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The sample for each programme (3AW Neil Mitchell, 2UE John Laws, 2GB Alan Jones, ABC Australia Talks Back) was ideally two weeks, 19-30 April 2004. For reasons beyond our control, however, not all samples are complete. The second week of the Laws tapes, 26-30 April 2005, transpired to be so dominated by the cash-for-comment affair that the content analysis categories would have been irredeemably skewed, and analysis accordingly unproductive. Two days had to be excluded from the fortnight analysed of Australia Talks Back: the tape for 21 April was damaged, and on 30 April the programme was replaced by Australia Talks Books with Romona Koval. And a mismatch between audio tapes and transcripts meant that only one week of Alan Jones could be analysed (much to the relief of the researcher and those within earshot of his office). One additional anomaly is that, for reasons beyond our control, it was impossible to access tapes for Alan Jones in the same period as for the other three programmes, and that it was impossible to access for the Jones period, 13-19 October 2005, the news sources material which informs the analysis of the extent to which the other three programmes draw on the contemporary news agenda.
This last, temporal anomaly of course raises questions about the comparability of the samples we are using. While it is true that this means that Jones was responding to a different news agenda than were the other three programmes, it is also true that the sheer volume of material in talkback – between one and five hours daily, five days a week – means that no analysis of talkback can be definitive; that the findings of the analysis indeed have only indicative status; but, by the same token, that our indications are very considerably more reliably indicative than the impressionistic selectivity of much earlier work on talkback. While the category of analysis most affected by this anomaly is the topics covered, dependent as they substantially are on the current news agenda, our concern with broad categories of content – politics, social issues, crime and so on – reduces the ephemeral historical variations. Our findings on the programmes’ caller constituency and formats are likely to be still less labile. For the distinctive profile of each programme, developed in each case over many years, likely remains sufficiently stable to be upset only by eruptions of news as big and close-to-home as cash-for-comment was for Laws.
In each pair of rows in the following tables, raw figures appear in the upper row, percentages in the lower row. Percentages are rounded to the nearest 1st decimal point; totals may therefore vary one or two decimal points above or below 100%.
Under each of the headings Gender, Age, Party Political Affiliation, Political Position, Fan Call, News Agenda, Topic Initiator, Topic and Caller’s Approach to Topic, callers or their topics were coded once only. Where there was any ambiguity, a single categorisation was made on the basis of the predominant emphasis of the item, eg whether a call was more informational than disputational. The sole exception to this rule is in discussion of the topic “Should a 13 year old be allowed to change sex?”, where two callers identified themselves as transsexual; they are marked as such in the tables with an asterisk.
Notes on CALLER ANALYSIS SUMMARY
Distribution between Host and Callers
This is given in seconds. Timings for the hosts include only their speech during call-in brackets, that is, with callers.
Demographics
Gender and Age were determined by auditory analysis.
Party Political Affiliation is designated only where the caller explicitly states one such.
Political Position
………………………….
Fans
Fan calls are identified by the caller expressing explicit enthusiasm for host or programme. Mere use of terms such as “mate”, “boss” or “Lawsie” was not considered to represent a fan attitude.
More analytical points
Comparing the Mitchell and Laws and Jones figures for Average Length of Calls and Average Number of Callers per Hour might lead readers of the tables to conclude that the two figures are in inverse proportion; that is, the longer the call, the fewer per hour. The Australia Talks Back figures, however, belie this assumption. In arithmetic terms, the multiple of the two figures here is more than twice that for the other 3 programmes. The explanation lies in the host’s more self-effacingly neutral input into discussion, as well as in the freedom from commercials, news breaks, and weather and traffic reports, and in the generally shorter interviews (more often with experts than with the politicians or celebrities found on the other programmes).
Mitchell has a higher ratio of Information to Dis/Agree than does Laws, because he limits opinions to certain topics, he is more scrupulously impartial, including in his interviewing, and he has several breaking stories, with eyewitness reports, eg 29 April, items 10, 11, 14.
Notes on AGENDA ANALYSIS SUMMARY
Topic drawing on News Agenda
This notes the extent to which the topics discussed draw on the recent news agenda set by the following newspapers and television…….
The strikingly high percentage of Mitchell’s topics with no such provenance indicates the degree of his journalistic interest in state and community issues.
Agreement or disagreement with the host of Australia Talks Back is a distinction rendered irrelevant by the careful neutrality of ATB hosts. However, callers’ opinions on the chosen topic are still differentiated from their offering information about it, and from their chatting about something irrelevant to the topic.
Notes on TOPIC CATEGORIES
Items were categorised as instancing one topic only. Thus an Australia Talks Back programme addressing the question “Should Australia boycott the upcoming cricket tour of Zimbabwe?” was categorised under Politics because the emphasis was more on the politics than on the game (11 callers as against 7).
Politics
Includes, eg, PM John Howard discussing the Iraq war, a nurses’ strike in Victoria. Where a discussion overlaps with Social Issues, such as Victorian Government funding for the Geelong by-pass, topic categorisation depends on the degree of emphasis given to the politics of the funding as against the social benefits of improved traffic flows.
Social Issues
Includes, eg, health, sexuality, ethnic affairs, traffic and accidents, unless their manifestations become a crime or politics.
Where a discussion overlaps with Politics, such as superannuation regulations, topic categorisation depends on the degree of emphasis given to the effects on superannuants as against the policies or politics of the funding.
Crime
Includes administration of justice.
Consumer Affairs
Includes, eg, land taxes for mortgagees, transport services, interest rates unless they are politicised or criminalised.
Subsumes discussions of “lifestyle”, eg the virtues of the Prado car.
Entertainment
Includes discussions of media, journalism and culture (eg Jones waxing lyrical about Lady Antonia Fraser in a piece on Pinter’s Nobel Prize…).
Sport
Other
Includes oddballs such as individual success stories, environmental threats such as a plague of locusts, the celebration of Anzac Day.
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