The fallout continues from the car crash/trainwreck/debacle [insert your negative adjective of choice in here] that constituted this year’s ARIA Awards ceremony, broadcast live from the windy steps of the Sydney Opera House on Sunday night.
While ARIA has acknowledged the backlash on its Facebook page, saying “Thanks again for your comments throughout the day. These comments will form part of our review with our producers and partners so that we can deliver the best ARIAs in 2011;” Channel 10 delivered a curt, poker faced one sentence statement that laughably said of the music industry’s supposed night of nights, “The ARIA’s are a very important event in the Australian music landscape and last nights performances were fantastic.” [sic]. Yes, they really said that.
They’re not the only media organisations guilty of failing to accurately acknowledge or report on the debacle. Fairfax didn’t do its Melbourne readers justice by describing the awards – to which a journo was flown to Sydney on a junket by EMI Records – as such: “The awards thrived from their move from Homebush to the city’s infinitely more picturesque harbour.”
Showing a junket makes you choose your words very carefully, the description of the chaos was misleading. “Last night’s awards were the last of a six-night run of concerts and gongs held at the Opera House. Although award fatigue was clearly setting in, the mood was overwhelmingly positive.” Sure it had to be filed on deadline, but the whole story was missed here.
Fairfax’s Sydney correspondent didn’t do much better, tiptoeing around the issue saying: “Not everyone is a fan of the new format and the perceived slight to those awards not included in Sunday night’s broadcast.” Articles the next day in both Melbourne and Sydney publications quickly applied a Soviet style of carefully worded revisionism to the proceedings, with The Age saying: “The future of the ARIA on free-to-air commercial television is in doubt following a disastrous showing on Ten on Sunday night.”
Fortunately, despite the fact that the ARIA Awards may never be screened on Free To Air TV again after this year’s efforts, ARIA was talking up the ‘interactivity’ of its awards ceremony with words that have come to haunt new CEO, former Second Dan front man Dan Rosen. Calling ARIA’s new phone app which allowed live streaming ”world class” he also pointed out that the awards generated much cyber chat. ”With online it’s all about giving new content and we been able to put up new content every day.”
That Dan, must be why Channel 10 has been pulling all footage off Youtube for supposed ‘copyright violation,’ and the ceremony was shitcanned right across almost every internet site and media outlet in Australia. You sure gave ’em a lot of ‘new content’.
