Last month saw triple j cop a bit of heat from The Australian, who took our national youth broadcaster to task for basically ruining the country. It’s a lofty accusation, but one it defended in a paranoid, conspiratorial manner that made triple j sound like the Illuminati.
In the view of Chris Mitchell, the scribe who wrote that particular op-ed, triple j has infiltrated the Australian media and pushed its leftist agenda in the hopes of creating a world where public opinion and policy isn’t controlled by straight, white men.
Surprise, surprise, News Corp is now back on the triple j hate train. Except this time they’re not hitting out at the station for some bizarre leftist conspiracy that sounds like something you’d hear during one of Alex Jones’s rants.
Instead, they’re actually hitting out at the programming. In a new op-ed bemoaning the current state of radio in Australia (can’t say we don’t agree with News Corp there, frankly), News.com.au accuse triple j’s programming of swinging between “bland” and “extremely annoying”.
“Hit and Nova can usually be found playing the exact same Justin Bieber song at the exact same time,” they write, “and down the “indie” end of the FM band, Triple J are either playing something bland (a 16-year-old girl warbling like Sarah Blasko, who hasn’t bothered to write a chorus) or extremely annoying (Death Metal at lunchtime? Really?).”
The op-ed actually goes on to make some fairly incisive points about the state of Australian radio. Namely that streaming and piracy have changed the music industry landscape so much that it’s made commercial radio more repetitive and less likely to experiment than ever before.
“The alternative is Triple J,” it continues, “which isn’t driven by statistics at all. Instead, it is picked by a small group, insulated from popular opinion. Much of the time, this is fantastic: there’s a station which will broadcast interesting, brave new music.”
Agreed. But then it goes into a simplistic and wholly unfair view of our national youth broadcaster.
“The rest of the time, it’s unlistenable: e.g. Minimalist Electro and Australian Hip Hop (with notable exceptions for SA’s Tkay, Allday, and Dialect).” Definitely have to take them to task there, as we’ve written extensively about the golden age Aussie hip-hop is currently in.
Thankfully, the piece doesn’t have the same degree of ‘querulous Baby Boomer kvetching about today’s youth’ as The Australian’s op-ed (partly because it was written by a self-described millennial) so regardless of what you think of the j, you can check it out via News.com.au.
