As the Christmas Cheer begins to roll in and all your regular media commentators depart leaving the Leila McKinnons and the Samantha Armytages of the world to take over, and stories about the best christmas lights or the post-Christmas sales start to dominate, the media news cycle tends to die. A lot.
Excepting a major disaster, like a tsunami, now is about the time that the stories that wouldn’t really get a run seem to dominate the news.
Who could forget last year’s darling of the summertime media: Corey Worthington
Never was a story quite so pointless. It served to amp up stereotypes of Gen Y, give Corey fame and money and allowed him to own a deeply stupid Leila McKinnon.
This year is starting a bit earlier, with the story about Channel 7′s Deal or No Deal Golden Boy Andrew O’Keefe caught out drunk.
In the age where everyone can be a voyeur or amatuer journalist via their mobile phone, these stories are becoming more and more common, see Amy Winehouse’s infamous snorting incident, just for one. Now, Channel 7 initially tried to censor this story by paying some $25,000 to the bouncer who took the video but surprise surprise, it leaked over the weekend to both Channel Nine and News Limited papers.
Much to their chargrin, the story has backfired for Nine and News. O’Keefe is a much loved TV personality, and given there was nothing unforgiving or untoward in the video, it has served to make them look like wowsers who think that people can’t just have a good time. And Channel Seven even ran the video on their own news, albeit talking up the anti-alcohol PM’s defense of O’Keefe.
I suspect that Channel 7 knew when it was paying the $25,000 that it would likely get out but it gave them time and avoided the video being sprung upon them. And served to make the fledging Nine look desperate.
As for Andrew, good on him, he’s flown out of the country prior to this breaking, and will come back with his fans and his numerous hosting jobs on Seven.
But that’s summer for you. I’m going to start keeping tabs on the ridiculous direction the media tends to take in the slow summer period. So keep watching!
