Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade. Today: Why the Ark Barker breastfeeding mum controversy was perfect news fodder; and the Unmade Index’s recovery immediately runs out of steam.
If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:
Member-only pricing for our HumAIn (May 28) and REmade (October 1) conferences;
A complimentary invitation to Unmade’s Compass event (November);
Member-only content and our paywalled archives;
Your own copy of Media Unmade
Sunny state
Tim Burrowes writes:
As I mentioned on Monday, I’m heading for Queensland next week, and I’d love to catch up with anyone in the industry who’s around. I’ll be in Brisbane all day on Tuesday April 30. And I’ll be up in Port Douglas to speak at the Local & Independent News Association Summit on Wednesday and Thursday May 1 and 2.
The calendar is almost full for my day in Brissie, but with a bit of juggling I can get in another meeting or two. If you’d like to grab a coffee, please email me at tim@unmade.media
Arji Bargy: The recipe for a viral story
Sometimes, a news story is suddenly everywhere.
Over the last 48 hours, it’s been the turn of comedian Arj Barker.
Since Monday morning when The Age’s arts editor Elizabeth Flux broke the story of the standup comic’s unfortunate interaction with audience member, it’s been hard to find a TV news program, radio show, or news website which hasn’t covered it.
You may vaguely know Barker as that bloke who was in some of the Flight of the Conchords TV series, or, if you’re not into live comedy, you may never have heard of him at all. While he’s American, he performs in Australia a lot, but has never previously achieved the level of attention he’s experienced this week.
The story began on Saturday night, when Barker was performing as part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
Somewhere in the audience was mum Trish Faranda who had brought along her seven month old baby Clara. As the baby began to make noise, Barker asked her to leave.
Within hours, she was talking to The Age, and then everybody else.
So what were the recipe ingrediants that made this such a big story?
Parenting: News stories that go off are often those where every viewer, listener or reader will have a different point of view. Parenting is one of those topics.
The incident encapsulated parents stuck at home wanting their old lives back; the question of when one person’s right to enjoy their night overrides somebody else’s; and the basic debate of whether it’s a sensible idea to take a baby to a live show limited to over-15s only.
Performance: There’s a technical aspect, and often misunderstanding, about what comedians actually do in a live show.
While you get one-offs like Ross Noble who can be entirely in the moment, with every night’s performance unique to the room, most great comedians sound like they’re telling a story for the first time while in reality, the rhythm of every joke and punchline has been structured.
Hecklers can ruin that flow, although comedians learn to take control and incorporate them into the show. But in reality, that’s a diversion from the story they’re trying to tell ands the jokes they’re trying to land. A noisy baby potentially shifts the focus at the key moment.
Highbrow versus lowbrow: This is not an exclusively tabloid story. It’s one that has generated opinion across classes, and coverage in all types of media.
Points of contention: Every consumer of the news story will have their own picture in their mind about how much noise and distraction the baby was causing, and how much that would have been taking the rest of the audience out of their moment.
The fact that the baby’s mother said she was breast feeding created a second level to the story with the implication - without quite saying it - that this might have been the cause of her expulsion. Barker’s protests that, in the spotlight, you can barely make out silhouettes in the audience added to the side debate.
Combatants ready for the spotlight: The baby’s mother ran towards the microphones, and Barker was not far behind. Both of them seemed to enjoy the attention. They made themselves fully available, and immediately, while the story was hot.
What the baby’s mother will get from the attention is harder to tell, but for Barker the timing is wonderful. He’s about to embark on a lengthy 44-night tour of some of Australia’s premiere third and fourth tier comedy venues. (Hello, Manning Entertainment Centre, Taree).
Irony gave the controversy a rocket boost just as it was beginning to calm down. One minute into her live interview with The Project on Monday night, Ms Faranda decided that her baby needed to be immediately breastfed; and within two-and-a-half minutes, host Sarah Harris was politely suggesting that perhaps Clara’s dad (who doesn;t seem to have experienced much of the spotlight) could hold her for a minute or two.
Those in the babies-are-noisy-and-distracting camp had just had their views confirmed.
Comeuppance: Then the next morning, just when Barker seemed to be winning the PR battle, he blundered during his on air chat with 2Day FM’s Erin Molan. After the presenter asked him to respond, he retorted, patronisingly “I know how a conversation works”.
Molan, correctly, took offence, and, still steaming, reminded him that he had been rude to her in previous encounters on the show. Barker was left lamely apologising.
It’s been the perfect, two day news story. Hopefully it will now disappear as quickly as it arrived.
Unmade Index flat after Monday’s surge
Monday’s recovery failed to make it into a second day with the Unmade Index running out of steam on Tuesday, to finish flat on 536.4 points, a shift of just 0.04% after the previous day’s big bounce.
A slump in IVE Group (down 1.9%) and another improvement for Seven West Media (up 2.38%) saw the two companies shift places again in the ranking of relative market capitalisations. With a market cap of $322m, SWM is once again Australia’s fifth largest locally listed media stock.
Time to leave you to your Wednesday. We’ll be taking a break for Anzac Day tomorrow, and unless something big happens, we won’t be publishing on Friday either. I’ll be back on Saturday with Best of the Week.
Have a great day.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
Jesus wept! That story was so inconsequential and irrelevant in the context of the current news cycle either locally or elsewhere, it's hard to believe anybody went there, incl you, Tim.