news articles 15 May

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A hard night's day for Idol hopefuls
By CARLA CARUSO and JESSICA HURT
15may04
AUSTRALIAN Idol hopefuls ignored judge Mark Holden's advice to stay in bed last night, choosing instead to camp out in the cold so they could be first in line for today's auditions.

The former popstar had advised people heading to the auditions, which are being held at the Hotel Adelaide International, North Adelaide, from 8.30am today and tomorrow, to get a good night's sleep. "It is too exhausting (lining up for so long)," he said.

"They should come later, like at 7 or 8am; they will be seen. If you stay up all night you will make yourself sick.

"I have seen too many people too exhausted when they come in."

His words of wisdom, however, did not deter enthusiasts from camping out.

Andrew Lees-Hawke, 17, of Millicent, was first in line at 3pm. He drove up with sister Stephanie, 15, and mother Virginia.

Andrew, who will perform the Shrek song It Is You (I Have Loved), said he was not concerned about the night air harming his voice.

"It will affect it a bit but as long as I keep my scarf and beanie on and am all rugged up, it should be OK," he said.

Maeli Felise, 19, of Robinvale in Victoria, decided to camp out after visiting his sister here.


"I had to get my hair braided to get rid of the Afro because I got called Guy (Sebastian) at home," he said. "I wanted to do something different."

One of the more mature in line was Maureen Beech, 67, of Greenwith, who was supporting niece Christina Coult, 17.

Holden will be a special guest and performer at The Advertiser/Sunday Mail Foundation's Famous Faces sold-out luncheon on June 17.


www.theadvertiser.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,9565471%5E2682,00.html

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Music's like sport: play hard and know the score
Lisa Yallamas
May 15, 2004

Caption : STRINGS attached ... Australian Youth Orchestra member Frank Fodor knows that to succeed in music he must be committed. Picture: Peter Bull.

GATORADE should use musicians in their television commercials, says Frank Fodor. Musicians sweat and they need the sponsorship too.

"Sports and music have a lot in common," he says.

Fodor is the Australian Youth Orchestra's Wendell Sailor. Like the footballer who swapped codes, the elite student musician swapped instruments and still plays at the top of his league.

He successfully auditioned two years ago for the AYO, just when he swapped from violin to the larger viola because his hands grew too big for the violin.

He was 19 when he made the AYO, where the average age of players is 22.

Fodor has sweated heaps playing for the AYO, playing lead viola in the Queensland Youth Orchestra, and attaining a grade point average of 6.8 (out of seven) in the first two years of his music degree at the University of Queensland.

The acid in his sweat eats at his strings during the Brisbane summers and replacements are $50 a pop – his instrument is worth between $20,000 and $25,000. And nerves are a problem for both sports and music performers.


Fodor is mindful that his diesel mechanic-sheet metal fabricator father and special education teacher mum have invested everything in his dream. It's why he gives his all to his music. "I have great parents," he says.


He has an Australian Chamber Orchestra poster stuck on the back of the front door so it's the last thing he sees as he walks out of the house every morning to catch a train on the first leg of an arduous journey from Logan City to St Lucia. "I could commit myself with all my heart to that ensemble," he says.

This year the AYO will perform at The Proms in London's Royal Albert Hall. "We were watching Guy Sebastian performing there in January and mum said: 'That'll be you soon'."

news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,9563641%5E3102,00.html

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Giving the ratings game a kick
May 15, 2004

Timing can be everything. Kerry Kingston's luck was to join Ten as the business was turning. Christian Catalano reports.

Kerry Kingston is not really the type to go looking for a fight. In fact the last time Network Ten's new chief operating officer traded blows of any kind he ended up on the canvas.

"My hobby is kickboxing. It's something I took up when I was 40 . . . a mid-life-crisis sort of decision," he says with a grin. "The last I sparred was with a young fella back in Perth and he bent my nose in a direction I didn't want it going. At that point I thought it probably doesn't look real good coming in to work bruised."

Not that Kingston, now 45, is quick to step away from a challenge.

Mention, for instance, that some of Ten's reality shows have underperformed this year and that it is behind in its core youth audience and he is quick to reassure you that Ten will win back the 16-to-39 demographic from Nine, much the same as it did in 2003. Or ask whether David Leckie's revamped line-up at Seven might just be starting to hurt the others and straight away Kingston points out who is ahead on the ratings scorecard.

"Seven is putting it out there that they're making up ground, but how can you say (that) when you're still running third?" he asks.

For the most part, however, Kingston is happy to use his experience as one of the nation's senior commercial television executives to wage the war in more subtle ways.

It's one of the reasons he will be staying put in Melbourne, despite his rapid rise within the network to effectively be second in command behind chief executive John McAlpine.

"I don't think we've brought home how much we do out of Melbourne," he says. "There's Rove Live, The Panel, Neighbours, Secret Life of Us, SkitHouse, the AFL, Grand Prix, and of course we do Bert Newton every weekday from here."

Kerry KingstonKingston says Melbourne is also a more educated television audience, and a better measuring stick for the shifting appetites of Australian viewers as a whole. "A show will turn a lot more quickly here than in Sydney. Melbourne really likes its TV, but I think it's more informed about it as well."

Finally, a Melbourne address gives Kingston the chance to have coffee with three of Australia's biggest media buyers in Paul Leeds (chief executive of Starcom), Anne Parsons (chief executive of Zenith) and Harold Mitchell (co-founder of Mitchell & Partners).

Kingston is the first to admit he's had it pretty easy since he joined Ten in January 2002, when things were really starting to tick for the traditional wooden spooner of the commercial TV operators.

After years in the ratings wilderness, McAlpine and his sales team had engineered a new push for a younger audience, one with more disposable cash and more time to spend it than their harder-working elders.

Spearheaded by the awesome success of the initial Big Brother series and followed by new franchises such as Australian Idol, the network has seen advertising revenue grow at breakneck pace. For the first time last year, Ten claimed more than 30 per cent of the $2.7 billion metro TV advertising pie and, more remarkably, it is operating at a TV earnings margin of 38 per cent, according to figures for the six months to March this year, a level unheard of in the industry.

Kingston concedes that the timing of his arrival was impeccable - "sometimes you just get lucky" - but he still thinks there are plenty of challenges.

"There's enough challenges in maintaining that 30 per cent-plus share (of metro ad revenue) to keep us all going," he says.

The most pressing of these will be convincing viewers and advertisers alike that the reality bubble has not yet burst.

As if the ratings failure of two of its new shows - The Resort and Hot House - was not enough, Ten is now having to deal with lower than expected peak audience numbers for its main Big Brother show on Sunday nights.

"Sunday nights for Big Brother are a bit down, yes, but on weeknights it's doing better than it was last year."

A much greater issue - though not as pressing - is how Ten is coping with both the structural and technological changes in free-to-air television.

He says he does not give much credence to the audience fragmentation argument. "I think you need to look at the model in the United States, where free-to-air TV's share of advertising dollars has not slipped at all. It is still the only truly 'mass reach' media."

As far as digital and interactive television in Australia goes, Kingston admits he is yet to come up with a clear business model.

"I think we still have to remember that TV is primarily about entertainment. When people sit down they want to be entertained, they don't want to think about it."