Festival promoter Adrian Buckley has criticised triple j for the way the national youth broadcaster dispenses its marketing budget. Buckley says the station gives an inordinate amount of attention to commercial behemoths like Splendour In The Grass.
In an op-ed for Newcastle Live (via FasterLouder), Buckley, the promoter of events including the Wollombi Music Festival, Buckley says he is no triple j “hater” but has “questions about the influence the station has on the wider music industry”.
In particular, Buckley questions why a public station provides “bankroll blanket promotion” to a festival as big and successful as Splendour In The Grass, which he says “returns massive profits back to the event owners”.
Buckley explains that over the course of seven years running events, he has “basically struggled to get any exposure” for his events on triple j, even when he’s tapped Unearthed winners and “fairly prominent artists on jjj programming” for the lineups.
“The conundrum that is ‘jjj presents’ is probably never so noticeable as when Splendour rolls into town,” Buckley writes. “To put it bluntly Splendour doesn’t need the level of coverage they get, they pretty much sell out year after year, within a very comfortable time frame for the promoters.”
Buckley argues that smaller events, such as his Wollombi Music Festival, rarely get the time of day and that “perhaps some of [triple j’s] huge expenditure could be spread out along a larger base of events”.
However, Buckley concedes that triple j has its own priorities, such as remaining competitive in a crowded marketplace, which he says means smaller events that don’t “hold their market or increase their market share are pretty much left to their own devices”.
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Buckley then quotes from an interview Byron Bay Bluesfest promoter Peter Noble did with FasterLouder, in which Noble likewise questioned why his event, among others, don’t receive attention from triple j despite booking triple j-approved artists.
Noble had previously expressed such sentiments during an appearance at the Face The Music conference in Melbourne, saying, “There are a number of events in Australia that are just based on triple j programming because they know they’re going to get a presents.”
“I say this with respect to Richard Kingsmill and people like that, there’s a whole lot of events with triple j-friendly artists that you’re programming and playing… and it would be really nice if you could jump over their shadow and get behind them as well, rather than events that just do what you do,” he added.
