David M. Green: Purveyor of fine humour

Category: My Two Cents

8 things I learned from my first comedy festival show

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival wrapped up its 30th year late last month. A significant achievement for live comedy in Australia. Although perhaps less impressive these days, with all this “30 is the new 20” kind of talk. Still, it was especially significant for me as it was where I chose to perform my first festival show.

It was a great experience. An emotional roller coaster at times, but I’m certainly glad I did it. Here are some things I learned.

1. Having a festival pass is awesome

As this was my first festival as a participant, it was also my first festival with a coveted “festival pass”. Having one of those beauties gets you into 95% of the shows at the festival for free (unless the show is sold out). It’s an expensive time of year to have so many comedian friends, and in previous years I could usually only afford to see 5 or so shows. This year I saw 15. They were:

Emily Tresidder – Crazy Is
Ryan Coffey – Beat
Dave Warneke – Facty Fact vs. The Audience
John Dore – Revolving Dore
Rhys Nicholson – Bona Fide
Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall – Oh Hey Guys
Peter Jones – This Show May Be Recorded For Quality Purposes
Lisa-Skye – Spiders Wearing Party Hats
Guy Montgomery – Guy Montcomedy
Yianni – The Simpsons Taught Me Everything I Know
James Masters – The King of Humility
Andy Matthews & Matt Stewart – Logistical Nightmare
Andy Matthews – Plenty
Nic Spunde – Asexual Healing
Jay Morrissey & Danielle Walker – Illuminati Karate Party

Every one of them made me laugh. Some more than others, as you would expect. I’ll spare you the minor details as I’m not in the review game any more (they usually result in me being fired from a television show or an awkward conversation years later, so I’ll leave the reviews to the actual reviewers).

2. Poster politics

You know comedy festival has come around again when you start seeing posters of funny people pop up around town. Their placement is the sort of thing you only notice in passing, until you’re tasked with actually putting up some yourself. There are a couple of companies you can pay to put up your posters, but I wanted to keep costs down, so I put all mine up personally. Great way to promote your show. Can’t have a show without a poster. Though you probably could have a poster without a show. Kinda would be a waste of time however.

I had the most success with shop windows on and around Smith Street and Brunswick Street. To my delight, I found that most owners/managers were more than happy to let you put up a poster in their window. Obviously you ask first. I learned pretty quickly not to waste my time with chain stores. They’ve got franchise agreements that prevent them from thinking independently or God forbid, engaging with the community.

Not everyone was up for it, and it was quite funny hearing some of the lazy, nonsensical excuses. People telling me with a straight face they have a “no posters policy”, while standing in front of a dozen posters for other comedy festival shows. Or the guy behind an unnamed bar on Gertrude Street who told me he could only display a poster for a comedy show that wasn’t taking place in Melbourne: “I don’t promote rival venues. If your show was in Ballarat, that’d be different.” Great, I’ll make sure to go back there when I want to advertise a gig that’s happening at least 100km away. At least he was open to the idea of offering SOME help. Provided his help is in no way helpful.

My favourite was the juice bar on Degraves Street in the city. On the wall I saw a comedian’s decaying poster from 2014! It was about 3PM, no other customers, and the guy working there was emptying an entire can of Mortein across every square inch of the place. I asked if I could update his two year old poster with a fresh one. “No mate, we’re closed.” “It’ll just take a second. I’ve got my own blu-tac?” “We’re closed.”

The lifespan of a poster also varies wildly. I reckon some of the ones I put up had been torn down or postered over within a couple of hours. Others lasted the whole festival. The one on the brick wall outside PBS is still there, despite all the thunderstorms. And unless that juice bar gets shut down by the health department, I expect I’ll see that 2014 poster turn 3.

3. Flyering is fun

Can’t do a comedy show without a flyer. It’s like a poster people can hold in their hand and pretend to look at. I spent a few evenings outside the Town Hall and around Smith Street in Collingwood handing out flyers. I was dreading this, but actually, it was pretty fun. I often stood next to the info booth, where one of my posters was conveniently positioned about eye height just on the edge (below the air conditioner). I’d wear the same clothes I was wearing on the poster and just stand there and point to it when people made eye contact with me. Made a lot of people smile. I figure if that was the end of the transaction, that’s better than nothing.

Was surprisingly tiring though. I think it was all the smiling. I was quite selective with who I approached (mainly because of the small number of flyers I had printed – I had to go for quality flyering, not quantity). So I only talked to people who looked like they wanted me to. Most either politely declined or politely took one. Some people stopped for a little chat, and asked me questions about the show, or about my experiences. A few people recognised me from my various audio-visual capers, either explicitly or in the “you look familiar” way. One lady came up and asked me if I was Josh Earl. I instinctively said no. I’m kicking myself now I didn’t say yes.

There was really only one nut I encountered. He stopped and chatted for a very long time, far longer than anyone else. After about 5 minutes, I’d pretty much said all I could, and it was at a time between shows where a lot of people were wandering around outside the Town Hall. I wanted to get to some of them while I could. But this guy sticks to me like glue, and keeps with the small talk and the jokes (“Feel free to use that in your show” etc.).

So I say to him, “Well it’s been great chatting, but I really have to hand out the rest of these flyers”. He comes up with an idea to “help” promote my show, and proceeds to start tearing down another comedian’s poster from the wall of the info booth. “Quick, give me some of your flyers. I’ll put them up here!” I clutch my flyers tightly to my chest. “Uh… I don’t think the comedy festival is going to like that.” “Na seriously, come on. I’ll put your flyers up here and everyone will see them!” I start to slowly back away. “Yeah… you know I reckon it’ll be more effective if I actually hand them to people.” “Come on, don’t be an arsehole. Gimme the flyers.” “Yeah… I’ve really got to go. Great to meet you. Hopefully see ya tonight.” “Fuck you man! Fuck you!”

Kinda happy he didn’t show up to my show later that evening.

4. PR was surprisingly hard

As it was my first festival, I didn’t bother putting any money into PR beyond a few bucks to boost some Facebook posts. I didn’t buy any print media spots. Figured I wanted a more low key (and low cost) debut. Also, with that journalism degree and years of media experience and contacts, I figured I could manage to get a little something on my own, maybe a community radio interview or a review from a blog.

Actually, no I couldn’t. I vastly underestimated how competitive it would be. Hence hilariously, I had a media night with no media. But any disappointment in the back of my mind was overshadowed by the fact it just reinforced my opening gag:

“The first rule of Fan Club is… you do NOT talk about Fan Club. I must say the Australian media is doing an exceptional job of following this rule. You open any newspaper in the country, you will not see this show, or my name, mentioned. At all. In hindsight, maybe not the best PR strategy, but too late now. Something to get right next year.”

So no reviews, for better or worse. Did get some lovely tweets though.

5. The stress

The first festival show was always going to be stressful. It’s stressful for every comedian. Even seasoned veterans. One thing’s for sure: there is no better laxative than knowing you’re performing stand-up comedy that evening. Or maybe that’s just me? I’m just a regular guy. Possibly too regular.

Actually though the nerves always peaked just before walking out on stage. Once I’m up there, it’s fine. It’s the waiting to go on that’s the worst.

And something else I experienced for the first time was a strange cartoonish rash on the palms of my hands. It would always appear after a show as a bunch of spots on either my left or right palm. It was either one or the other, never both. And it would always be gone by the next morning. Could be stress. Could be an allergy to one of the metals in the microphone. Possibly some combination of the two. I don’t know. Funny though.

Glad it’s over and I’ve got my evenings back again. For now. If anything, doing the festival this year reminded me of the importance of taking time out to relax and recharge.

6. Playing to small audiences can actually be great

Preparing for this 50 minute show, I started going to open mic nights again. Typical audience numbers range from maybe 15-30. Occasionally, it’d get up to 40 or 50. That’s a nice crowd to perform to. Most people I talk to reckon the more people in the audience, the scarier it is for the performer. Personally, I find smaller audiences much more intimidating.

A small audience creates a completely different dynamic. It’s less like performing to a crowd and more like performing for individuals. And my festival show gave me the chance to perform to some of the smallest and largest audiences of my career thus far.

Some nights, I was performing to 2 people. A couple of them were actually really good. Those 2 people were really into it, and it made for a much more intimate show (obviously). Another night, there were 3 in the audience: A woman from Germany, a woman from Thailand and a guy from Adelaide who was in the year above me in high school who I happened to spot while flyering one night. Needless to say, some of the gags with local references didn’t go so well. So I had to change a few things on the fly, which made things interesting. Had a drink with them afterwards and they seemed to enjoy it (who really knows though, right?).

One of the other 2-person audience nights was made a bit difficult by one of those 2 people being a jerk who was essentially behaving like a human Twitter feed throughout the show. That was about as challenging as it got for me. Was glad to get to the end of that one.

During the festival, I did a couple of 7-minute guest spots with other comics doing the same. One at Boney and one at Toff in Town. Those crowds were something like 80-100, and I got some great laughs. It’s nice when you do the same material to a decent sized audience and are suddenly reminded that the jokes are actually funny.

7. Ad-libbing is great

Having a 50 minute show with a script to fall back on means you can afford to go off on a tangent if the opportunity arises. And often, the funniest things in the show are the unexpected reactions from people in the audience. Plus at times I got a bit sick of doing the same gags the exact same way. So it was great to try slightly different variations on bits and on occasion, just ad-lib something and not think about the consequences. I wouldn’t ever do that at an open mic night because I’ve usually got something very specific to try out and you only get 5 minutes up there.

I went on some very fun tangents this festival. Sometimes, it’s the best thing you can do at the time. Just go with it.

8. Comic comradery

Tony Martin once told me Melbourne is home to the world’s bitchiest comedy scene. That may be true. Well, I mean, it’s true that he told me.

But I reckon there’s a quiet respect between all comedians doing a comedy festival show. Everyone’s in the same boat. Everyone’s show is on at the same time. Everyone’s vying to sell tickets. Everyone’s swimming in debt before they’ve even started. Everyone wants to get a good review. Flyering around the Town Hall, I’d occasionally make eye contact with a fellow comic and exchange a nod of recognition or a handshake. You’re never alone.

This was the first time I’ve ever felt part of the scene and it’s great. Sure there’s a bit of bitchiness. Everyone wants more gigs and we all wish we thought of that hilarious killer line instead. But there’s also support, laughter and friendship.

There’s also Dean Watson:

Thanks Dean for manning the door and sitting through my show 8 times. Thanks also to Antonio Cafasso for his superb graphics and Alexis Kotlowy for the fabulous midi tunes. To Michael and all the staff at Caz Reitop’s Dirty Secrets in Collingwood. And everyone who came along.

I’m not sure if I’ll do another festival show next year. To be honest, I think my heart is still in TV, web and radio-based comedy (10 years today since my first time on radio, by the way!). But I’m sure I’ll do another one some day.

That little voice in the back of my head won’t let me stay off that stage for long.

– David M. Green

May 4, 2016
Things what I did in 2015

Greetings from Stockholm!

I’m rounding out the year in Sweden with Annika. My first trip to Europe and my first time out of Australia in 10 years. A long overdue chance to see how life works in a place that isn’t Melbourne or Adelaide. For example, being able to insert your credit card in the machine at the supermarket before all the items have even been scanned? Mind blown, Sweden. Mind. Blown.

I’m here for a whole month so I’ll save up the humorous anecdotes and poignant cultural observations and give you the good ones later.

It’s been a grand year. Back in February I returned to the writing team for season 5 of Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell. Just about the most fun you can have as a comedy writer in Australia. And congrats to everyone on the AACTA Award for Best Television Comedy Series! Greatest team in TV.

Here’s one of my favourite sketches from Season 5 (I assume it’s the right one. Can’t seem to watch this video in Sweden for some reason. Really, The World? Still with the geoblocking?):

Also spent another year behind the control panel at Crocmedia. For my 4th year I worked on the radio flagship “AFL Live” program as well as the new “A-League Live” domestic soccer coverage, and Saturday nights at SEN during the summer. A great job and great people. Which is why I’m still there, obviously.

Here’s me with TV’s Jane Nield on AFL Grand Final Day:

It was also great to actually attend an AFL game this year too. Not just attend, but sit in the Crocmedia commentary box at the MCG to see Hawthorn vs Geelong in Round 20, with Rex Hunt calling with Darren Parkin and Terry Wallace.

Only my second time at the MCG and the third AFL game I’ve ever attended, if you can believe that? FYI, the first was Adelaide vs Geelong at Football Park in 1997. The second was Melbourne vs Brisbane at the MCG in 2010. I’m usually back at Crocmedia HQ pressing the buttons, ya see.

Man, what a view. And fascinating to see the operation from the other side of the ISDN line (Thanks again Jack Heverin!).

No 31 Questions this year (five years and three community TV seasons was enough). But a project I worked on throughout 2015 was my “new” webseries VHS Revue. I’ve been going through old pre-1995ish video tapes and cutting together the hilarious/unusual highlights with some contemporary gags in between. All recorded on period VHS technology.

I made nine episodes this year with the assistance of Nicholas Godfrey and Alexis Kotlowy in Adelaide. With another one I made way back in 2008, there are now 10 episodes on YouTube. Look out for cameos from TV’s Michael Pope and Mark Humphries!

Still a few more tapes in the box I haven’t gone through yet. They’re fun to make so I suspect I’ll make some more at some point. The Adelaide VHS Gang and I have another more complex project in the works for the future, so keep a nose out…

Here’s a clue:

Another thing I returned to this year was stand-up comedy. I’ve kept a pretty low profile. In fact, this is the first I’ve mentioned it online. But I’ll fill you in.

Between 2008 and 2011, I got up on stage to do a five minute spot about a dozen times. A few of those went pretty well. But I was always more interested in pursuing radio, TV and narrative/sketch-based comedy, so I never really took stand-up seriously and when “31 Questions” got up and running, I put stand-up on the back burner. Or rather, took it off the stove entirely.

But there was always a voice at the back of my head telling me I should be doing stand-up. A real comedian should be able to get up on stage in front of an audience at any time and deliver entertainment. I was conscious I couldn’t fulfill that requirement.

With a bit of free time in the second half of the year, that voice got harder and harder to ignore. So at the start of October I put my hand up at “Comedy at the Wilde” in Fitzroy. Coincidentally, it was four years to the day since I last performed.

I was pretty rusty and to be honest, completely terrified. I haven’t been that scared in I don’t know when. I’d forgotten what it’s like up there, with the bright lights and no autocue. I got some laughs. Also got a generous portion of nothing. But I just had to get that return to the stage done and out of the way. And here’s the difference between now and six years ago: I rewrote the routine and got up on stage at “Station 59” in Richmond and did it again. That went a hell of a lot better. Then I tried a new five minutes, and another and another. I got up eight times in two months before I left for Sweden. And you know what? When you take stand-up seriously, it’s really fun. And when you kill? When everything just works? Oh my God, what a feeling. It’s indescribable.

By March, I’m planning to have 45 minutes of fine, hand-crafted comedy.

Why?

Hell yeah! It’s my debut show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival!

Come see me in “Fan Club”. It’s at a nice little cocktail bar called Caz Reitop’s Dirty Secrets, 80 Smith Street, Collingwood. I’ll be doing two shows a week, Thursdays and Sundays 9PM from March 24 to April 17. Book your tickets at TICKETMASTER (CLICK HERE).

It’ll be an evening (well a portion of an evening) of stand-up, a few stories and some live commercial reads. Producing it all myself. Just me and my comedy brain and possibly some other organs. If you’ve enjoyed any of my work ever, or you’re one of those people who’ve been asking me if I’ve got a show in the festival throughout the last decade, I’d be thrilled if you come. But until then, I’ll be round the stand-up traps in Melbourne. If you see me, come say hi.

In other news, I read some great books this year. I’ve been getting back into that too. I particularly recommend “Command and Control” by Eric Schlosser and “Catch Me If You Can” by Frank Abagnale and Stan Redding.

Well whoever you are, thanks for reading (this, not the books mentioned above). Hope you’ve had a good year too and all of the best for 2016.

Let us do coffee. Let us do lunch. Let us do all of the things.

– David M. Green

December 31, 2015
Dr Pepper or: How I learned to stop worrying & love the soft drink

Everyone remembers their first time.

I was 11. Adelaide, 1998. I was visiting my Grandma during one of her frequent stints in hospital no thanks to five decades of smoking. Her, not me. As was customary, she gave me two dollars to buy myself something sweet from the canteen.

A plastic bottle in the drinks fridge caught my eye. A black liquid with a red label I’d never seen before: “Dr Pepper”. Wow! What better place to try a medical-themed beverage than in a hospital? And if it’s poisonous, intensive care was just a short crawl away. I gave it a try.

That first sip was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted. It was worse than cough medicine. Had it not been for my total lack of confidence, I would have asked the little old lady behind the counter for a refund.

My mind was made up. Never buying one of those again. A lot of people must have come to the same conclusion. Dr Pepper was suddenly everywhere but no one was drinking it.

A big TV ad campaign featured panicked Australians in biohazard suits handling the suspicious new beverage as if it were a bottle of anthrax. In hindsight, perhaps not the best marketing strategy. After literally minutes of searching on YouTube, I haven’t been able to find that ad. If I find it on VHS, I’ll make sure to donate it to the cloud like I have with so many others.

But it was still the early days of Dr Pepper’s Australian invasion. Americans had been guzzling down the soft drink since 1885 and the company wasn’t going to give up on the market down under so easily.

So they started a promotional campaign to get Aussies hooked. One in four 600ml bottles of Dr Pepper had a voucher for a free one under the cap. Pretty good odds. And in those days, the word “congratulations” on your soft drink meant you had actually won something.

It clearly didn’t get the spike in sales the Dr Pepper people wanted because soon after they upped the odds so one in two Dr Peppers wins a free one. ONE IN TWO! You had a 50 per cent chance of winning a free drink! Never before or since has a confectionery brand run a sweeter promotion. About 64 grams of sweetness per bottle, in fact.

That’s when they won me over. Hey, I was a thrifty pre-teen. I forced myself to drink it. And I kept winning. And I kept drinking. I think I had a chain of five wins in a row.

Dr Pepper is an acquired taste. It’s also unique. I don’t know what it is, but I love it. My Dad reckons it tastes like liquid marzipan. He hates marzipan.

The company itself claims it’s a secret concoction of 23 flavours. Move over Colonel Sanders. One time I swear I stumbled upon the Dr Pepper formula by combining just the right ratio of all the other flavours from the post-mix machine at Pizza Hut. A feat sadly never to be repeated.

I drank Dr Pepper at every opportunity, long after the excessively generous promotional campaigns ended. One time at the zoo, I walked past a bank of vending machines, pressing all the buttons in the off chance a mechanical malfunction would result in a freebie. Wouldn’t you know it? Free Dr Pepper.

They were great days for a soft drink connoisseur.

But Dr Pepper just couldn’t get a foothold in Australia’s overcrowded soft drink market. At the turn of the millennium, we had reached peak carbonation. And the Doc slowly began to disappear. I know Marty, this is heavy. By 2003, it was only available at a handful of supermarkets in 1.25L bottles.

That same year, the makers of Dr Pepper in Australia – Schweppes – ceased local production. The doctor was out. Forget hen’s teeth. Dr Pepper had become rarer than teeth at a Collingwood hen’s night.

The last place I know of that had it was a chicken shop down the road from where I worked at the Mitcham GameTraders in early 2005. I was 17. I saw my manager drinking one, straight out of the big bottle. He said the chicken shop had four left – probably sitting there for over a year. I didn’t care. I went in there the next day intent on buying up the lot.

Someone else had beaten me to it. And the sweaty man at the fryer said he couldn’t order any more. You couldn’t find Dr Pepper anywhere. Soda aficionados refer to this period as “The Apepperlypse”. I may have made that up. But I just had to have it. I called the Schweppes factory in Ringwood. They told me the dream was over. Also, to please stop calling them.

In desperation, I turned to this new thing called the Internet. I found a place in Melbourne called USA Foods. They imported Dr Pepper direct from the United States. So I started ordering 355ml American cans in bulk and getting them mailed to me in Adelaide at great expense. FYI, shipping liquid is quite costly. But I considered it worth the price. Looks like the Dr Pepper people were getting a nice ROI from their l998 campaign. From me, anyway.

Arriving home one day, there was a gigantic cardboard box waiting for me. It was filled with cans of Dr Pepper individually wrapped in newspaper. I remember the first sip of that first can from that first shipment. It was the most glorious thing I’ve ever tasted.

Suddenly I was the man. I was giving cans of Dr Pepper as gifts for friends’ birthdays. “Where the hell did you get that?!?”

I even tried to recoup some of the cost by on-selling some of the cans on ebay. I sold a 6-pack to some dude in Sydney for forty dollars. Forty freaking dollars. He bought them and he drank them.

I fantasised about opening my own little shop that just sold imported soft drinks. The people at Schweppes were crazy. There was clearly a demand for Dr Pepper in Australia.

In late 2005 I went to the USA with my parents and sister for the holiday of a lifetime. Dr Pepper everywhere. I drank it constantly. You could get it in every restaurant and there were always free refills. Yes. This is how it should be.

On my last day in Los Angeles, I bought two 2L bottles from a convenience store and carried them without incident onto the plane. I didn’t want to put them in my suitcase because I was paranoid they’d explode in the unpressurised baggage compartment.

Ironically, you can’t carry that much liquid onto a plane now after a failed 2006 UK terrorist plot to detonate explosive liquids on several transatlantic flights. And a note to my 18-year-old self: 747 baggage compartments are pressurised.

Personally, I believe if you can’t carry a Dr Pepper onto a plane, the terrorists have already won.

Five years later, I moved to Melbourne and Dr Pepper gradually started re-appearing. This time as a boutique carbonated beverage. First at those little British-style lolly shops, then at the odd independent burrito place in a tiny fridge behind the counter, along with other exotic drinks like Snapple and Irn-Bru and A&W Root Beer.

To my delight, it’s come full circle and now you can get Dr Pepper at pretty much every hipster hamburger donut joint and Chinese supermarket. All imported from the US and usually reasonably priced.

It’s available at more places now than it was 15 years ago when they still bottled it here. We truly live in a Golden Cola Age. Or “Gola Age” if you have a speech impediment.

Though despite Dr Pepper’s newfound abundance, I don’t actually drink it much these days – on the strict advice of my dentist. And my doctor.

Typical.

– David M. Green

August 13, 2015
2014: The Year.

And so another curtain turns by the milestone where a chapter passes around a corner that’s closed to cap off the page’s end of yet another ticked over year.

Hi, I’m David M. Green and here’s the gist of what I did in 2014.

It’s coming up on 5 years since I left Adelaide for dead and moved to Melbourne to pursue a life of comedy, radio, television and shopping after 9PM. And man, I did a big steaming pile of all those things this year…

January through April was full on. I started at my childhood dream job of writing for a Shaun Micallef-based ABC TV comedy show: Series 3 of Mad As Hell (as seen above with Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall and Simon Taylor in our official ABC-supplied writing uniforms). There’s no other way to put it. It was bloody fantastic. An amazingly talented team of people and so, so much fun. I returned in September to write for Series 4 and I’m thrilled to say I’ll be back in the writers’ room again on Series 5, which starts in February.

If you want tickets to come join the studio audience – which I can highly recommend – hit me upside the head. I know a guy 😉

Here’s my favourite Mad As Hell sketch from this year: “Watching the Watcher”

Returning to the start of the year, the ole RMITV gang got back together one last time to record the third and final season of 31 Questions: The TV game show where YOU get to be the viewer. We put everything into this one and it almost killed me.

I reckon the best episodes this year were 1, 6 and 8.

I’ve crapped on about the show enough now, but if you literally have nothing better to do and like that behind the scenes shit, read the blog entry I wrote after we finished shooting. Or the other one I wrote after the final episode aired.

I’m amazed we got so far with that show. But 4 years and (fittingly) 31 episodes seems like enough for now. It cost a lot of money, time, sleep, dignity, and even a couple of friendships. But we did it because we loved it and everyone involved learned an incredible amount. And that’s community TV.

And that’s why I’m so concerned about the future of community TV, which is currently under threat after Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull decided to kick all 5 metro stations off the air at the end of 2015.

So concerned, a few months ago I wrote an article for The Age/Sydney Morning Herald, which was shared a hell of a lot more than Malcolm Turnbull’s half-arsed response.

It was even mentioned in Parliament:

They’ll get my name right one of these days…

Make sure you sign the petition over at Commit to Community TV if you think community television in this country is worth having.

After that burst of TV-making in the first half of the year, I took my first trip to Tasmania with my friend and mentor Van Badham. It was pretty good, aside from the food poisoning on the second day. I think it was a combination of some bad fish and a slightly disturbing experience seeing MONA‘s infamous “shitting machine”.

I thought surely I took a picture of that machine? But looking back through the photos, evidently I did not. Probably for the best.

3 days in Hobart was great, though I spent one of those days in bed watching QI, which arguably I could do at home. So I’d love to go back and explore the rest of the state properly. There’s some pretty breath-taking scenery.

Here I am taking a breath:

Back in Melbourne, I met a girl from Sweden. Her name’s Annika. She wants to stay in Australia, so to get a second year on her visa, she went and worked at a dairy farm in Lockington near the Victorian/New South Wales border. For 3 months. For no money. In a profession in which she has zero interest.

Understandably, she didn’t like it much. I’m kinda ashamed we make foreign visitors do that in Australia. We are a selfish, small-minded country – as comprehensively encapsulated by our current federal government and their systematic policies of unfairness… But on the other hand, at least I got something out of this situation (not selfish).

I got to visit a part of the country I’ve never had a reason to go to. So I twice drove up to see Annika, temporarily save her from the life of a milk maid, and spend a few days in Echuca. I introduced her to Red Dwarf and we stayed in a B&B that had a fireplace. (A FIREPLACE, people.)

Both trips were great, though the guy at the B&B was a bit of a dick the second time. Got a stern lecture when we went to check out at 10.07AM. Hey, I was there at 9.55 and the counter was unattended!

Anyway, we’re totally going out now. Here she is riding a cannon (hoho):

Throughout the year I’ve also been back behind the radio panel at Crocmedia, where I continued my self-imposed tradition of panelling the Grand Final for “AFL Live” in a suit:

Even panelled a few shows with cricket legend Merv Hughes. Turns out we have similar tastes in shirts:

There were fewer sound effects this year, but that wasn’t enough to prevent another batch of bizarre audio highlights. Get a load of these:

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As always, a thrill and a pleasure to work with the whole team, on-air and behind the scenes (and not just because they get my name right, but that does go a long way).

So that’s the gist of it. I’m seeing the year out in Adelaide. Gonna see the old gang. Gonna play some golf. Gonna have my bowl. Gonna eat cereal. Gonna eat at my favourite spots: The Blue Bird Bakery and Charminar Indian restaurant in Brighton, that Yiros House place on Rundle Street, and maybe even Gilbert Place’s The Pancake Kitchen – just like Melbourne’s The Pancake Parlour, but everything’s 30 per cent cheaper. Just the way I like it.

I still love Adelaide. And I love coming back to visit. It’s slowly turning into a proper city. I reckon every time I’m here, I see more solar panels and speed cameras. And little bits of Melbourne slowly being absorbed into the local scene. That’s progress, my friend.

So that’s the gist of it. Thank you for reading, enjoy your holidays and I’ll see you in 2015. We should do lunch.

Kind regards,
David M. Green
Your treat.

December 26, 2014
Community TV Good. Abbott Government Bad.

A few days ago I wrote an opinion piece about the Abbott government’s decision via Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull (artist’s impression above) to cease transmitting community television on television. It appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Age (incidentally, my first time in The Age). If you missed it, you can read it online here.

It went a bit viral yesterday and as of this moment, there’s a “112” next to the Twitter logo and a “241” next to the Facebook logo on The Age website. Thank you very much to the people who shared it and thanks for showing your love and support for community TV in Australia.

It must have struck a chord, because Malcolm Turnbull replied with his own opinion piece in The Age today. In it, he essentially repeats the arguments he made on his website when he made the initial announcement.

So, I thought I’d reply to a few of his recent points Fatboy Slim-style. Right here, right now:

“Commercial and national television broadcasters are already responding to the demands of audiences for more content online, and I envisage this trend will continue, particularly where the content is specialised and local. Nielsen’s Australian Connected Consumers 2014 report found that of the 80 per cent of Australians with the internet, 50 per cent of them watched television programs online. This represents a significant Australian audience watching TV from an internet source with the most growth coming from under 35s and over 60s.”

So, 60 per cent of Australians do not watch television programs online. More than half the audience still prefers to watch TV on a TV.

I agree with Malcolm this trend will continue, but that percentage just supports my call for a more gradual transition for community TV to move online. People will need to change their living room set up, purchase Internet TVs and in many cases, wait until faster, more reliable internet is available in their area. The end of 2015 is an inadequate deadline.

Leaving to one side the fact that Malcolm Turnbull isn’t requiring the other commercial stations to transition to the internet in this same time frame (or at all).

“Currently there are five community television services in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. Apart from Geelong, because of its proximity to Melbourne, Australians outside these metropolitan capital cities have never been able to access CTV.”

At last year’s C31 Melbourne & Geelong Christmas party, general manager Richard McLelland told the crowd his vision to expand their free-to-air TV signal to the regional centres of Bendigo and Ballarat.

The desire is there. The audience is there.

The power to make it happen is yours, Minister.

“OzTam official ratings data shows that CTV has very small audiences. Over the last five years with an average annual daily audience in prime time (6pm to midnight) for all stations of about 6000 viewers. To put this in perspective the total viewing market is about 15 million viewers.”

As has been said by others before me, using “average” ratings to compare the niche broadcasting of community TV to the other stations is not a fair measure and misses the point entirely.

The nature of the diversity of programming on community TV means ratings for individual programs are going to vary wildly. C31 Melbourne & Geelong says community TV reaches 3 million viewers each month.

Regardless, achieving high ratings is not the primary aim of community TV. It exists to give people experience in broadcasting, to air programming the other big TV stations wouldn’t touch with a ten foot TV pole and content which appeals to smaller, less commercially-viable sections of the community.

Community TV is supposed to have smaller audiences. That’s the point.

Does anyone know how many people actually watch those God awful shopping channels?

“In the short term (from 2016) sixth-channel spectrum will be used to assist free-to-air broadcasters in the migration to MPEG-4, a video compression technology that is almost twice as efficient as the MPEG-2 standard they currently use. This migration will allow for more channels and better picture quality with the same amount of spectrum.”

So, if it’s possible to have more channels on the TV spectrum… can you not just give community TV one of those channels?

And secondly, why should we be bothering with this spectrum upgrade at all, if you say the future of television is on the internet?

I don’t see how it’s possible to have it both ways there. Unless of course this is all bullshit and based purely on some right wing ideology.

Community TV is somewhat of a passion of mine. If you think it’s important to keep it, I’d encourage you to sign up at Commit to Community TV, and continue sharing the passionate articles written by proponents. Including this blog entry.

If for no other reason than just so I can see how Malcolm Turnbull responds 🙂

Kind regards,
TV’s David M. Green

PS. Many thanks to Tony Sowersby for that fantastic cartoon. He draws others, you know. Check them out on Facebook!

September 23, 2014