Hi all
I am interested to hear people’s thoughts about the media work of Tom Elliott.
Over the years, I have been in situations where Elliott’s Drive program on 3AW was on in the background and I have had no real choice in the matter, e.g. in a shop or a waiting room. On the rare occasions where I have skimmed the Herald Sun, I have noticed that Elliott sometimes writes a column.
Here are some starters.
1. As a whole, 3AW is skewed towards an older, mainly conservative, audience. This is especially the case with Elliott’s talk-back show. He is a man in his early-50s who consistently appeals to listeners of his father’s vintage, or many bored truck-drivers.
2. Talk-back tends to be lazy radio. It seems as if Elliott prepares for an episode by getting the Hun or other Murdoch print-media, or perhaps the Twitter observations of a Tim Smith, James Newbury or Georgie Crozier, and picking talking points that he suspects will excite his listeners, usually by appealing to their bigotry or excessively individualistic outlook. Elliott starts a segment with some outrage bait and lets the listeners have their say. He tends to end each call with “well said” or some other smug observation.
3. The Drive show is also lazy in that the program has a lot of filler. Drive runs from 3 to 6 pm, Monday to Friday, and I checked the length of episodes on the Drive podcast, which are streamlined to the content of each show. The podcast list showed that there is usually 90-100 minutes of content out of the 3 hour show, i.e. 50 % to a fraction under 60 %. The remaining 80-90 minutes are filled by ads, frequent news updates and traffic reports.
4. Elliott’s voice is not suited to radio. He is lispy and has a tendency to stammer. But it seems that having a grating voice is no barrier to a long career on the airwaves. Alan Jones has a shocking voice for radio and he was on for years (the self-proclaimed Muhammad Ali of 2UE, back in the day).
5. When a listener occasionally disagrees with Elliott, he tend to talk over them, or uses the radio station’s mute tools to silence them.
6. He has an annoying habit of starting a sentence with “My daughter … “. The usages are mostly gratuitous and often seem motivated by the idea that being a parent somehow gives his opinions special weight.
7. His delivery has a veneer of civility, in contrast to the snarling of Alan Jones or Ray Hadley. Often, his arrogance and prejudices will come though when he uses a patronising or sneering tone when covering topics such as indigenous Australians, social security or drug-injecting rooms.
8. Less odious than his father, which is not saying much, but an unwelcome presence in the media. Perhaps Bolt Lite.
I am interested to hear people’s thoughts about the media work of Tom Elliott.
Over the years, I have been in situations where Elliott’s Drive program on 3AW was on in the background and I have had no real choice in the matter, e.g. in a shop or a waiting room. On the rare occasions where I have skimmed the Herald Sun, I have noticed that Elliott sometimes writes a column.
Here are some starters.
1. As a whole, 3AW is skewed towards an older, mainly conservative, audience. This is especially the case with Elliott’s talk-back show. He is a man in his early-50s who consistently appeals to listeners of his father’s vintage, or many bored truck-drivers.
2. Talk-back tends to be lazy radio. It seems as if Elliott prepares for an episode by getting the Hun or other Murdoch print-media, or perhaps the Twitter observations of a Tim Smith, James Newbury or Georgie Crozier, and picking talking points that he suspects will excite his listeners, usually by appealing to their bigotry or excessively individualistic outlook. Elliott starts a segment with some outrage bait and lets the listeners have their say. He tends to end each call with “well said” or some other smug observation.
3. The Drive show is also lazy in that the program has a lot of filler. Drive runs from 3 to 6 pm, Monday to Friday, and I checked the length of episodes on the Drive podcast, which are streamlined to the content of each show. The podcast list showed that there is usually 90-100 minutes of content out of the 3 hour show, i.e. 50 % to a fraction under 60 %. The remaining 80-90 minutes are filled by ads, frequent news updates and traffic reports.
4. Elliott’s voice is not suited to radio. He is lispy and has a tendency to stammer. But it seems that having a grating voice is no barrier to a long career on the airwaves. Alan Jones has a shocking voice for radio and he was on for years (the self-proclaimed Muhammad Ali of 2UE, back in the day).
5. When a listener occasionally disagrees with Elliott, he tend to talk over them, or uses the radio station’s mute tools to silence them.
6. He has an annoying habit of starting a sentence with “My daughter … “. The usages are mostly gratuitous and often seem motivated by the idea that being a parent somehow gives his opinions special weight.
7. His delivery has a veneer of civility, in contrast to the snarling of Alan Jones or Ray Hadley. Often, his arrogance and prejudices will come though when he uses a patronising or sneering tone when covering topics such as indigenous Australians, social security or drug-injecting rooms.
8. Less odious than his father, which is not saying much, but an unwelcome presence in the media. Perhaps Bolt Lite.
