually at one point when 2DAY FM was going really well, I used a senior Financial Review journalist to do regular finance updates in our Breakfast news).

It's a long time ago but I'm trying to remember the cast from that era. I know George Moore was doing mornings (and very, very well - boy did he fit that adult format!) along with Tony Hartney, Keith Williams and Tim Webster. I'm also recalling Grant Goldman, George Donikian, Holgar Brockman, Terry Mabb, Michelle Aleksandrovics, Norris Smith, John Kesby, Angie Nelson and Simon Latimer.

I'll ask my large production team to see if they can include an attached piece by Harry Robinson who must have been feeling kindly disposed towards me as breakfast presenter.

We knew that we had to get some extra bite into the overall station presentation so Cherie hired Debbie Spillane to do sports. We tried to generate a sense of humour in our presentation, especially if I had the opportunity to remind Miss Spillane of any or her sporting predictions which hadn't worked out. She had a cheeky sense of humour and the Debbie and Frank show seemed to work ok for a time.

It was during this period that I worked closely with Production specialist Peter Kukura in putting Debbie forward for an annual RAWARDS, as Best Sports Presenter (I think they're now knows as the ACRAS). We waded through tape after tape and Pete ended up putting a wonderful package together. Imagine how it felt when I was sitting at the 2DAY FM table on the night of the awards and heard the MC read out, "and the RAWARD for Best Sports presenter goes to... Debbie Spillane, 2DAY FM." Don't you love it when a plan comes together.

It was also during my second tenure at 2DAY FM that I started to concentrate on some other areas of my career: doing a one-minute history piece Monday to Thursday with George Moore and a regular Friday Travel segment. These both worked quite well. In fact Friday travel was a real surprise generating tremendous audience feedback. Of course the audience Cherie was targeting was smack bang in the middle of the same audience profile for the travel operators - upwardly mobile 25 to 45's who were extremely interested in... THEMSELVES. I remember one day Japan Airlines faxed me a release announcing a special one-off $100 fare to Tokyo, to introduce a new Sydney-Japan service. They had intended it to be released to the weekend press travel sections as well but had to ring me urgently at noon that day, 90 minutes after the feature went to air, saying they'd already filled the 450 seats available. George really did have a strong and loyal audience.

My histories with George also attracted the attention of Dick Smith's Australian Geographic magazine and I got a call one day from the Editor, asking if I'd do the History segments in their first-ever calendar.

I agreed of course and settled down with their historians at AG to work out the format.

The 1989 Australian Geographic calendar is a collector's item and I'm so proud that I assisted with that historic production.

Our in-house photographer Darleen is now being asked to provide some pictorial highlights from this magazine for the Producer of this web site, son John, to include on this page. Hopefully all has gone well and the highlights will appear before you as we speak.

At this point of my career it became obvious that my on air work was falling away: my voice was clearly getting weaker, lacking projection and Noel and Cherie saved me having to make a tough decision about myself by calling me in and asking how I'd feel about Tim Webster coming back to 2DAY to read breakfast news. I was ecstatic. He was such a good voice and near-perfect for the station's news presentation. Plus he was a really good bloke and excellent team member.

At the same time, Debbie took time off for a baby and Cherie discovered the legendary larrikin, Tim Bailey who came in to do sport. And so we begin probably the most controversial thing in my long period as a News Director. 2DAY FM Breakfast featuring the "two Tims", Webster and Bailey.

Well, from day one Web absolutely loved Bailey. And vice versa.

And somehow the morning sports report gradually turned into an all out,no holds barred riot.
Devotees absolutely loved it,and rang in laughing deliriously. But there were those who regarded their sport as sacrosanct who protested vigorously. "How dare we laugh at sport"? Among those was Debbie Spillane who had come back doing weekend sports and was beside herself at the antics of the Two Tims.

Actually it started out innocently enough.

I'd always made a habit of collecting the famous one liners of history. Everytime I heard somebody utter something that seemed to capture the story or the era I'd grab it on tape. I had 3 reel-to-reels full of famous quotes which I carried to every station along with my three drawer filing cabinet full of information about anything and everything. Anyway one day Tim Webster was in the newsroom when I played my favorite John McEnroe outburst - you probably know the one where he screams at the umpire, "You cannot be serious... You CANNOT be serious." As he utters the second line his face has gone bright red and spit can be seen flying 3 metres out of his mouth.

It's just my all time favorite. Tim quietly asked if I could cut him a cart with this one liner on it. It was simple enough and I was happy to oblige. Imagine my surprise when in the following news a Tim Bailey report was followed by McEnroe screaming, "You cannot be serious… You cannot be serious."

I looked into the news booth and Webster was sitting totally inscrutable as if the whole thing was a complete surprise. Bailey was looking at him glaring daggers. The battle was joined. Soon both men had a repertoire of one liners which they used with gay abandon. These ranged from Rhett Butler responding to Tim Bailey‘s weekend league predictions with, " Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn," to a range of totally unsuitable additions like Mae West saying, "Come up and see me some time," to Marlon Brando's, "I could have been a contender." Pretty soon Cherie was looking at me very strangely and Noel kept ducking into his office and shutting the door as I walked by.

Clearly they were trying to tell me something: actually I think they were trying NOT to tell my something, hoping the whole thing would just go away.

And everything would have been fine had Australia not taken part in the Commonwealth Games that year and had Tim Bailey not been working on 2DAY FM. This was not my mistake. I take no responsibility for the ebb and flow of history. This was just fate.

This was the time when the Australian male athletes decided to wear extremely revealing, tight fitting track suits. One particular track star filled his suit incredibly well. Indeed when Channel 9 showed the front on shot of him winning a gold medal there was little doubt that he was a remarkably well endowed young man.

The problem was Bailey just couldn't believe any man could be that... er... well built.

He went to air at 8 o'clock, announcing that the man in question had in fact stuffed plasticine down the front of his pants. Even the normally well controlled Mr Webster took a liking to this theory and expanded on it to some extent.

It was terribly difficult to know what to say to Bails. I sat at the news desk, I think completely stunned.

Bailey obviously knew he was on pretty thin ice with this one and it took him 15 minutes to summon up enough courage to return to the newsroom. All I remember is this face coming around the door and Bails looking at me like a naughty schoolboy asking, "Do you think I went too far?"

Too Far? He'd gone that far he was no longer in the same postcode! He smiled at me, cheekily - he was always so good at being cheeky - and I broke down into complete laughter, sliding out of the chair and falling on the ground. It took half an hour for newsroom staff to help to return to reasonable operating order. I mean what can you say?

At 8.20 a man rang me in absolute hysterics announcing that he had just lost complete control of his car on Victoria Road and crashed into a telegraph pole. The thing was he was still laughing. He rang me back at 10 to tell me that when he told the police officer what had caused the accident the officer then broke down into hysterics. Bystanders reported seeing a car smashed into a pole with a man and a police officer both sitting on the gutter laughing.

So we somehow survived that crisis until 11.30 when a particularly serious gentleman rang asking to speak to the News Director. He promptly announced that he was a solicitor representing the said athlete, informing me that his client had been grossly defamed in our morning news.

He went on to explain that the said defamation was heard by the man's wife and family and that they had thought our comments were highly offensive. I asked if he'd actually heard the comments himself and he said yes, indeed he had heard the 8 AM news on the way to work.

There was a slight break in his voice and I admit I actually started to laugh.

Then he broke down and started to laugh. And we both spent the next 15 minutes laughing hysterically.

Finally he hung up and we never heard from him again.

At last the Games came to an end and we sadly had to say goodbye to the allegations of the plasticine in the pants.

Webster and I looked at each other and the look in our eyes said the same thing, "Please God, just don't let Bailey loose again, just give us some breathing room, just normal news and sport."

It was not to be. God in his wisdom had decided that New Zealand would play a test cricket series in Australia including a match in Sydney. Mr Bailey left little doubt about his opinion of New Zealanders making various thinly veiled remarks about the Land of the Long White Cloud. He gave the Kiwis heaps.

Then New Zealand struck back at Bailey with the great all rounder Richard Hadlee announcing that he was going to retire at the end of the season. This would be the last time we'd see him in action in Australia. Bailey announced this piece of news and for a brief moment it sounded as if there was actually a hint of sorrow in his voice. People started to call in support of Hadlee, happy to give Bailey some of his own medicine. I was on to this at the speed of light and opened up our recording line for people to call in and say their farewells to the great Richard (soon to become Sir Richard) Hadlee.

The phones were flooded. Some cricket fans were actually crying. We kept the recording line going for 48 hours. Then I rang the Prime Minister's office and asked if Bob Hawke would like to join in. He was on the line in 20 seconds with the most incredible tribute. We played it uncut. We couldn't stop the phone calls. They just kept coming. Clearly the public loved this bloke Hadlee. He epitomized the whole Australia/NZ relationship - we give each other heaps, and we absolutely hate to lose when we play each other at sport - but when the chips are down we are there in the trenches together. Does the word Anzac ring any bells?

Anyway, it was early afternoon and my batting average on this story was pretty close to Don Bradman's so I thought I'd go all the way and ring the New Zealand Prime Minister, I think it was Jim Bolger, to see if he'd like to say a few words on air. Now his office was adamant, "No way!" Jim had apparently had a shit of a month and had taken off on a fishing trip, not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

There was no way he'd agree to call.

15 minutes later the Prime Minister of New Zealand rang 2DAY FM with the most heartfelt tribute you have ever heard in your life. Hadlee of course was an icon.

I had a quick meeting with Cherie and Noel (yes they were talking to me now, well not openly so that anyone could see, but definitely talking) and we all agreed.

Peter Kukura and I would put a one hour special on cassette full of all of these wonderful tributes and we'd present them to Hadlee at a coming test match in New Zealand.

I'd already been very sneaky by leaking a lot of the audio to one of our sister stations in New Zealand, and they lapped it up. So the whole thing was absolutely huge in Kiwi land.

There was only one thing left to do. We called Tim Bailey in and in very sobre terms informed him that he would be flying to Auckland and in front of a huge crowd of New Zealanders, it would be him who'd be presenting this tape to Richard Hadlee. Personally. Smack in the middle of enemy territory.

Webster and I loved it. Here was the ultimate penalty for that little smart alec. He'd ducked all of the bouncers we'd bowled at him but now was the ultimate reckoning. We doubted he'd actually get out of Auckland alive. Indeed Webster and I had put together what we thought was a fitting tribute to Mr Bailey should he fail to make it back over the Tasman.

As usual – yes, you guessed it - the trip was an overwhelming triumph for you know who.

As I understood it, Bails entered the cricket ground for this famous presentation decked out in a dinner suit jacket, accompanied by shorts and a pair of work boots. They loved him. This man who had personally delivered more insults to Kiwis than Ian Chappell at first slip charmed the living daylights out of the lot of them. The Auckland radio station rang, "Could Tim stay longer to do some guest appearances," "He's the biggest celebrity in the country," etc, etc. It was absolutely mortifying.

I looked at Webster and we both thought the same thing, "No, you bloody send him back home. He's not going to swan around New Zealand like a superstar." And so he returned but it was never the same.

The station had by now moved into the ownership of Austereo and it quickly became obvious that the two Tims were not actually Austereo material. Every time I mentioned the Tims Paul Thompson, Greg Smith and their team looked left of camera and suddenly found they had to get to an urgent appointment somewhere.

Oh well, we had a good run and for a few months radio was suddenly the way it was back in the 50's. No one had a script, it just sort of happened, but oh brother when it happened to someone like John Harper on 2KY and years later to the "Two Tims" on 2DAY FM, boy, did it happen. And how wonderful it was to be there.

Austereo was very successful in this new breed of programming. Everything was researched. You gave the target audience exactly what they wanted. Nothing just happened. Not even the humour. Spontaneity? Sorry not on the menu. Funny thing about Austereo, no one really laughed. It was very, very serious.

But to be fair, they had the last laugh with both their ratings and their bank balance. They were clearly doing what their audience wanted. The thing is that they took this philosophy into news. News became what the audience wanted. If they didn't want it, it wasn't news. Which took us all into a whole new arena as we essentially argued the key issue: does a journalist have a responsibility beyond the audience's demands? It may not be a hot item in the monthly "focus sessions" but what if the journalist believes it to be important for the audience to know? Tricky, huh.

This was the basis of a keynote speech when I went to the RTNDA symposium in Las Vegas that year. The CBS reporter Jeff Greenfield spent some time talking about the "death of the gatekeeper". He said that one of the most crucial components of any newsroom was the "gatekeeper" - the veteran who'd been through it all and was able to sit back and say, "That isn't news," or "Hey, why aren't we doing this story?" and then explain to his fellow journos why.

Greenfield argued that the gatekeeper was being removed from most of the gates in radio and TV around the globe and that we were essentially reverting to news which was strongly driven by demands for trivia. The exploits of 21 year old actresses, who were stars after making one movie, had suddenly become preeminent. Look, let's be honest, the Austereo format which was basically a quick series of headlines and weather followed by a 30-60 second "informational", essentially aimed at the female audience, was also legitimate and proved to be highly successful.

The truth is we now have so much programme diversity that everyone is catered for. If you want the more traditional news you know where to go.

This entry is probably going too long but there are a couple of things I should also mention.
First was the day Austereo's ND John Williams (a really nice bloke, we also got on extremely well) brought in this hot shot news programmer from the US West Coast. He was the man who apparently formulated a lot of their ideas. So I was ushered into the Board Room where John and I sat down with several of the Austereo heavies to hear what the great man had to say.

He was walking up and down the boardroom looking out of the window. He did this for some time, in fact he did it for a very, very long time. Suddenly he turned and uttered these immortal words, "Headines... Very important!" Then, allowing us sufficient time to mentally process this incredible breakthrough in news programming he returned to his pacing up and down the room.

Some time later he suddenly wheeled around again and looked me smack in the eye saying,"Weather... That's critical!" After that I think he left the room, probably to recover from this incredible intellectual feat. I walked slowly back to the newsroom thinking, "I've got to get out of this industry... Something's happening."

Also at this time I had another major brain wave. Again, the timing was gloriously awful.

The allies had just launched their major operation to kick Sadam Hussein out of Kuwait and all the way back to Baghdad. I wanted to do something entirely different.

I suggested to the powers that be that we could operate a national update from 2DAY FM which would feature a retired Senior Army Officer who would brief us on the operation at several peak bulletins through the day: 6, 7, 8, Noon and 6 PM.

I wanted to call it the War Room (Stop sniggering, it would have worked).

In these key bulletins we would have crossed to Colonel X in the 2DAY FM War Room for his latest update on the fighting. He'd take us behind the battles, describing the terrain where they were fighting and what sort of weaponry was featured at the coal front etc, etc.

I wanted to do a deal with one of the daily newspapers, preferably the Australian because they published in most of the capital cities, to include a two page detailed, coloured map of the area so that the audience could use the map to follow the Colnel's updates.

He'd even be able to use cross-references from the map to add to the authenticity.

I flew this idea before the senior administrators and I have to report that it went down like the proverbial lead balloon. There were a lot of sideways glances, heavy whistling and movement from one foot to the other before we sort of went our separate ways down the hallway.

So, we all gradually rode into the sunset.

I went for a brief stint to 2SM which was in the process of self destruction at the time (do you realise 2SM no longer appears on the ratings sheets in Sydney? They have to be included among "Others").

As for the two Tims, well, I don't see anyone anymore really but I watch them. Web does the sport on Ten News and Bailey does the Weather, cheeky as always.

Thanks guys for one of the most memorable, albeit controversial, periods of my radio career.

There were other developments during this period, including my movement into teaching, but I think that'll have to wait till next time we meet.

PS. If there's anybody I haven't defamed so far please leave your name and I'll correct the oversight as soon as possible.

Frank Avis at 2 DAY FM

2009-02-15T12:00:00+10:00

It was the early 80's and I'd made the move from Bondi Junction to Crows Nest - MMM to 2DAY FM.

Part owner Graham Kennedy continued to call it TWO DAY FM despite our recommendation that it was TODAY FM, essentially for marketing purposes, but THE KING just wouldn't have it. I'd had a bit of contact with Kennedy since XY in the 60’s and he always remained totally supportive of my career. He was a very nice, extremely quiet bloke who did some hilarious routines on his old XY show.

Ask Producer Brian Newington about those days: he would have a stack of very funny memories.

When I got to 2 DAY, it really didn't take long to organize the newsroom and start putting out a moderately decent product, especially as news started out essentially as a peak-hour component.

Brendan Sheedy was in charge and if I remember correctly he soon hired Cherie Romaro to run programming along with Tony Hartney and Gerry O'Shea. Noel McGurgan was the Sales chief, but soon to take over as Chief Executive. I'm trying to remember the on air staff in those early days. I'm sure Laurie Bennett, from XY, was there and I know Tim Webster came over later on, but my memory is a big vague after that.

The Chief Engineer was The Admiral Graham Greenwood and he had organized the station to utilize an automatic system, which meant the station could run for hours without an actual "live" presenter.

Everything was mixed in the Control room, which included all of the music, commercials and the announcer “drop ins”, pre-taped prior to the shift.

It was good in theory and probably would have been effective for the late evening-mid to dawn arena, but I think it just drifted away as it became clear that all the programmes lacked immediacy.

I mean what do you do if Sydney's hit by a cyclone mid morning and the guy on air is running the show as if nothing has happened? You've got the news bulletins of course, announcing the imminent end of the Earth, but as far as the rest of the show is concerned, it's all fun and giggles.

I remember Tim used to come in an pre-tape his 9-1 shift and all I had to do every hour was pause for the news and then hit the programme start key for Tim's tape to go to the next hour.

It worked ok just as long as nothing untoward happened. Then we were in trouble.

My memory of this time is pretty hazy but I think Brendan and Cherie were already putting the fundamentals in place for the later successful 2 DAY FM "adult" contempory format, based strongly on album input. I remember at the time that I thought the programming was getting better and better by the day. Although, like MMM, there was a lot of pressure on Brendan because of the poor rating figures. It was pretty much like the earlier story of 6PR. We knew the actual listenership was improving every month but it just didn't show on the surveys. This is one of those phenomena which our peculiar industry just has to live with - there is this delay in what is actually happening among the mass audience and the confirmation of this in the monthly ratings. It can sometimes take a long time to move up the ladder, just as it can often take a long time to start moving down.

Then came one of those things that in retrospect you really can't explain.

I got a phone call from Brian Rangott, of channel 9 fame, who was a major shareholder in 3MP.

It transpires that the Board had decided to clean out the place after a series of rating disappointments.

The General Manager Ray Bean was leaving to be replaced by Norm Spencer. My pal Dean Matters had gone and Brian told me they were releasing News director Barry Owen. I was extremely sorry to hear this as I know that Barry really didn't want to replace me as ND when I left. He would have been much happier continuing in his role as the Senior reader, which he did really well. So I blamed myself for some of this, having put him in a difficult position when I resigned in the 70's. Basically, Brian was asking if I would mind assisting the station in vetting any candidates who might emerge from the Sydney market.

I loved 3MP of course, as we had a lot of history together, and I agreed to provide any assistance required. The trouble was no suitable candidates were coming forward. MP was looking for somebody to not only run the newsroom but to put ideas to Management to take the place forward. Weeks and weeks went by and no one surfaced.

Anyway, the long and short of this saga was that I decided to take up the challenge myself. I still don't know why. Just one of those things.

So, I broke the unwritten law of our industry, NEVER GO BACK.

Not only did I break it once but I broke it twice in succession. If you want to stir up the Gods of radio that’s how you do it.

I returned to Melbourne and resettled in beautiful Mt Eliza. I was actually met at the airport by Norm Spencer (I loved him... Everybody loved him) who briefed me on the trip back to the Peninsula.

I can't remember everybody but I know my old mate Ian Nicholls was in the newsroom, along with Chris Morris, Rob Curtain and the Traffic girls. Andrew Rutherford had taken over the Community Services sector including the Victoria Story and Rupert Macaw was the chief engineer.

I remember Leigh Mathews was our football expert. At DB earlier I'd worked with Ron Barassi, and earlier at XY with Jack Dyer, Bob Skilton and Barry Cable. Talk about getting close to the legends.

It was at this time that the most bizarre thing happened which I probably shouldn't even record here, but oh well, here goes. I'd come back into the newsroom late one night, I think it was a Saturday. I was probably editing a footy tape I'd done that afternoon, to be available for the Sunday breakfast. Anyway there were only two people In the place, the duty announcer and me. The jock hit the intercom and said could I take a call on what seemed to be a mysterious matter.

Anyway I picked up the phone and found myself talking to either a young police officer or the head of security at a leading Melbourne hotel. He said he needed to speak to a station executive. I said I was the only one there at that time of night, so he took my name, rank and phone contact.

Then he told me that he was questioning a group of men who had been found running naked through the hallways of the hotel. He had them in a room, apparently in various states of undress, and that several had told him they were from a country radio network, attending a meeting that weekend. He needed to speak to a 3MP official because another one of the men claimed to be one of our executives. He mentioned a name and a rough description and I was able to confirm that yes indeed there was such a person on our executive staff. The officer then thanked me and rang off. I never heard any more of the story and indeed I never mentioned this amazing tale to anybody else, until quite recently when the story surfaced while talking about old times with a former MP colleague. But it was most embarrassing and I wish I hadn't been in the newsroom that night. Funny, huh? Anyway back to the format problems.

I spent a month checking out the situation, only to quickly realize that MP's "something for everyone" policy was being shredded with the arrival of FM radio. I just stood back, listened to the market and looked at the last two surveys and realized MP couldn't survive unless it chose to make some major changes. Ideally, it needed to specialize. But I couldn't see that happening so I wrote a long memo to Norm suggesting that MP go totally mainstream by getting strongly into sport, including VFL broadcasts.

There was still one match per round available and I recommended we immediately negotiate for the spare spot with the VFL and our radio colleagues.

I think my memo came right out of left field for Norm: it was exactly the opposite to what he wanted to hear. He dismissed the whole idea and I think that may have ended his close relationship with me as the station's ND.

Norm and Brian were determined to continue MP's policy and set about cleaning up its on air sound.

Truly, they did this with a vengeance. Brian was there in the trenches, decluttering the on air content and reworking the sound of our local ads and community service input.

By the time he'd finished the station sounded magnificently professional. He did everything anyone could do to give the format a 100% chance of success.

Norm, for his part, ripped into the station's public image. He gave away a house, yes, I said a HOUSE.

He organized a huge bikeathon, picking up the concerns of the community over the abuse of energy, especially the impact of cars.

I came up with this wonderful story of a young lad who'd rescued several people on his surfboard, I think from a shark attack or perhaps a boating crash. Anyway we found out he had lost his parents and was being raised by his Grandmother. Norm opened up a special trust to pay for the rest of his education.

Norm and Brian did everything anyone could ask but the ratings continued to say "no"

It is probably the most demonstrable proof of the adage about radio that YOU CAN RATE DOING THE RIGHT THING BADLY, BUT YOU CAN'T RATE DOING THE WRONG THING WELL.

The whole radio landscape was changing and MP policy mix which had seen them flying high for some years, was now dragging them back to Earth with a thud.

The days of appealing to everyone had gone. Now you had to pick your audience and target them.

We worked our hearts out but to no avail.

This was an absolutely awful experience, particularly as I had to watch a group of really decent, dedicated people pouring everything they had into the place and going backwards.

In the end, the place was taken over by a provincial radio consortium and Norm retired to the farm, to be replaced by Wayne Browne.

I was immediately called into Mr Browne's office and told I was being dismissed. It was slightly unexpected and naturally I asked for a reason. He replied that he thought I'd be leaving anyway.

This left me just as puzzled, although some weeks earlier somebody had planted a nasty little story in one of the Sunday papers, alleging I was in talks with FOX FM. I must say this was news to me, and it must have been news to FOX as well, because we'd never even swapped a phone call.

My dismissal created shock waves in the southern capital.

With 48 hours I was called to a meeting with the Journalists Association in Melbourne. When I walked in the Secretary told me that the Association regarded my sacking as a disgrace and that it was placing a ban on the position of 3MP News Director. The station had tremendous trouble getting anyone to takeover. In the end they had to settle "in house".

Lots of stuff was happening at the time. The Sunday paper which had run the invented story of my talks with FOX then announced that I'd resigned from MP. I rang the reporter and told him it was untrue, I'd been dismissed. Given the boot. The reporter said he thought he was doing me a favour in making it sound as if it was my decision.

I pretty much decided that staying in Melbourne really wasn't an option.

I sucked in my pride and rang Cherie Romaro at 2 DAY FM, asking if she knew of anything going in Sydney and if she'd speak on my behalf. Two hours later she rang back to offer me a job as Breakfast Editor at 2 DAY, to start as early as possible. Warren Burr was the ND and Graeme Virgo his right-hand man.

Mike Jeffreys was taking over the Breakfast show and I was to be part of the team, doing the news and special features.

So I did it again. Twice in a row I broke the cardinal rule of Radio by going back to the place I'd left just a few years earlier. This time, fortunately, the results were significantly better, well for quite a while anyway. Nothing lasts forever in radio, or TV for that matter.

Frank Avis Continues His Radio Story as Sydney Goes FM In 1980

2009-01-13T12:00:00+10:00

2MMM was centred I think it was the 25th floor of this super high-rise building in Bondi Junction.

Tom O'Donohue, who was the technical consultant at 3MP back in the 70's, was doing the same job at MMM. I remember Frank Mancini was the Chief Engineer. Cherie Romaro, from 6PR, was PD with Tony Hartney assisting, along with Keith (Chooky) Fowler and I'm not sure whether Gerry O'Shea was there. He was definitely at 2DAY FM with Cherie later on. We had my mate Tim Webster on air, along with Bob Hughes, Keith Williams, I think George Moore was there and I’d poached Terry Mabb, as our Chief reader, and Jason Wayne as our "on the road" specialist over from 2GB. Jim Carroll joined us as Terry's back-up in Breakfast.

Rod Muir of course was the charismatic el supremo: he was MMM.

Our newsroom was virtually the end of a passageway which was our main working area. But we did have an excellent newsbooth with direct sight to the studio suite.

I think it was set it up really well and it worked efficiently from day one.

It took some time to get to air and there was a lot of tension in the place, as I recall, but at the same time it was also very aggressive and positive as our rock and roll playlist pounded out around the building.

I've got to say the MMM music was fantastic, especially our main thematic chosen to launch the station.

You'd come out of the lift, up near the top of this high-rise building and the R AND R would be pounding out. There was a lot of pressure on Cherie about the playlist, as I recall, but from my perspective it wasn't the music that held MMM back. It was just history. It took a while for FM to settle-in in Sydney, indeed in most cities, and even longer for the figures to start showing up on the ratings sheets.

And the view was fantastic. I hope my imagination isn't taking over here, but I'm sure Terry Mabb called the start of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race from the newsroom windows and then walked across to the other side of the building to report on the yachts as they zoomed down the coast. Don’t take that as gospel: I could be going senile. But the vista from the MMM building was sensational. Has anyone operated in a more beautiful city?

I wasn't unhappy with our product. We tried to be a bit tongue-in-cheek. I did a deal with one of the Sunday papers for a special 5PM feature on Friday nights, with their social columnist reporting on where all the "beautiful people" would be going on the weekend. We had a lot of fun with that.

I would like to report on another major story we did in that time, describing the unusual technique I used which I felt worked really well. Again, I'm not mentioning this for personal glory. I add my traditional rider that I can really only report the behind-the-scenes stuff of WHAT I DID. I can’t comment on the methodology of others.

Anyway, get on with it.

President Reagan had been wounded in an assassination attempt and we actually had incredibly detailed descriptions of where the bullet had lodged, what sort of bullet it was etc etc as he went into emergency surgery.

I'm always looking for "lateral thinking" in these cases and this time I opted for something rather unusual. I rang a major Sydney hospital and asked if they had a surgeon on duty who might comment publically on the operation. To my surprise I was put through to one of the city’s top cardiac surgeons.

I said to him I was hoping to get his comments on air about the operation. I expected him to tell me to "get lost" but he actually liked the idea. He laughed and said he'd need to get some detailed information and I was able to read him the AAP copy describing exactly where the bullet had lodged.

He then started to put his thoughts together and I could hear him saying, "Oh, they'll have to go in via the (some technical name for a body part) and, gee, they'll have to be really careful there because they can't hit the (another technical name)..." He was rambling on, rehearsing the operation in his head, so he could give me some sort of meaningful analysis of what the surgeons over there were facing.

Suddenly, I'm listening to him and I said, "Do that… Don't give me a summary... Do the operation for us on MMM NEWS... Just simplify for us and tell us what the doctors have to do."

And he did. So, as the doctors operated on President Reagan, MMM NEWS had a leading surgeon describing exactly what they were doing. I read the SMH the following day, which carried a detailed description of the operation, and our surgeon had got it spot on.

I still think this is as good a story as I've ever been involved in. We took the story and transported our audience right into the middle of the drama. This one is up there with the best. (How I wish I'd been programming a News and Information station that day...)

When it went to air, I think Terry Mabb was reading, I sat in the newsroom and waited for someone to run into the newsroom and say, "That was brilliant." And I waited and waited. We hardly got one word of praise from within. I still find that stunning. The only reaction I ever received was a phone call from another Sydney News Director (really nice bloke) who simply laughed and said, "You bastard," and then hung up still laughing.

To be fair, I don't think news was a MMM priority. It was the music so I guess we couldn't expect people to be hanging on our every word. In fact, something very unusual happened just a week or so before we went to air. Rod was taking one of our shareholders, radio celebrity Bob Rogers, on a tour of the building.

He brought him into the little newsroom and said, "And this is our news department," to which Bob responded, "What do we need news for?" and walked off.

So, I think we have to accept that it was the music which was the 1,.2 and number3 priority at MMM.

And I say again, I absolutely loved the playlist. The music was marvelous.

There is one interesting sidelight to the Reagan shooting. The John Lennon assassination was also a huge story during my tenure at MMM. Of course it was much easier to merge our news coverage into the station's programming, because of the stature of the victim in the musical world.

So it should have sounded pretty good, overall. But the truth is our news coverage was absolutely traditional... Dead straight... I just couldn't find any inventive way of doing the story, so we did it just like everybody else, including a couple of the dreaded "voicers" from LA.

When I got home that night I thought, "Boy, that was ordinary... Very, very ordinary."

Imagine how embarrassed I was when I found myself being congratulated by senior management on how we tackled the story. I even got a really nice memo from Rod saying how good it was.

I didn't have the heart to tell them that it was just about the most predictable effort we could have given them: nobody listening in would remember any part of it in six months time. I'll bet a few remembered the Reagan coverage a lot longer than that.

Now for the difficult part. It was becoming increasingly obvious to me that the lifestyles of Frank Avis and MMM were increasingly moving poles apart. I offer no further comment on this issue except to say that I discussed my problem with the news staff and told them I'd decided to get out. Needless to say we had a few intense discussions but in the end I decided to get out as quickly as possible. I'd known Brendan Sheedy since 3AK days and he had now taken over Mike Willesee and Graham Kennedy’s 2 DAY FM at Crows Nest. Brendan needed the newsroom set up and I put my hand up as the man to do it.

There was a difficult period of legal debate as Rod demanded I serve out my full resignation term, and I know Brendan Sheedy was placed under a lot of pressure. But, it was resolved in the end and I was able to make the move to Sydney's other FM'er, 2 DAY FM, situated, was it on the 3rd floor, of a motel-office complex on the Highway at Crows Nest.

I can tell you one thing... The view was a lot different.

At least, we had a hospital next door, in case it all became too much for me.

The 2 DAY FM adventure will be the next chapter of my radio story which will also feature the "worst decision I've ever made" as I break one of the cardinal rules of the industry.

2GB and Beyond

2008-12-24T12:00:00+10:00

I finally got back to Sydney, twenty years after heading into country radio, to join 2GB as News chief.

I’d been hired by GM Ron Hurst who was rebuilding the station after an early unhappy trial of a music/news mixed format. Sadly, as I walked in the front door, Ron virtually walked out the back, replaced by Fairfax heavy Max Suich. It was a bit of a blow for me as I had a sort of understanding with Ron that he’d take a close look at a news/information peak-hour format. But I have to say that even though GB had a close relationship with the owner, Fairfax, it had none of the shared information I'd found at 3DB in Melbourne. Still, there was a great history there and I was moderately hopeful.

I remember Carol Miller, I think was PD, Roger Summerill was Assistant Manager and Bob Milne was the Chief Engineer. In the newsroom we had Tony Townshend, Mike Baker, Russell Powell, Shane Sody, Patrick Weaver, Terry Mabb, Jason Wayne, Barry Freedman and others, including our wonderful secretary Gaynor Mitchell. The bad news immediately was that Tony had already contracted to return to London radio, a development which hit us hard. I immediately went on the attack, trying to end the staid old-style Macquarie presentation. One of my pet hates was the dreaded voicer.

Basically, back in the 70s—and probably even today—the voicer was the basic extra input in most news bulletins. Let’s say something happened in the far north of West Australia. A Sydney station would immediately ring its affiliate in Perth and ask the duty journo to voice the agency copy. Now the journo would often have no additional information on the story—he wouldn’t even be within a thousand kilometers of the event—but he'd read the agency copy word for word and his report would be carried across the nation as if it were gospel. Cross your fingers that the agency copy was right because if it got it wrong then the reader also got it wrong. This process was repeated right across the radio universe. If something happened in New Orleans then the station’s reporter in New York or Los Angeles did a voicer. Again he/she probably knew no more than the journo in Sydney. They were both almost certainly working from the same agency copy.

I hated the voicer. The reader was virtually pretending that he was there, that he had some special knowledge about the event. It was, and is, pathetic and unethical.

So we cut our voicer input at 2GB and lifted our real actuality level dramatically. Suddenly the voice was gone, replaced by an eyewitness, a reporter actually on the scene, or somebody who had some special interest/knowledge in the event.

This had an immediate impact on our sound, lifting our energy level and de-boring the old GB presentation. However, I'd forgotten one little thing. Our affiliates on the network were also forced to change. Instead of receiving 10 voicers in their morning feed they were getting 2 voicers and 8 pieces of genuine actuality. Oh God, they hated it.

Whereas in the past, they could stick a cadet in the booth and he'd be able to write a dozen voicer intros:

"10 people have died in a tornado in Alabama. Bill Smith reports..."
"There's been a light plane crash in northern Queensland. Allan Roberts..." And so on and so on.

It was zombie radio. Now, all of a sudden, the journo at the other end had to actually WRITE A STORY and marry in our actuality.

When Australia's David Graham won the 1979 US PGA title—one of the golfing majors—they didn't get an intro and a voicer. They got 6 pieces of great actuality from David who spoke to us when Terry Mabb tracked him down to the locker room.

But our affiliates were beside themselves. We had a network finance meeting one day and I thought the News Director from a very large city south of Sydney was going to have a heart attack. Mike Baker was with me and he couldn't believe the anger and jealousy. I think he immediately decided he’d never contemplate becoming a News Director. In fact it might have even driven poor Mike out of the industry.

But despite the hassles from beyond, back at ol' 2GB the product wasn't half bad. We tended to crack a lot of stories and I have to say the staff were extremely loyal and hard working in pursuing the Avis principle of "chase the actuality".

Two things about the place: There was a bad feeling right across the station and I think I need to address that phenomenon. We were now being run virtually by newspaper execs and I have to do a bit of background on the immense difference between the two types of media. Newspapers—from my experience—seem to be run on fear and hatred. The paper is divided into several areas, represented often by different unions. These areas hate each other. They don't trust the others. And nearly everybody hates the owners and the administrators. Often the administrations also hate each other. So these are usually large, bureaucratic-style operations with massive divisions between the various departments. Somehow they come together at the end of the day, or night, and put out a great product. I don't know how this happens. In the words of Geoffrey Rush in Shakespeare in Love, "It's a miracle." You can't run a radio station like that. The whole basis of a radio operation is unity. Everyone has to be going in the same direction and have the same general inspiration. It's a bit like war. You can't win if you have to fight the allies as well as the enemy. I remember saying to Max once that you could feel the fear running down the 2GB corridors and he responded, "Good, a little fear might be just what we need." You can't blame him for that. He was educated in that sort of journalistic environment, an operation where you often had to fight the person alongside you to get a result. But it just doesn’t work in radio.

The other issue being fought out was our programme philosophy for 1980. Where was 2GB heading? After one disastrous decision the management couldn't afford another. I was trying to get some interest in a news-information-talk concept which would see us trial my news-info policy from 6-9 AM, Noon to 2 PM and 4 to 6 PM. I’d titled it "THIS IS..." (Based on our intro):

Eg, "THIS IS (slight pause) MONDAY DECEMBER THE 12th..."
"THIS IS... WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22..."

I'd tested the audio impact of a snare-drum as our basic news thematic. I'm sure you've seen and heard the drum, usually carried on the side of the drummer as he leads his battalion into battle. It has a special, hollow, attention-grabbing sound. You can't escape it.

Anyway the plan was to hit the drum FX, go to a high, and then do the announcement:

"2GB SYDNEY" (drum up) "THIS IS Monday January 23rd..."

There were about a dozen drum variations available through the news hour. This was the sound we would have used to reinforce the audience's connection to 2GB NEWS-INFORMATION. But it never happened and to be fair it was a difficult concept to sell, especially to someone not versed in the idiosyncrasies of radio. In the end it became obvious the powers that be intended to go for a tried and tested personality format with Mike Gibson and Mike Carlton taking the prime Breakfast-Morning time slots. I guess, from that moment, my passion dropped away.

I continued to have good support from within the newsroom as well as from such diverse people as Johnny Tapp, the racing supremo, and Ron Camplin who was picking up the 2GB service on his network.

Then there was the really good news that Tony Townshend's London gig didn't turn out to be all that was promised, which meant he was coming back to rejoin us in the new year. I would certainly have held on until then in normal circumstances but two ridiculous incidents finally cost me big time.

It's strange how it's often the stupid little things that bring us undone.

One of our journos accidentally ran over time while sending out our midday news feed, cutting into the intro of the racing preview which was carried across Australia. All hell broke loose and they were firing cannon up and down the 2GB aisles, mainly in my direction. Anyway we thought we'd solved the problem when some four weeks later another member of staff repeated the dose, sending the news feed out to the network at the same time as the racing experts were trying to pick a few winners for the punters. The following afternoon I was dismissed. And really I couldn’t blame Management. In this business you only get one warning and the newsroom had already had one. Something dramatic had to be seen to be done and it turned out to be my head. As the President said, "The buck stops here."

I had a quick conference with Roger Summerill and I was cut free.

By a strange coincidence I'd been following the progress of the FM'ers who were preparing to go to air later on in 1980, one being Rod Muir's 2MMM-FM. I rang a mutual friend Brian Newington, who was helping get the Triples to air, and he kindly mentioned my name to Rod Muir, who I'd worked with so many years earlier at 7HO, Hobart.

We had a meeting and shortly afterwards I was on staff—unpaid during the work up period—preparing the newsroom for a launch in a few months. It was really nice of Brian to act as mediator. I'd worked with him at 3XY where he produced the Graham Kennedy radio show from Frankston. Earlier, of course, he'd been a legend at 3UZ when I think it must have been Don Lunn who christened him "Moondoggy". I still owe him one. He helped keep me in employment in the toughest radio market in the country.

2MMM was an amazing adventure—not all of it good—and I'll tell you about that particular part of my career when we next meet at this site.

I promise my next episode will come a lot faster than this one.

As Johnny Young would say, "Be there, or be square."

Have a great Xmas and a really good 2009.

Frank Avis Continues: 3DB and beyond

2008-09-30T12:00:00+10:00

I moved back into the city to 3DB which was sited in the Herald Sun Headquarters.

Talk about a massive rabbit warren. I was told to go up to the second floor for a meeting in an office and failed in two attempts to find it. In the end they had to send somebody down to escort me there. Embarrasssing. I’m remembering Brendan Sheedy (The Manager), Paul Thompson (PD) along with Geoff McComas, David Shoreland (ex XY), Laurence Costin (absolutely lovely bloke), my mate Col Denovan (XY), another great mate Ian Nicholls, Wally Ryan, Alex Shabs (ex AK), Chris Lewis and many others who will remind me that my memory has crashed. Sorry.

Anyway the pervading atmosphere was bad. DB had been a giant in the industry but was now declining.

In fact, I hope he won’t mind me saying this, but Col rang me when he found out that I could be moving to warn me to reconsider. So, it was a pretty gloomy outlook. Still, there was a job to do and we all got on with it. I have to tell you the most wonderful story about the first few days. I walked into the newsroom, had a fossick around and found a bank of printers along the rear wall. There must have been four to six printers just sitting there. I kept checking them every hour or so and couldn’t find any sign of activity. I waited until late in the day and eventually asked somebody what they were or whether they worked. Whoever it was didn’t have a lot of information... He thought they worked occasionally.

Anyway, I went another 48 hours looking at these printers and finally could no longer contain myself. So I asked Laurence what was going on and he said that he thought the previous News Director had got sick of reading through all the stuff and had simply turned them off. Laurie and I pulled the printers out and sure enough the plug had been pulled out. We stuck it back in and they all went berserk. I sat there dumbfounded as I watched 3DB NEWS get a copy of every story filed to the Herald Sun network from around the world. I sat there all afternoon, bewitched. It was like going to heaven. We had the hard news, the backgrounders, and—believe it or not—even the phone numbers of people involved.

We never turned the printers off again, not as long I was in the ND’s chair anyway.

Then, a week later I happened to be patrolling the corridors of the Herald Sun upstairs—probably trying to find the office of somebody important I was supposed to see—when I walked through what appeared to be some sort of central receiving agency for newswires.

As I walked through some lady looked in my direction and said, "It’s about time you people came back to get your stuff." I looked bewildered and she said, "Aren’t you the new bloke from DB?" "Yes," I agreed, "I am." "Well," she said, "there’s all your copies... No one’s picked 'em up for about 18 months."

There in front of me were several huge spikes, marked DB, full of stories going back over a year. Every story filed by local reporters was copied for DB and left on the spike. This was astounding... Certainly the most formidable source of news available to a radio station I have ever seen or heard about. I hope you don’t mind a bit of boasting here, but let me tell you for 12 to 18 months DB was the hottest source of radio news on the planet. We broke so many stories you wouldn’t believe it. I know the station was in serious trouble overall but for a wonderful year our news team was up there and running. And we loved it. We kept telling each other what stories we’d broken and how far in front we were. These were difficult times but for the newsroom we were humming and really proud of the stuff we were doing. I reveled in the standard of our product. And I could tell our peers were paying attention. When you get two job offers from Sydney while you’re there you know something is going right.

Speaking of Sydney, I found myself facing a dilemma. Every morning around 8:15 to 8:30 one of the printers fired up from the Sydney office with a stack of stories which would be leading the afternoon papers in Sydney that day. We had a sister station relationship with the mighty 2UE but I really didn’t know what to do... Did they already have these stories and if I went to a lot of trouble and started giving them a one hour lead over their rivals would they simply regard me as a smart arse? Remember there’s a lot of jealousy in our trade. Anyway, one morning I bit the bullet when a really big story came in on the Sydney wires around 8:45. I rang the UE desk and can’t remember who was there—Vincent Smith, Greg Milne, not sure—but I asked if they were running the story of a well known pop star going to jail over a serious offence. They hadn’t heard about it... Indeed they almost laughed. So I read them the story that would be front page in the afternoon papers in around two hours. They were stunned. But the evidence I’d given them was overwhelming. The reporter had just a few minutes to make a decision on whether to accept what I’d told them or reject it. He went with it. It was a big story and UE broke it more than an hour before their opposition. From that day on, as long as I was in the DB news chair, we rang the UE desk around 8:45 with any hot stories coming in. I don’t know whether they really liked it—Sydney doesn’t like getting favours from Melbourne—but the arrangement continued and was very effective.

Another tale—detailing just how much information we had—concerns the sudden death of the great Bing Crosby who collapsed on the golf course (that’s probably what’ll happen to me). Anyway Ivor Davis ran this wonderful story with tributes from far and wide including a lovely piece from Dorothy Lamour, the female lead – remember – in those great old Hollywood Road movies with Bob Hope.

And there in the middle of the script, in brackets, was a Los Angeles phone number. I knew it wasn’t Ivor’s number and I kept thinking it’s in the middle of the Dorothy Lamour tribute... Surely it couldn’t be, could it?

I went into the booth rang the number and the voice at the other end said, "Hello, Dorothy Lamour."

I was stunned, quickly explained I was ringing from a radio station in Sydney and then waited for her to hang up in my ear. No way. She laughed softly and then spent 15 minutes telling me about Bing and Bob and how she loved the road series the three of them did in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

We did this sort of stuff all the time... The resources were unbelievable.

We should have done fair dinkum "news and info" but things were difficult for Brendan and I could never talk him into giving it a fly. Or rather, he probably couldn’t talk the Herald Sun heavies into giving it a go. I’m positive it would have worked. Take my word for it. And allow me to go into some detail, including a NEWS AND INFORMATION CLOCK that I drew up for DB and later 2GB back in the mid-70’s.

I warn all readers the following information is probably for the consumption of journos only. It’ll just bore everyone else. So I’ll give you a clear warning when it’s over and you can then resume checking out the gossip, having given the technical stuff the big flick.

It was obvious from the mid-70’s that we were heading into specialist radio, particularly with the possibility of FM ripping into the music arena over the next decade. I’d listened to a bit of US news and info and was totally unimpressed. It was heavily national/international/political, so that I guess it could be easily formatted nationally. Indeed, quite a few of the formats were nationally-syndicated with 1 minute breaks or "local news". Maybe it worked in the US but I can tell you then and now, forget it in Australia. If you’re in Sydney at 7:30 in the morning and the Harbour Bridge is closed for an hour, it is THE STORY of the day. You can forget the latest Canberra surveys or US forays into Deep Mongolia. When Sydney’s main artery stops, Sydney stops and the audience wants to know about it, big time. But it’s not a story in Melbourne, Brisbane or Perth. Whooooo cares!

My concept for news and information in Melbourne and Sydney was LOCAL... Underlined... So it was very labour intensive. And you couldn’t on-sell it around the nation. End of Frank’s dream.

But it would have been good radio. Still could be.

Basically, you’re looking at my NEWS AND INFO format 5:30/6:00 AM to 9:00... Switching to NewsTalk Radio till noon... Resuming NEWS AND INFO 12:00 to 2:00... Back to NewsTalk until 4:00 and running NEWS AND INFO 4:00 to 6:00/7:00 PM.

And there’s no padding. The stories run as long as they run. The infamous “voicer” would be banned (more on that later, when I journey to 2GB). I don’t wish to be offensive but listen to the ABC’s NEWSRADIO and then go in the opposite direction.

I also incorporated a lot of production aids, including thematics which meant you had to include a panel op or an extremely gifted announcer/panel op to keep the show running.

The concept was to move it quickly and to keep the information flowing.

I won’t use the “clock concept” here, but rather simplify it into a half-hour block format which just keeps repeating:

00:00 Station ID/news thematic
00:15 Situationer*
00:30 News, sports and weather
05:00 90 second commercial break and community announcement
07:00 The Big Story/The Big Interview
09:00 Sports wrap
10:00 Local/interstate weather
11:00 Situationer*
12:00 Business Update
13:00 90 second commercial break and community ammouncement
15:00 News briefs and city weather
17:00 All the Sport
20:00 Situationer*
20:30 90 second commercial break
22:00 Business update
23:00 Feature**
25:00 City weather, interstate and international
28:00 90 second commercial break and community announcement
30:00 Repeat the format

Notes:
*Situationer is normally the latest traffic update, but can include any major happening having an impact on the city.
**Feature. The idea was to allow room for special input, eg backgrounders on big events or high profile names. In Sydney we planned to use the feature for a special report titled "What’s going up, what’s coming down". The intention was to have a reporter exclusively following major building projects across the City, updating the current state of play.

Not just the huge projects but things that were happening right across the metro area. Just imagine if you were driving West along Parramatta Road and we were updating you on a building project you were just passing, letting you know when it would be finished and what it was for.

The idea was not just to keep the listener briefed on the "hard news" and the obvious information like weather and traffic, but to also sell our credibility on "what was going on" on the wider frontier.

Well, so much for News and Information programming.

Basically, I failed to win that one and things started to drift away at 3DB. When Ron Hurst rang from 2GB I was ready to make another try at the concept, thinking GB, with its Fairfax affiliations, was perfectly suited to the concept.

Ron seemed interested in pursuing the idea and so I made the move to my old home, the Harbour City. Again a lot of my mates rang me saying, "Don’t do it... It’s suicide," but I figured you only live once and you’ve got to give it a try."

I should also mention that this was the time when I was really into long distance running, an interest I’d acquired when our intake had won the 1956 National Service road race.

I’d somehow got through the Big M Marathon, after injuring my knee at cricket the day before (Col Denovan kept asking me why I’d be playing cricket the day before I was to run 42km and he never got a satisfactory reply). I was training with ultra-distance runner Tony (Run Run) Rafferty at the time and wondered out loud how far an average person would go trying to do what Tony did. He replied, "Why don’t we find out," and so we both set off on his historic Melbourne to Sydney to Melbourne run. It was my fantasy to make it to Sydney, but by day three—after running 125 kilometres—my ankles admitted defeat and our team just staggered on to the border at Albury. I can still see the sign reading "301 kilometres". I think Tony actually passed me as he ran back down the Hume Highway from Sydney. I was assisted by a wonderful team, including one of the journos from the newsroom, Chris Lewis. I wonder if he remembers that week?

Enough of that stuff. Let’s get back to the main game.

It’s late ’79 now and In the next episode we tackle 2GB—and fail.

Frank Avis Returns To Melbourne To Continue His Radio Career

2008-08-27T12:00:00+10:00

It was the mid-70’s and we were heading back East after a short but very enjoyable time in Perth. And yes, I repeat, I felt badly because I’d let Rhett Walker down by not staying longer, particularly as 6PR was now performing in brilliant style. But there you are: anyone following my career can see how I never stayed that long in one place. I took on a specific job, succeeded or failed, and then moved on to the next one. Actually I had two decisions to make on my return to Melbourne... the new 3MP, hopefully to be established in Frankston, and a surprise second possibility, an offer from Bill Howie to return to my old job at 3AK.

I met with both sides and after talks with Norm Spencer I opted to stay with my original choice, to set up News and Information at 3MP, an incredible opportunity to start from the beginning.

It’s a long time ago but I remember there was Brian Rangott, Mike Walsh, Joff Ellen and Judy Pollock among the main shareholders. Ray Bean was the GM, John Lloyd, from KZ, had moved into the job of Sales Chief, Murray Korff was the Chief Engineer, Geoff Charter was in the Programming chair and I was working side by side with Geoff Brown from early in the piece as we were charged with assembling a wide range of community licence promises, some of which were going to be extremely difficult to meet.

We were lucky to win the support of several modern-thinking religious leaders in the community, otherwise I think some of the religious commitments might have made us sound like a country station on a Sunday morning (no offence I hope). Ray, Geoff and I worked for some time to convert a lot of the religious content into genuine community information. It took a bit of discussion but we were able to convince the local churches to run "informationals" across the schedule, professional 30-second clips which accented the community side of the various churches... counselling, youth work... a series of direct messages from the church aimed at solving community problems rather than 15-30 minute lectures by clergymen. This method turned out to marry directly into the general profile of the station. These prestigious, community oriented information pieces certainly did no harm and we have to regard them as a key success.

On the news front, I had Barry Owen, Ray McGhie, Peter Young and Col James with me, among others, and we were looking for a central plank to make us stand out from the rest. I sat down with the map of Melbourne and kept looking at the geography. What was there here that we could use to cement our image? I kept returning to the Bay. Now, Melbourne is a very unusual city. Sydney is very aggressive, incredibly competitive and very, very confident. Melbourne is very internal. There are no show-ponies in Melbourne. Have a look at their stars. Most are "nice guys" who are never overtly stars.

Very few people succeed in Melbourne, saying publicly "look at me, aren’t I terrific?" Sorry, I digressed there for a while. The more I looked at Melbourne the more I saw this huge tract of water smack in the middle of the city... Port Phillip Bay. Funny thing about the Bay, hardly anybody seemed to talk much about it, certainly not boast about having it (nothing like Sydney Harbour, for example). I said to Ray that we should wade into the Bay big time... We should own it from the moment we went to air. But I didn’t know how.

Then one night at my home in Mount Eliza I was wading through files and files of ideas and research and I put two things together. "The BAY and the WEATHER." It all became clear. We could own the Bay via the weather. I couldn’t do a deal with the Weather Bureau but as I looked around we could come to an exclusive agreement with the local Volunteer Coastguard. They were the people, after all, who had to head out on to the water if someone had to be rescued. But how do you take advantage of any such association? How does it transfer to, if you like, controlling the territory?

By bringing in a RED and BLUE ALERT system, that’s how. I think the idea came to me about 10 o’clock one night and my colleague Geoff Brown was in the lounge room within 15 minutes as we reviewed the whole scheme.(I should point out that Geoff had almost moved into our lounge room permanently by this time as we spent whole days working on all of this critical on air content... More behind the scenes stuff on this subject later on.) It only took Geoff 30 seconds to look at me, smile knowingly, and confirm that it would do everything we wanted. It would, in one simple stroke, give us critical ownership of a key geographical area. And it wouldn’t be just for summer, this was a 12 month deal.

But did General Manager Ray Bean want ownership of the Bay? Was that his plan as well? We put the idea to him the next morning, pointing out that we hadn’t even discussed it with the Coastguard hierarchy. Ray was pretty much like Geoff: it took him about 30-seconds to nod in agreement and give us the go ahead. There were long talks with the Coastguard because what we were asking was a 24 hour, 7 day commitment. Mind you, there was a huge plus in the prestige factor to the Coastguard as well. In the end we did the deal, which included a stack of "informationals", voiced by the Coastguard themselves, about boating and boating safety. These guys became local celebrities within weeks of MP going to air. But it was a significant responsibility for the top officials at Coastguard headquarters.

By the time we got to air we not only had red and blue alerts but Ray and Murray had briefed the architects and the news and studio block had a RED and BLUE light alert system.

When the light went on the jock knew that he had to play the appropriate cart several times an hour.

The alert could be phoned in by Coastguard at any time and be on air in minutes. It worked wonderfully.

And of course The BAY theme was perfect. Little did Geoff and I know when we put the original proposal together that Ray had already been considering our programme positioning sales pitch... "Bay city radio". Now, we knew why he smiled and nodded in approval that morning.

The other plus was that the station theme music was being done by Peter Best. He was also charged with doing the news theme. We played around with all sorts of stuff, including a montage of famous moments in history, but it was just too long and too over the top. Not the sort of image we wanted to portray at MP. So in the end Pete came up with a short, simple news thematic which worked admirably.

Then, we got to talking about how we could individualise the news ,making it instantly recognizable.

And we came up with a plan to add SFX to the weather. Pete went crazy, and ended up giving us about a dozen weather variations. If it was sunny we had this soft, sunny theme we played under the weather. There was this gorgeous tinkly thematic we could play under the weather if it was really cold and rainy. I know it created a bit of flack in the trade... I can imagine what the team at AW would have said about such sacrilege, but I think it worked exceedingly well in augmenting the on-air sound. Ray wanted "fresh" and the weather thematic s certainly met the station criteria.

The other stuff we did was to run a series of historical pieces, researched by either Col or myself, which followed key news broadcasts during the day. These usually ran an average of 30-seconds and were "think pieces" about something significant or potted versions of famous happenings which had occurred on that day. The first one I did, on our opening breakfast show, was an investigation on whether it was possible to build a bridge across the Bay entrance. If you want to go from the Peninsula over to Geelong and along the Great Ocean Road you have to go north into the city, across to the west and down the Geelong Road, a journey of more than an hour. Putting a bridge across the Entrance would have reduced that to 15 minutes. It actually excited a lot of interest, to tell you the truth ,and I got a lot of calls from engineers commenting on the project.

Col also did a series on the assassination of JFK, summarising all of the ballistic information which suggested that if Oswald had indeed shot Kennedy then he must have been the best marksmen in the history of the world. This was Robin Hood with a rifle. This too excited a bit of comment. So the general theme of providing a news service, high on information input, seemed to work pretty well.

Geoff and I also pioneered a lot of local historical stuff which Andrew Rutherford was to expand into the VICTORIA STORY series in later years. We took famous buildings and well known sites in the area and told their stories, along with info on how to get there including a Melway reference.

I had talks with the man who owned the Melway maps - Iven, a really terrific bloke - who agreed immediately to allow the map references to be used on air. In fact,he loved the idea so much he put 3MP ads into any spare space he had as part of the deal. It didn’t cost us a razoo.

I hope you’re all following this?

Everything seemed to be moving along nicely... The format was in place, Ray was assembling the cast, Murray and his engineers were working on the complex job of getting our signal right and so Ray and I went to meet the Chairman of the Control Board, Myles Wright, who had to sign-off on the license.

We had a most convivial meeting during which he asked us a lot of probing questions, concentrating on the various promises made in the original application, finally announcing that he would not be signing our license as we had not meet quite a few of our crucial local requirements.

There was a strange quiet in the room as he smiled and said goodbye, until we came back with a new plan.

I drove back to Frankston absolutely shocked. Ray headed off to the city for an important meeting, doubtless about what had just happened. I got back late in the afternoon and rang John Lloyd who was similarly shattered. So I thought I’d better do something about my main areas of interest to see if the original promises could be accommodated in some way. Yes, I rang "Old Faithfull", Geoff, and we sat up until around 3:30 in the morning using the same methodology - converting everything to across the station "informationals" - to see if it would work.

We took our finished product to Ray first thing that morning and he was suitably impressed.

I don’t know how important this was but I can only report the next time we went to the Board the license was officially approved.

Now all we had to do was to get our signal correct, ensuring that it wasn’t impinging on other stations, especially at night. Easier said than done. Murray Korff was practically living at the transmitter site, along with a team of fellow engineers... Consultant Tom O’Donohue, Control Board reps Frank Waldron, Ray Kelly and Dave Paget, and RCA techs Jim McGrath and John Innes. I don’t want to depict myself as "Mr Goody two shoes" but I took an increasing interest in events at the TX, not necessarily because of completely altruistic motives but essentially because, if they failed, I would’t have a job and we’d just bought a lovely home in Mount Eliza.

So, I started making regular trips to the TX at night, and gradually my wife Anna started preparing food for the gang there. Eventually this turned into a sort of nightly ritual. When the techs were working at night, and I think it was pretty much 7 days a week, I was there with the food, to run messages, make phone calls and provide whatever help I could.(Anybody who’s known me for longer than 15 minutes would know that this did not include any technical matters. Frank and technology parted ways a long time ago and we’re not going to be reunited.) I don’t think it’s possible to describe how all of these people just came together to get 3MP to air.

You wouldn’t think the Control Board Techs would have had any more than a bureaucratic interest in events but let me tell you they were down there in the trenches, night after night, trying to get the signal array correct. This went on and on for some considerable time. We couldn’t go to air till the Control Board approved the performance of the transmitter, especially that the signal was not causing any problems for any other operators. Truly, I didn’t think it would ever be solved. One night the group had been going from sun-up till 2:30 the following morning when Murray Korff fell asleep standing up and started to fall forward into the back of the open transmitter. As I remember it, Tom O’Donohue and Frank Waldron leapt forward grabbed his shirt and pulled him back from almost certain death.
"That’s it," said Frank Waldron, "we’re all going home to get some sleep."

Eventually there was this magic moment when we got 5 K signal to air. It was perfect.

I raced home, grabbed a magnum of Stonyfell champagne and we toasted the future of MP as we sent out our first official signal. It was 2:42 AM, July 21, 1976. Harry Wilde was the announcer back at the station in Frankston and the first track played on Melbourne’s newest station was John Paul Young’s "I hate the music". Never has a song sounded so good.

As a matter of interest I still have the bottle of champagne, appropriately marked with all the salient details, which I’d love to pass on to 3MP if anyone is interested in preserving some of the station’s history. Feel free to call me and I’ll ensure it’s delivered safely. Otherwise it’ll probably end up in a garbage bin somewhere. That would be a pity because so much went into that first signal and MP became an immediate hit, an unsual blend of local and big city radio, a format which later worked a treat for WS in Sydney.

One of the other tactics much discussed by Frank and Geoff in the wee small hours of the morning was how to carry a substantial "local" load without appearing to be a country station. Everyone, especially Ray, knew we’d be dead in the water if we sounded provincial.

We could control a lot of on air content, but not the ads. Everyone forgets that the audience’s perception of a station is not just from the music, news and the jocks but from the commercial content as well.

We knew John Lloyd and his team could sell MP’s schedule many times over from the local market but what would that do to our image as a major metropolitan station. How would we sound if every second ad was for "Harry’s hamburger stand" in Frankston? Bad, that was the answer. So we spoke at length to Lloydie and his sales team, explaining how - though heavy local advertising would pay our bills - it might also destroy the station as a major player in a big city. The programmers had nightmares that the audience perception of MP would be that of a "country station". The sales team was terrific. Everyone co-operated to achieve the right balance even though it often hit the sales guys in the hip pocket for the first three months. Anyway, the joint was a tremendous success from day one .We were elated.

I’m remembering back to those days... I don’t know whether I mentioned the jocks, but I’m recalling John Burgess, Brian Bury (absolutely wonderful bloke),Richard Combe, Dean Matters, Keith McGowan and others to whom I apologise. My memory is shot.

Have I mentioned that we returned to the traffic girls concept and that I contracted a range of businesses, mainly service stations, on key roads across the metro area? This not only gave us excellent updates on traffic, but also good sources for happening news. The other thing I did was do a deal with a major provincial newspaper chain, who happily supplied us with all of their weekly publications in return for a mention as the source. This also provided us with some top news stories. I remember we lead our breakfast news with one story from Western Victoria on a Tuesday, only to see it pop up as a big deal in the Herald the next afternoon. I loved that.

The other interesting story is what we did during the great petrol strike in the mid-70’s. As fuel was running out we found more and more people in our local Peninsula area were finding it harder to get to work. So I put a concept to Ray that we set up a "car matching" pool. There was one card file of people who could offer lifts and another composed of those who were looking for a lift, willing to help pay for the petrol. Ray loved this idea from the first 10 seconds and it was on air the next day. The girls set up a special office with the phone lines open from 2-4 every weekday afternoon. We took down the details and put the two groups in contact with each other. Really a tremendous success.

The only thing was I was awake in the early hours one day and I thought, "Hang on. What happens if there’s an accident involving one of these match ups? Are we liable?” We had a big meeting the next morning which resulted in a series of on-air disclaimers plus a half-page ad in B&T.

MP was a wonderful learning process and let me place on record that Manager Ray Bean never ever rejected any of my good ideas. I was backed all the way.

But you know me... I got restless. I tried to talk Ray into creating a new position where I could be a Special Assistant to the Manager charged with coming up with all these schemes (Look, I had a million ideas in those days, and candidly I didn’t feel much like putting them forward and having somebody else claiming them as their own). But there was no such position available and Brendan Sheedy was looking around for somebody to take over DB NEWS. I took one look at the Herald Sun facilities and thought, "If anybody is going to make a play for NEWS AND INFORMATION it’s got to be DB." So I made the change amid much sadness, really. But I’d spent the past 12 months putting a peak-hour NEWS AND INFO clock together and I knew it would work in a major city. I just wanted the chance to do it.

That took me out of leafy Mt Eliza and up north back into the big city. Was it a mistake? Look it was just another chapter and I always knew radio was like Broadway... You had to accept you’d win some and you’d lose some. But that’s another story for our next chapter, providing your reporter actually gets off his backside this time and gets it done. Thanks for all your emails, reminding me that the latest chapter had taken a bit too long, including the enquiry from a colleague of years ago who asked if I’d actually passed away between chapters? Still hanging in there mate...

Frank Avis continues his radio career, now off to Perth in the mid-70's

2008-05-19T12:00:00+10:00

We arrived in Perth and the weather was beautiful.

6PR had already launched its format “Gentle on Your Mind” but it still hadn’t succeeded in the ratings. I wish I’d been there from day one, but my arrival was in the early stages and just in time to ride the elevator up to the next floor.

Gordon Leed was ND and I remember Tom Drewell, Tony Stanton and Col James in the newsroom as well as RW, of course–the man running the show, Cherie Romaro doing the music and Tony Hartney, Ted Bull, Dean Matters and I’m sure many others who will remind me that my memory is stuffed.

The music was excellent and Rhett ensured that there was a direct link to the audience with a lot of information including, believe it or not, lost dog and cat announcements.

The news team was really good, particularly with RW’s policy allowing us a certain latitude. We called it “soft editorial”, in that if the story was sad we were supposed to sound as if it saddened us. If it was happy then our delivery was supposed to underline that. The policy makers weren’t even averse to a certain amount of “internal commentary” providing it didn’t impinge on our responsibility of fairness in reporting. The three people doing the on air work were well experienced so I think we managed to stay on the right side of the knife-edge.

I note 2SM launched a roughly similar style, a bit different featuring Brian White and Steve Leibman, a year later. Indeed, Garvin Rutherford actually offered me a position there in that period but that’s another story, a rather strange story, for later on.

I arrived in WA just as the con men were busily infiltrating the state financial system. We had pretenders setting up multi-million dollar international conglomerates and even establishing “banks” using, of course, somebody else’s finance, much of which was subsequently lost forever.

If you want to know the inside story of this wheeling and dealing, involving the financial vultures and their friends “in high places” just get one of the books written about the era. Or go to the library and get a few back issues of the Financial Review. She was a funny old state in those days, folks.

The first thing I noted was the distance between the media and the authorities, especially the police. The WA police, I think, regarded most journalists as pests that needed to be kept at a distance.

This came to a head shortly after my arrival when Perth actually turned on a genuine, national story – a big payroll heist. I whipped down to the scene with my recorder only to be told that we weren’t allowed into the area or to talk to anyone in charge.

After an hour or so a man emerged from the building and gave a statement to the gathered TV and radio journos. He was very good. He took us through the whole robbery, how it was done and what avenues of enquiry the police were pursuing. “Wow,” I thought, ”what a terrific police PR man.”

I wrote down his name and asked one of my fellow journos what his position was only to be told that we’d just been briefed by a journalist from WA Newspapers. Police had taken this trusted journalist on to the scene, given him a full briefing and – out of the goodness of his heart apparently – he’d decided to share some of the information with the rest of us.

I was dumbfounded and went back to work, ringing the Police Minister’s office to ask what they were running here? I guess that caused a bit of friction and apparently a fair bit of embarrassment for Gordon, for which I belatedly apologise.

I certainly learned quickly that the local police did things differently in WA.

Of course, the mid 70’s were dominated by one sensational story: Cyclone Tracy in Darwin.

No one had any idea just how disastrous it was in the early hours. I know Gordon made initial attempts to get someone up to Darwin, suggesting we could tag along with one of the air force crews heading North. The authorities in Perth just laughed and made it clear there’d be no one else on board the flights. It was virtually impossible to get anywhere near the place. We kept getting all of these calls from the Eastern states ,wondering when we’d have someone on the scene. It took a few hours for someone in Sydney to actually look at a map of Australia and realise it’d be a lot faster to send a reporter from Brisbane or even Adelaide. Anyway, we all know now that it was extremely difficult to get anything in or out of Darwin in those early days.

That was almost certainly one of the most frustrating stories of my career. Authorities just weren’t deeply into Public Relations at the time and it was extremely difficult to get any actuality/comment.

I just loved the PR music format. It remains my equal favorite with the 2DAY FM adult format of the 80’s. Although I have to confess I also loved the music of 2MMM FM when we went to air in 1980. And PR was beautifully sold to the advertisers, with a sophisticated campaign featuring the “butterfly” motif. We’re attaching an example so you’ll get the idea.

After a few weeks at PR it became obvious that the station’s real ratings were significantly higher than the returns we were getting in the surveys. The same thing happened to 2MMM FM in Sydney in later years. This is one of the most intriguing issues in mass marketing: why do the survey audiences take so long to catch up with the real ratings out on the street?

We’re plagued I fear by the phenomenon of “residual goodwill” where a station manages to maintain its ratings figures when every man and his dog knows they’re going down the drain. It can be a radio station, TV channel, even a restaurant or hairdressing salon.

Whatever it is, the audience perception that the company is still a major player takes a long time to evaporate. So you can have a station management getting all the signals that it is in decline but receiving a different story in the monthly ratings. It’s hard to take tough action when you’re still hanging on in the ratings. Like a footy team that is clearly in trouble continuing to just hold on, within a win or two of making the finals.

The trouble is the ratings suddenly catch up with the word from the street and when they do it’s usually in a fairly dramatic fashion. All of us know stations which have just managed to hold on to the rating middle ground for two to three years and then – all of a sudden – Wallop. They suddenly lose 30 % of their audience. The problem is they lost those 2 to 3 years when they should have called in the cleaners and gone for a new format.

I can’t tell you a great deal more about my time in Perth except that gradually I wanted to get back to the main game. There was an offer from 2SM but when I flew across for my interview the situation seemed to have changed.

Then I was approached with word that Norm Spencer (of channel 9 fame) was hopeful of a new Melbourne licence, operating out of Frankston. I won’t need to tell you how putting a whole new station together grabbed me. I just wanted to get over there and do it, so the Perth adventure ended and I guess I let Rhett down by heading back East. Sorry about that.

It was a privilege to watch PR’s programming, though, and a great experience to see the ratings eventually catch up with the real world.

There is one story that remains to be told about PR, a story that is I guess almost mystical in how it demonstrates that journos sometimes know there’s a story there, when no one else can sniff it out. We seem to be able to smell it.

It was I think a holiday Monday and Col and I were the duty team for the afternoon news. We looked at each other in alarm. There was absolutely NOTHING happening. As far as I could see ANYWHERE ON EARTH. Certainly nothing our audience would have wanted to know about anyway.

We did the 1 O’Clock bulletin which was full of politics (Australians absolutely HATE politics and politicians which will probably come as a tremendous shock to the ABC and all the TV networks. The law is don’t run political stories unless they really are genuine stories and never allow yourself to be sucked into a story by politicians or unions. They are so good at that). Sorry, I digress.

Back to that Monday afternoon. We got to 1:30 and I said to Col, “Stuff this, we’re not going to run another bulletin like 1 O’Clock.”

“Well,” he said, “ if there’s no news, there’s no news.”

I picked up the WA phone directory, divided up the state and announced that we were going to ring every police station we find. There was a story out there, we just had to find it.

Col didn’t necessarily seem convinced but he went hard at it. We rang police stations across the state asking if there was anything happening. We were knocked back at every turn. Remember the police in WA were operating like an army unit in WW2 in those days, working on the adage “Never give the enemy anything.” After half an hour that’s what we had, NOTHING.

We did the 2PM news, looked at each other and got back to the phones, knowing we couldn’t possibly inflict that sort of news on our public again in an hour’s time.

At 2:15 I spoke to a Sergeant on duty in a seafront town south of Perth. I asked for the umpteenth time if anything had happened and his reply was, ”No one’s told me anything.” He was pretty grumpy so I got off the phone and looked for the next contact.

Then I paused and asked Col to take a breather. I remember saying to him that the officer never said a direct “NO”. He chose to say that no one had told him about anything.

I started smelling a rat and Col was just as suspicious. The more we talked about it the more we came to the view that the Sergeant didn’t say NO because he was trying not to tell us something but didn’t like to lie so directly

Maybe Psychology 1 was starting to pay off.

We formulated a plan to test our theory, ringing the local Ambulance station, intimating that we already knew something. The next 5 to 10 minutes were really quite astonishing. I’ll try to reduce it to transcript so you get the picture.

FRANK: Hi, sorry to bother you on a holiday Monday.
AMBULANCE OFFICER (Like he was taking a call from his mother in law): Yeah, that’s alright.
FRANK: We’re just checking on an incident we understand you’ve had down there this afternoon.
AMBULANCE PERSON: Oh. Who told you that?
FRANK: We were just talking to the local Police Sergeant. (Well, it’s not a lie is it. We were just talking to him. It’s just that he didn’t say anything.)
AMBULANCE PERSON: Well, you don’t need anything from me than do ya?
FRANK: Well, we really like to double check with all of the services involved, you know, we hear they had to call you out.
AMBULANCE: Ok, how many did you hear?
FRANK (Interesting question, as I haven’t got a clue what he’s talking about, so just choose a number): I think they were saying there were two.
AMBULANCE: No, it ended up three. One died at the hospital.
FRANK: Thanks very much. That confirms three dead at the scene… Right?
AMBULANCE: That’s the best I can do for you. Ok?
FRANK: Thanks very much. You’ve been very helpful. Thanks again.

Now what incident are we talking about?

Col hits the area phone book, gets on to the local store and we find out that a mother and two of her children had wandered out on to a sandbank, not realized the tide was coming in and drowned trying to get back to shore.

Not exactly the joyful story we were hoping for on a holiday afternoon, but a big story nonetheless, and a tragedy that travelled interstate within the hour, courtesy the PR news team.

Col later joined me at MP in Melbourne and then went on to the chief of staff chair at TEN.

We used to talk occasionally on the phone in the 80’s and we always remembered that strong incident which reinforced another unwritten rule: listen to what they say but also pay great attention to the way they say it.

Melbourne Radio

2008-04-10T12:00:00+10:00

It was the early 70's and I'd made the big decision to switch from the faithful 3XY and move across to 3AK and it’s "take no prisoners" rock and roll format. It was an unusual operation in that I was actually employed in Channel 9 news and answerable to the N.D Mike Schildberger, later Tom O’Connor.

But I generally managed to steer a course close to 3AK, mainly because of my good relations with Gary Day and the PD Rhett Walker (RW on UW). I had an immediate rapport with R.W who turned out to be a dynamic leader. We had similar interests and once he found out I was a Marx Brothers fan he immediately labeled me Wolf J. Flywheel. All my memos were hereafter marked "To: Wolf From:Rhett".

Now let me see if I can remember a few names. I keep having to respond to Emails from people I've completely forgotten which is dreadfully embarrassing. Others I've placed at the wrong stations and in one case the wrong city. I immediately responded to the wronged party by pointing out, I think quite reasonably, that at least I put him in the right country. I mean, how much accuracy do these people want?

John Bailey was the 9 reader at this time and he was one of the first to drop the declamatory approach and deliver the news in a more conversational style. Hendo, of course, perfected the technique in Sydney but Bailey was very, very good. I later saw him on Sydney's Ten news but to be honest I don't know why he didn't end up an out and out superstar. If you missed his style it was very masculine and very personable. I found him to be a really nice bloke. He switched to Current Affair in the early to mid 70's and had a real crisis when he came down with a killer dose of flu on opening night.

I remember Hilton Prideaux and Rupert Macaw in Tech along with I think Tom O'Donohue. At AK there was Graeme Boyd, Yorkie, Bill Howie and Tim Hewat while the much loved Peter Tate was our top news presenter, along with Graham Cumming, Barry Owen (from Hobart), Alex Shabs, Rob Grant and John Westbury.

Just after I left XY they went full on r 'n' r,challenging AK's number 1 status. They ripped AK to shreds from the first survey sending shock waves through the Richmond studios. Rhett’s answer was to bite the bullet and switch formats to Beautiful Music.
I loved the dramatic change as it allowed me to virtually rebuild the news and information coming out of the newsroom. You should have seen my news guide to staff. It must have run to 30 pages.

But it all worked well and we saw the station back on to the right side of the financial ledger. There is incidentally a great story about Sir Frank Packer's first visit to the Melbourne studios, obviously long before I joined the company.

Sir Frank apparently rarely travelled by plane so he was driven down from Sydney arriving midway through the afternoon. Everybody was there, even the cleaners, to greet the great man. All the executives gathered to catch the historic first phrase uttered by the media mogul. Apparently, he got out of the limo walked through the guard of honour stepped inside the building and turned to the General manager asking… "Why are those bloody lights on in the middle of the day?"

It's not quite "one small step for a man…" but it has passed into industry legend.

One of the best stories during my tenure at AK was the Queanbeyan siege where a man had taken over a sports shop in the town and was reportedly holding his young daughter hostage, demanding his wife come to the store to talk to him. Apparently there'd been a break up of the marriage and the man had gone over the edge. As we understood it, he had his daughter tied to a chair and had manufactured a bomb to explode and kill her if he didn't get his wife to agree to the talks.

Anyway I grabbed a local phone directory (the first thing I did whenever I took over a newsroom was to stock it with every phone directory in Australia, plus directories for city centres like London, New York and Los Angeles), and started to ring the sports shops in the area. Believe it or not, I got him first try.

The father answered the phone and I started running a tape. He confirmed that he had his daughter tied up to a bomb and that he was threatening to explode it. We spoke for some time and it was obvious that he was desperate to find a way out of this dilemma and that he really didn’t want to harm the child.

I asked if there was anyone he trusted to talk to him and he mentioned a local police sergeant. So I got a colleague to ring the Station and the sergeant hot-footed it down to the scene. I told the man that the Sergeant was waiting outside to speak with him and pleaded with him to go out and talk. There was no response. A short time later we got reports he'd walked out the front door and surrendered. The bomb was dismantled. We did a quick edit job and put 1'15" of the tape as the lead story into Peter Tate's 8.30 bulletin. I have to admit it sounded sensational. The guys at the 9 news desk loved it. They ran it as one of their top stories that night showing me talking on the phone and running the audio. The next day the Channel 9 caricaturist delivered a drawing to my office showing me, dressed as Superman, coming to the rescue. There I was thinking I was a hero and along comes this drawing, reducing me to a cartoon. They know how to get you, don't they?

Anyway I've kept the drawing to this day and with the good offices of my technical back-up team (ie. partner Darleen working with John and Janie) we will hopefully be able to include it in this report. I'm the thin bloke with the glasses who – for a brief time – thought he was more powerful than a locomotive and able to leap tall buildings.

Things went along reasonably well at AK although there were ominous signs as senior staff started to depart. Gary Day left and then my hero, RW, departed to seek new fields of conquest in Western Australia. Then something rather unfortunate occurred. For some time I'd had this running dispute with a senior executive about… believe it or not… including the Football scores in our Saturday afternoon bulletins.

It was his argument that people listening to our all-music format would hear the footy scores and be enticed to switch over to a station covering the footy. My response was that the people listening to AK were actually doing so because THEY DIDN’T WANT TO LISTEN TO THE FOOTY. That's why they were with us. I said that our listeners got the best of both worlds.

They had their favorite music but our hourly news gave them the footy updates. This debate raged on although I was supported by most of the executive members. Then RW left and this person was advanced to senior executive status. I went on holidays for a couple of weeks and when I got back the footy scores were missing – under the personal direction of the senior executive in question. Nothing was ever said to me and there was no memo carrying the directive and the executive's decision.

I had talks with my staff and several execs, believing that the action was a direct attack on my position. Most of my staff I think were ready to back any stand I decided to take on the issue. They were extremely supportive. I went home and thought long and hard about this difficult problem. I was pretty confident that I would have been able to win the battle, but kept questioning whether it was the right thing to do by the station. My job, the transfer of news and information to this new format, was complete and increasingly I realised that I wasn't interested in long term tenure at AK.

From AK onward I tended to take on specific assignments in newsrooms, either succeeding or failing, before moving on to the next challenge. The rest of my career was based on this philosophy. I think people never quite understood that. I know the guys at UE used to call me the "Southern Aurora" because "I worked in Sydney and Melbourne and all the stations in between", (it was a really funny line), but that's what my career turned into…taking on particular assignments and then moving on to the next one. In many respects' I operated in much the same fashion as a modern football coach. The upshot was that I didn't see any future in declaring World War 3 over the issue so I decided it was time to find new pastures. I rang Rhett where he was re-positioning 6PR PERTH into an exciting new format and asked if there was anything going?. He said "come on over" and I did, joining ND Gordon Leed, Tom Drewell and Colin James in the Newsroom. We all had a wonderful time.

Before I leave Melbourne and head West to the Indian Ocean I need to set the record straight regarding a controversial story I ran in the Mike Walsh Show on XY. It was during the period that I was calling the footy with Jack Dyer. I took a phone call one morning from one of our staffers who happened to be in a certain place just before the Grand Final, Collingwood vs Carlton.

Anyway, several key Collingwood players had a semi-formal meeting over money. I don't know that it was as simple as this but as I remember it they were extremely angry at the huge difference in match payments between the locals – who were expected to play for the love of the club - and those imported from other states who were apparently getting a lot more.

The group of local players was irate and voted to consider withdrawing from the Grand Final team unless the issue was addressed by the club. They voted to make their feelings known to the Club and to meet later that week to consider the position.

My source was impeccable. There's absolutely no doubt that the story was correct. I ran it in the Mike Walsh show and the "fall out" started. The Club rang issuing the strongest of denials. The Press rang of course. The problem was that I ran the story before the players managed to put their concerns to the club. This was a disaster for the group of local players who had to retreat without even having had the chance to talk to club officials.

Oh boy, I was jumped on by everyone... The other radio stations and the press gave me heaps. Only one person offered support. My old mate, the ultimate straight shooter Ian Major, rang from 3KZ and asked me how I was doing. He didn't say much but asked if the source of my story was a certain person. Maj was absolutely trustworthy – and the person was a mutual friend - so I said, "Yes, he heard the whole meeting."

Maj replied, "Well, if he told you that, then you can believe it... It'd be right."

We then had a laugh about the business. I mean it doesn't matter whether you're right or not.. what matters is can you prove it. And I couldn't without publically revealing the source and the players involved. And I'd given my word that I wouldn't do that. If my "source" happens to, reading these recollections... I kept my word mate.

So, the upshot of all of this is that we put the trusty Valiant Ranger on the train and boarded our plane heading for Perth. Perth, on the Indian Ocean, where there's no dirt, just sand.

In fact, we bought a house fairly quickly and found that we had to put in a lawn. All we saw in the front and back yard was sand, so we said to be the builder, "What do we do, just bring in some top soil for the lawn?" He looked a bit mystified and replied, "well,if you want the ground higher, just bring in more sand". There’s no dirt in Perth, not that I could see anyway, just lots and lots of sand.

Next time... PR launches its new format with a red bullet.

Frank Avis continues his career, in Melbourne

2008-01-11T12:00:00+10:00

I arrived in a major mainland capital in the mid-'60s, ironically not as a career move but due to personal tragedy. My life was clearly in chaos and I was lucky to have my friend Woody, now working in Melbourne TV, to look after me.

My first appointment was with 3UZ to see if I could get some work with their news team.

I did an audition and News Director Clive Waters took me into his office, apologising that they had nothing to offer at this time, but asking if he could make a call on my behalf. This was astonishingly good of him. I've no idea why he went to all this trouble but within an hour the tape had been dispatched to 3XY's John Burls and I found myself starting at the XY newsroom the following morning.

I walked in and was handed the 9 AM bulletin which I read reasonably well.

Minutes later General Manager Bob Baeck called me in, said he was impressed and I was officially hired.

Bill Passick was News Chief and I remember Ian Major as the Footy/Sports Chief (absolutely lovely man), Ray Woods was in the Programming chair, Frank Welch in Accounts, and the famous character Wally Chamberlain was the Chief Engineer (you couldn't understand what "character" really meant in radio until you met Wally). Please add to the list of XY identities: Bill Acfield, Vi Greenhaulgh, Jeff Warden, Paul Konik (the laconic Mr Konik), Johnny Young (soon to be found YTT on TV), Barry Seeber, Jeff Sunderland, Bruce Mansfield (anyone who wants to know what radio is really about needed to hear Bruce sign off to Jeff at midday—some of the funniest and most inventive material I've ever heard), Graham Berry, the living legend Jack Dyer doing the footy with Maj, Cyril Stokes, Pam Peters (Mike's Secretary), David Shoreland, Wayne and Maurie Kirby, Geoff Hiscock, Ken Hibbins, Alf Minister, Clyde Simpson, John Magee, Barry Looms, Iven Walker, Paul Sime, Col Denovan, John Boland, Laurie Bennett, Jack the cleaner (who became something of a legend), Jim (the dear man who answered the front door and manned the switchboard at night) and many others. Sorry, my memory no longer behaves properly.

Of course, we were joined at various times by celebrities like Graham Kennedy and Mike Walsh who did 9-2 during this period. In fact Mike did a really good mixed music/interview series from 9-11 and Graham had lots of fun doing 11-1 with Moondoggy at the panel.

I worked particularly closely with the Mike Walsh show and my favorite moment was the brainwave I had when I heard Phyllis Diller was coming to Sydney, but wouldn't be playing Melbourne. When she arrived I rang her management and said what would it take to get her on a plane to Melbourne briefly where Mike Walsh would declare it "Phyllis Diller Day". Her only obligation was a brief appearance in Mike's show around 10.30 and then to be guest at a special luncheon, including 100 lady listeners.

I was thinking, she's going to ask for 100's of Dollars, I think the Manager was particularly concerned, but her response was amazing. Nothing. No money. Get her a plane ticket and a hire car with driver and she'd fly down. It was a wonderful day. Phyllis, who turned out to be a really lovely person, was greeted like royalty, which she regarded as only fitting for a person of her status. She was a very big star at the time, even in Australia, so this turned out to be quite a coup.

This was also the time when Tiny Tim came to Melbourne and we came up with this plan to get him exclusively on to the Mike Walsh Show. In fact, we took the suite next door to Tiny's room at his Melbourne hotel where I stayed that night to make sure he could be intercepted in the hallway the next morning. I did a series of tongue-in-cheek reports through the night, updating the Tiny Tim story, always ending with the same tag line, "This is Frank Avis. I'm just a suite away from Tiny Tim." I don’t know why but I always thought that was really funny.

Anyway, my insider in the entourage gave me a call at 9:30 and I was waiting in the hallway, ready to pounce, when Tiny left his room. He gave me a terrific interview, including a few bars of "Tip Toe Through he Tulips" (God, it was awful) and we raced the tape back to Carlton, edited in a few Mike Walsh questions and, fair dinkum, you would have thought he was sitting there in the studio.

Ah, what happened to Tiny Tim? And to Miss Vicki? I'm not sure I recall the answer but instinctively, I know it wouldn’t have been good.

There were several really big stories in Melbourne during this period.

The disappearance of Prime Minister Harold Holt. Washington stations rang us for interviews for weeks and they kept asking the same question, "How is it possible the Prime Minister was allowed to go into the surf alone?" I think if he'd been an American he would have had six Secret Service agents swimming out there with him.

The Westgate Bridge collapse. I spent all afternoon at the scene and I remember Danny Webb and I were standing together when they found one of the last of the bodies. We looked at the remains and the man had no face. Danny and I looked at each other, filed our last reports, and went home. That was enough for anybody. This disaster incidentally gave me one of my first great examples of how to use radio "sound" to advantage. I often used the edited tape when I did my news lectures at AFTRS. The caller came in around midday and luckily we ran tape immediately, getting his introductory words. He said, "I think... I think... I just saw the Westgate bridge fall down." There were long pauses in between and a bit of static. Normally we would have tightened all of this up to give us a 30-second grab, but considering the gravity of the story – I think the death toll was over 30 – I closed my eyes and listened to the sentences. In the end I left in a lot of the pauses and the static. The static gave the eyewitnesses account a sort of eerie quality, adding to the atmosphere. I haven't got the tape anymore but I still remember how it sounded that day.

Then there were the bushfires. Tthis raises another unusual memory. I remember the bushfires were burning across Western Melbourne and one of our reporters had been stopped on the Geelong highway amid fears the fire would cross the road. I’m not sure who it was. I have memories of John Magee or maybe Frank Marston. Anyway he called me on the two-way and said a convoy of vehicles was going to attempt to head South and he wanted to join them to get closer to the fires. I said, "Of course, what are you waiting for? Get in the line and go!" I don’t know why this happened but some minutes later I called the reporter and asked if he had set off. He said he was just about to but he had a bad feeling about the trip. I responded that I had the same feeling and we called it off. That afternoon, the fire swept across the highway at Lara and I don't think anyone in the convoy survived. Strange, hey?

Oh yes, and I have to recount another weird story from those days. I know it sounds strange all of these odd things happening during my career, but this one was really quite unusual and was witnessed by a large number of people including police, who actually arrested me briefly during their investigation.

The morning papers started to run stories about a suburban house which was having rocks rained down on it every night. I can’t remember where it was, I think one of the middle-class Southern suburbs. Anyway we went down and did several interviews and it transpired the people in the house believed that the rocks were coming from one of the houses above them. Apparently there'd been a falling out with the neighbours some time back.

Just how these people managed to throw hundreds and hundreds of rocks in a few minutes wasn't addressed at the time.

So the police finally got sick and tired of the whole thing and sent half a dozen patrol cars down to the house and nearby streets to personally witness the phenomenon.

A few journos, including myself found out, and couldn't resist taking part in the operation.

I parked up near the neighbours, who I'd been told, were the prime suspects.

Anyway, around 9 PM there was this hell of a commotion as all these rocks rained down on the house, right on schedule.

I'd turned off my lights so I wouldn’t be seen by the neighbours and gunned the news car up the street to see if they were throwing the rocks. Unfortunately, there was a police officer nearby and he pulled me up, thinking I was acting very suspiciously, and was in the process of taking me in for questioning when another officer I knew intervened. The bottom line is that the rocks never came from the "offending house" and after a few nights they just stopped altogether. We never found out where they came from.

PS. I'm not making this up. Check the Melbourne Sun's files. It'll all be there.

It was also during this time that I filled in as the football moderator when Ian Major made the unexpected decision to switch to 3KZ. So I entered the world of Aussie Rules doing the Thursday night teams with Jack Dyer (along with Barry Cable and, after that, Bobby Skilton) and Saturday afternoon calling. We did the second half of the Seconds game and then the main game with updates from our round the ground reporters. I absolutely loved Jack Dyer and Bob Skilton and I would often joke about how unfair it was that jack hadn’t won a Brownlow Medal as Best and Fairest (Bob had won three) as he was such a fair player who wouldn’t hurt a flea. The fact was of course that Dyer, they didn’t call him Captain Blood for nothing, was one of the most feared players of the 30’s. When Jack went through a pack he always seemed to manage to emerge intact on the other side leaving half a dozen opponents on the ground behind him. One day he shirt fronted one bloke so hard that they had to carry him off the ground. The opposing coach ran on to the ground and threw a blanket over the player, covering his whole body. Jack looked over and thought, "What are they doing that for?". The opposing ruckman looked at Dyer and said, "Jeez Jack, you've killed him." Dyer was useless for the rest of the game. He couldn't kick straight and he kept pulling out of contests in case he hurt somebody and Richmond got done.

As Jack left the field, expecting to be arrested, there was his victim, as large as life chewing on an orange and winking at him. Jack never pulled out of a contest again. I've spoken to a lot of experts who remember the '20s, '30s and '40s and most of them say the same thing: if they could have picked a team of all time greats, Jack Dyer would probably be in their first 5 choices. He wasn't pretty but he was tough and relentless. If you’re not a VFL/AFL fan this probably won’t interest you but the WA great Barry Cable finally came across to Victoria at this time to play for North Melbourne and XY signed him up as our special commentator.

He joined Jack and yours truly for the Thursday night teams show. I hadn't realized 'til our first show that Barry had never met Jack and that Jack had never seen him play. I told Jack how brilliant Cable was when I saw him at the '66 Carnival. It was obvious Barry idolized Jack from the moment they met.

Sadly Barry’s form was well down in the first few matches. His famous drop kick was virtually gone and he spent most of his time hand-balling. Jack was increasingly embarrassed as the three of us met every Thursday night. Then one Saturday afternoon Barry started kicking again and it was Jack's great pleasure to name him our Man of the Match in an XY game of the day. Only then did Barry tell Jack what was wrong. He rolled up his trouser legs one Thursday night and the two legs were virtually blue, covered in massive bruising. Barry had been kicked in a trial game apparently and could hardly walk, let alone run and kick, in his first four games. But he never offered an excuse and he never revealed his injury 'til it was virtually healed. He just kept plugging away as best he could. Jack just looked at Barry and nodded quietly in approval. It was emotional stuff. On Thursday nights I walked with giants.

But it all had to end. XY was about to turn to a new format and Bill Passick rang me to say he was switching from AK to CH.9 and would I like to take over? I met N.D Mike Schildberger, took the job and sadly announced I was leaving XY.

They'd been so good to me but I knew it was time to head off to something different... 3AK "where no wrinklies fly", Rhett Walker and an unbelievable format change from Rock and Roll to Beautiful Music.

That's our next adventure...