Ray Hadley was presenting his morning program from the Ekka in Brisbane when he became increasingly agitated that the show wasn’t running smoothly. A fed up Ray Hadley has stormed off midway through a live broadcast after enduring 30 minutes of “technical difficulties”.
Hadley was presenting his program from the Ekka, the annual agricultural show of Queensland, in Brisbane when he became increasingly agitated that the show wasn’t running smoothly.
Hadley repeatedly apologised to listeners and threw to ad breaks throughout the first 60 minutes of the three-hour long program.
“All I can do is apologise most sincerely for the first 30 minutes of the program which has been a complete and utter fiasco,” he said.
“But I do apologise. I’m broadcasting from the Ekka, which I didn’t get a chance to tell you because nothing seemed to work.
“I hope it is currently working and we’ll see what happens from hereon… and obviously we’ll be having some discussions at midday about the fiasco I’ve presided over.”
The host threw to several breaks telling listeners “there are people here trying to fix things – unsuccessfully I might mention”.
Another round of advertisements followed before Hadley decided to throw the towel in.
“Look, we are having some rather severe technical problems here at the Ekka to the extent that Mark Levy will be looking after the program after ten o’clock this morning, for which I do apologise to Mark and everyone else,” he said.
Hadley then went on to tell listeners he was making his way “back to Sydney” despite the program being scheduled to broadcast live from the showground until Friday.
“I’ll make my way back to Sydney and I’ll be broadcasting from the studio in Sydney tomorrow given the problems we’ve encountered this morning,” he told listeners.
Nine Entertainment refuted the claims, telling The Australian Hadley “will be on air at the Ekka for the rest of the week”.
G’day Ray,
Surprisingly .. listen to the crickets …. but, I’m happy to chip in.
C’mon people are we broadcast professionals or broadcast amateurs??
It’s an OB, featuring a high profile show from a prominent location!
I hate to criticise our broadcast technicians – without them, broadcasters don’t get on air.
That said, really, were there any checks (production team), possibly on Sunday (factor it into the production budget people) to ensure that the link was working and then checked Monday morning, well before the broadcast was due on air.
I’m sure Kerry Packer would have gone spare if this had happened during PBL’s involvement with Nine.
The word ‘assume’ says so much about this situation.
For the record, I’m no armchair critic but a 30 year broadcast media employee (radio and TV).
And, yes, I worked briefly with Ray at 2UE in 1991.
C’mon team, let’s all learn for this – no matter if you’re doing an OB in Boulia or Brisbane, Singleton or Sydney, Moe or Melbourne .. you get the picture.
kr
Garry Blair, Maitland NSW