Frank Avis' Memoirs of 42 Years in Radio

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.

More From Bendigo

2007-11-20T12:00:00+10:00

I know I’m supposed to be sticking to my radio career, but having just mentioned John Laws I’m drawn to a wonderful story. I was driving somewhere in NSW in the 70’s when John was at the height of his career. His programme was being edited and sent to various country stations around Australia. One morning I happened to be listening to one of these outlets when a call came into John from a lady who said, "Mr Laws... Mr Laws... There’s a man living in my roof."

Now, I have this picture of John doing his show, sitting on auto-pilot, leaning back in the chair and saying "Yes" and "Oh really" at the appropriate places while reading his morning paper and letting the caller rave on. Every now and then you could almost see him lean forward, put down the paper and nod to his producer, "We’ve got a live one here, Stan." Then he’d go for it.

I could almost see him leaning forward and nodding to his producer as the lady started to tell him that there was a man living in her roof. Laws got right into it.

"What do you mean, living in your roof?"

"Well, I go into the kitchen for my dinner and I hear him moving about up there."

"Do you mean he’s living in the loft-above the ceiling-and you don’t know who he is?"

"He shouldn’t be there... No one’s ever lived in the roof before."

"Well, how did he get in there... I mean, how long’s he been in the roof?"

"I think he moved in when my son left home... It’s about 3 months ago... And he just stays there... I can hear him... He’s very quiet, but he moves around when he doesn’t think I’m listening".

"Well..." Laws now assumes the role of her counsellor, "He shouldn’t be there and you’ve got to get him out."

"I know... But he won’t go."

"Now listen, this is what I want you to do... And I want you to be very firm for me... I want you to make sure he hears you clearly... Can you be firm for me?"

"Yes, I’ll try."

"You leave the phone off the hook and go into the kitchen and yell out at the top of your voice... GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW! GET OUT! Will you do that?"

"Will he go then?"

"Yes, he’ll leave immediately. You’ll never have to worry about him again. Just put the phone down and tell him to get out. Then come back to the phone and one of my staff will talk to you, alright?"

"Thank you, Mr Laws."

The phone is heard being put on the table and there are footsteps moving away into the kitchen. Suddenly this woman’s voice screams out, "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE NOW! GET OUT!" There is a pause and she yells out again, "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" She is still yelling when the Producer cuts to an ad' break and on to the 11 o’clock news.

The following day I’m listening to the same station which continues with the John Laws’ show. Laws is sitting back comfortably in his chair when a woman caller gets on the show and says, "Mr Laws, my daughter-in-law is a witch."

You can almost see Laws lean forward, nodding to his producer, "We’ve got another one, mate."

"Well ma'am," he takes on the role of the friendly family mediator, "there are often tensions between mothers and their son’s wife... It’s quite common."

"No, you don’t understand... She’s a witch."

"Of course, and as I was trying to explain, these things usually work themselves out over a period of time and..."

"You’re not listening to me, Mr Laws. I’m trying to tell you that SHE IS A WITCH!"

Long pause...

"Do you mean, witch as in wearing a pointy hat and riding broomsticks? Are we talking here about a witch witch?"

"Yes, she’s got my son completely under her spell... He’s changed completely... He doesn’t talk to me anymore... Never comes home... He’s a completely different person."

"But, surely that doesn’t mean she’s a...?"

"I’ve been in the kitchen, God know what she’s mixing in there, what she’s been feeding him."

"I can’t talk to him... She’s got a spell on him... I’ve got to break the spell."

"But Madam, surely...?"

"You can just see it, the way she looks at me... Oh I know, you little vixen, what you’re up to..."

"Madam..."

"She’s got him now, but I’ll break the spell..."

"Madam!" (Laws' voice is getting a little louder)

"I know what she’s up to... I know she’s..."

"Madam!" (Getting louder)

"If she thinks she can come here with all her chants and potions and take my son..."

"MADAM!" (Extremely loud)

This final scream from Laws finally stops the tirade. The woman stops. There is this incredibly long silence as Laws pauses for effect. And then very quietly he says, "You don’t happen to have a man living up in your ceiling, do you?"

Producer fades to promo, commercials, 11 o’clock news.

Lovely line, perfect timing, your reporter nearly drives off a country road, laughing hysterically. Sorry about that, just another diversion.

Back to 3BO and another strange story.

It was a holiday Monday, I remember that, and I was on duty in the studio while Turps, Graham Turpie, was the duty journalist (I think Dave Horsefall was the Editor in those days), we suddenly started to get all of these phone calls about strange objects in the sky over Bendigo.

It was the late-50’s, maybe 1960, but in those days you didn’t run stories about such things on a conservative radio station in a very conservative city in a very conservative country. But when the number of calls get over 80 you have to do something. So Turps ran a story about the number of calls we were getting about these strange objects.

The calls kept coming in, all reporting these sightings. Eventually Graham had no option other than to go to one of these locations and actually see what they were talking about. I said to him that he’d probably need another impartial witness, suggesting he collect my wife on his way so there’d be two people reporting on the event. So Graham and Elizabeth went to one area where we were getting a lot of reports, not sure just where that was.

Graham could see the objects clearly but Elizabeth, who had excellent eyesight, was the best of all. She could see a large, cigar-shaped object, high in the sky-not moving-surrounded by smaller disc shapes which appeared to be flying around the main object, perhaps even flying in and then flying out again.

It was astonishing. We could, I guess, rule out up to 100 callers, suggesting they were suffering some sort of mass hallucination, but it was pretty hard to rule out Graham and my wife. So we continued to run the story.

I eventually got through to the duty officer at the nearest Victorian Air Force base, asking if he’d received any such reports. He had some difficulty not laughing at me. He repeatedly tried to fob me off, suggesting all we were seeing was a weather balloon. But I asked him how a weather balloon could stay in the same position in the sky for 8 hours without moving.

He didn’t like this and then made it clear that if I thought he was ordering a plane to go into the area to check on these things, then I had better forget it. That pretty much ended the conversation.

The objects remained in the sky for the early part of the afternoon, but then the reports stopped coming in. By the time I signed off, they were gone. This was a most baffling mystery which sent me off on another hunt for ten years or so, reading all of the literature I could get, especially after another extraordinary incident which happened a few years later when I moved to Hobart.

Remember, I never sighted these things myself, but the people who witnessed them were beyond questioning. There is no doubt they saw something very unusual that day in Bendigo.

I hope you don’t mind me taking along these byways with the Yowie story and now these UFO’s but I am reporting them exactly as they happened. Where possible I’ll name names so that you’ll know they’re absolutely authentic.

When these ramblings resume I’ll move from Victoria across Bass Strait to Tasmania and over 5 years with 7HO, Hobart.