Manx Radio

[Non-Believer]

4 hours ago, GreyWolf said:

Very light weight program no scrutiny or difficult questions towards Hooper this always seems to happen and to other hot topic politicians that come on the mannin line when Winty is in charge.

I can’t help thinking Brindles wouldn’t have given him such an easy ride 

Didn't Brindles and MR just get their scrotums nipped for having the audacity to question Peter Boxer's submitted expenses for a trip? Front page story in the Courier a couple of weeks back now.

[Stu Peters]

23 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

Didn't Brindles and MR just get their scrotums nipped for having the audacity to question Peter Boxer's submitted expenses for a trip? Front page story in the Courier a couple of weeks back now.

I think that was more about inviting a senior politician in to talk about one issue and then switching to something the politician wasn’t briefed on.

[A fool and his money.....]

1 hour ago, genericUserName said:

The radio and tv frequencies should be sold off now that we have the internet. 

Where have you been for the last ten years?

[Barlow]

15 hours ago, ADELE said:

I have phoned in a good while ago they just ask for your name , not surname, ask what you would like to speak about, just the subject, and Bish Bosh you are through ,there is no filtering system.

Actually there is and @Stu Peters knows it, (although this wasn't always the case and of course  it certainly wasn't the case on said Stu Peters late show).

I believe* there have been times when the producer of the show has been known to give a bit of a grilling to callers, regarding what they are going to say, before going on air.

 

* Actually I don't just believe, I know. And Mr Peters knows it too. (Stu 'liked' or rather 'thank you' to Adele's post suggesting callers are not filtered in any way)

Edited August 1, 2023 by Barlow

[Kopek]

Political guests on a chat show need to to be assured that they will not be faced with awkward question they were not expecting? Otherwise, they are unlikely to appear again.

Many politicians will try to answer other questions if they have some knowledge of the subject OR know the party line to follow. The party in our case being Comin.

If they refuse to answer other topics, they will be accused of avoiding, if they answer, they are accused of meandering from their departments remit????

We have to just file it away for future reference and take what their dept stance is on the main subject?

[Roger Mexico]

53 minutes ago, Non-Believer said:

Didn't Brindles and MR just get their scrotums nipped for having the audacity to question Peter Boxer's submitted expenses for a trip? Front page story in the Courier a couple of weeks back now.

The whole thing was very odd.  There was a long and very opaque piece on Manx Radio at the start of the month entitled: CURA upholds complaint against Manx Radio, which was that a "claim about Freedom of Information requests, [made] during a live interview with the Cabinet Office Minister, was inaccurate and lacked impartiality".  There wasn't much more definite detail and at the time the link to the Summary of the CURA Decision didn't work - and certainly didn't for several days afterwards (I checked a number of times).  Though that seems to be CURA's fault  - I checked their site directly and there was nothing.

Luckily the same day, Gef actually printed the whole story.  It turns out Brindley has asked Lord-Brennan:

‘We have been told repeatedly by a civil servant in your department that we should not put in FoI requests for ministers for off-island costs, as an example. Now surely this is stuff that the communications team and your department should be trying to be as transparent as possible, is it a case that communications is there almost as a spin department to stop bad news getting out?’

Mrs Lord-Brennan denied this was the case and said that FoI’s is not the responsibility of the comms team.

Which triggered the whole thing.  No one (except Sam Turton who actually committed some journalism)  comes out well from this. 

It was a useless question from Brindley because it shows the sort of trivial semi-personal queries that reporters are obsessed with while the big spending items that affect people's lives get ignored as 'too complicated'.  But in this case it's a particularly stupid topic to put in an FoI about because such off-Island Ministerial expenses are published in any case.

Lord-Brennan's response was equally poor as it missed the point which was about how the comms people behaved not FoIs.  But worse she seems to have failed to stop Peter Boxer, who presumably thought he was the civil servant alluded to, from putting in a complaint about this (though it took him six weeks).

But CURA's response was dreadful and even tardier.  It then takes them till over a year after the original broadcast to produce something and rather than just telling Boxer (who wasn't then even employed by IOMG any more) that his complaint just proved that people were right to be concerned about government trying to dictate things to the media, they produce something saying that media shouldn't ask Ministers awkward questions.  

[TheTeapot]

Boxer was crowing about this on twitter the other week. 

[littlebushy]

45 minutes ago, TheTeapot said:

Boxer was crowing about this on twitter the other week. 

Not barking about it?

[Barlow]

This is what happens when you allow Westminster stool pigeons onto the top fucking table.

[Barlow]

12 hours ago, Kopek said:

Political guests on a chat show need to to be assured that they will not be faced with awkward question they were not expecting? Otherwise, they are unlikely to appear again.

Many politicians will try to answer other questions if they have some knowledge of the subject OR know the party line to follow. The party in our case being Comin.

If they refuse to answer other topics, they will be accused of avoiding, if they answer, they are accused of meandering from their departments remit????

We have to just file it away for future reference and take what their dept stance is on the main subject?

The master of avoiding awkward questions was Allan Bell. I have only once phoned in Manx Radio, and it was regarding the size of the civil service/government employees and the effective downsizing thereof. As a former UK civil servant I have a fair bit of knowledge about this and was simply offering a suggestion. The boy Bell was quick to intervene and his reply and words went on and on and on. And on. And Stu the presenter allowed him to do so, only chipping in occasionally to keeping the ball rolling. 

The CM was in a bit if a corner and it was an awkward moment. I hadn't intended it to be like that, I just wanted to offer my experience working for an administration that was not dissimilar in size and function of the Isle of Man.

But I was left dangling on the phone with the line cut and with the presenter clearly not wanting me back on. Boredom/attrition won the day for big Al, and I put the phone down and went to mow the lawn.

Edited August 1, 2023 by Barlow

[ADELE]

Do you honestly and truthfully believe they would let Quirky and the other guy Juan on if there were filters ?     They glide from subject to subject with the greatest of ease with encouragement from Andy.     The producer of the show asks for your name and subject so that Andy and before that Stu can introduce the contributors , e.g. and now Reggie from  Ramsey would like to talk about ……. otherwise the listeners wouldn’t have a clue what was going on.    This conspiracy theory is ridiculous if you are unconvinced ring up Mannin Line tomorrow and see for yourself. 

[The Phantom]

4 hours ago, Barlow said:

The master of avoiding awkward questions was Allan Bell. I have only once phoned in Manx Radio, and it was regarding the size of the civil service/government employees and the effective downsizing thereof. As a former UK civil servant I have a fair bit of knowledge about this and was simply offering a suggestion. The boy Bell was quick to intervene and his reply and words went on and on and on. And on. And Stu the presenter allowed him to do so, only chipping in occasionally to keeping the ball rolling. 

The CM was in a bit if a corner and it was an awkward moment. I hadn't intended it to be like that, I just wanted to offer my experience working for an administration that was not dissimilar in size and function of the Isle of Man.

But I was left dangling on the phone with the line cut and with the presenter clearly not wanting me back on. Boredom/attrition won the day for big Al, and I put the phone down and went to mow the lawn.

Say what you will about Bell, but he can bench-press more than anyone else in Govt! 

[Roger Mexico]

43 minutes ago, ADELE said:

Do you honestly and truthfully believe they would let Quirky and the other guy Juan on if there were filters ?     They glide from subject to subject with the greatest of ease with encouragement from Andy.     The producer of the show asks for your name and subject so that Andy and before that Stu can introduce the contributors , e.g. and now Reggie from  Ramsey would like to talk about ……. otherwise the listeners wouldn’t have a clue what was going on.    This conspiracy theory is ridiculous if you are unconvinced ring up Mannin Line tomorrow and see for yourself. 

But you've just explained that there is a filter - the show's producer who will take the calls and can put people through or not.  No doubt they are happy to put through the regulars because they know the sort of thing they will say and they don't mind (indeed encourage) them going off topic because the programme will be keen to avoid 'controversy' that might get the station into problems with its paymaster.

It may also be different rules apply when there is a guest on and the filter will be needed more for practical reasons (most of the time will be taken up with the guest speaking rather than callers), but that means that the producer and presenter should be using their power not to let things drift off-topic.

[Roger Mexico]

5 hours ago, Barlow said:

The master of avoiding awkward questions was Allan Bell. I have only once phoned in Manx Radio, and it was regarding the size of the civil service/government employees and the effective downsizing thereof. As a former UK civil servant I have a fair bit of knowledge about this and was simply offering a suggestion. The boy Bell was quick to intervene and his reply and words went on and on and on. And on. And Stu the presenter allowed him to do so, only chipping in occasionally to keeping the ball rolling. 

Bell used to do this in Tynwald as well.  If you look at the way Tynwald questions were done in his time, the answers were bulked out with long spiels of irrelevant background, read out at length and meaning that question time always over-ran and awkward questions went unanswered.  The one good thing with Quayle was this stopped, probably because he was pretty useless at reading things out from a piece of paper.

[Zarley]

2 hours ago, ADELE said:

Do you honestly and truthfully believe they would let Quirky and the other guy Juan on if there were filters ?     They glide from subject to subject with the greatest of ease with encouragement from Andy.     The producer of the show asks for your name and subject so that Andy and before that Stu can introduce the contributors , e.g. and now Reggie from  Ramsey would like to talk about ……. otherwise the listeners wouldn’t have a clue what was going on.    This conspiracy theory is ridiculous if you are unconvinced ring up Mannin Line tomorrow and see for yourself. 

While I've yet to "phone in", I have often texted in. They certainly DO filter out texted questions or comments they don't like. Whenever I've texted a Q or C that could be construed as controversial (I've never been rude or used profanity) it's been ignored. I've yet to have a non-controversial text ignored.

There's no doubt in my mind they filter out callers with potentially controversial Qs or Cs as well. It just stands to reason and yes, next time I'll gird my loins and call in to see what happens. (I dislike talking on the phone, hence normally texting instead.)