Having seen the start of all three concerts it is funny how much the same they are every night; everything from the ‘informal chatter’ and audience interaction is scripted and placed in perfect sync. For example the below video is the first six minutes of Saturday night’s concert, when Rieu speaks to the audience it is exactly the same word for word as the previous two nights.

Additionally a lot if not just about all artists in this sort of setting like to pick on people who turn up late and Rieu was no exception, after the second song he would pick on whom ever it was that was walking in late, as someone is always bound to be late. He would say to them “you are late”, and added “we have come all the way from Holland and we are still on time”. Saturday night one woman couldn’t find a seat near the stage so Rieu offered her one of his orchestra members chairs, she wouldn’t take it so he made another audience member come up and take it for her.

Below are some images I took of the stage while on the Telstra Dome arena, it’s not everyday you get to go on the actual surface so that was a nice little experience in itself. (click on any of the images to enlarge them)

Another privilege of working at the Telstra Dome is that I managed to have a look ‘backstage’ both before anyone had arrived and also during the performance, below as you can see it shows all of the staircases used by the performers that the Viennese Debutantes use to make their entrance to the stage. As well as this take a look at the setting of the whole stadium before people arrive from a nice vantage point.

Additionally here are some images of backstage while the performance was underway.

Below as promised a look at how the car park was reinforced because of the stage, nothing impressive to look at but here it is none the less.

For Andre Rieu it is now off to Adelaide, and I hope this provided a little insight into what goes on when no one is around.

For a change it was nice to be serving and older crowd, a lot nicer than serving toothless footy bogans every week, don’t get me wrong I love my footy but there are some feral’s out there lets face it. What will be amusing next year is watching members of the respective cheer squads try to pronounce the new name of the stadium Etihad Stadium, a tongue twister for some no doubt.

An enormous effort went into constructing the set which is the main talking point of most, even the Telstra Dome car park had to be re enforced to hold the 7 tonne stage costing 5.6 million dollars.

The show kicked off at 8pm but before that all afternoon Rieu and his entourage were practicing to an empty stadium to get some last minute practice. As the show started Rieu walked down the centre of the crowd who were sitting on the Telstra Dome surface with everyone up on their feet cheering him, I couldn’t help laughing at the thought of someone breaking their hip while cheering.

As he was walking down towards the stage music was playing, when he and his cast arrived at the stage they started to play along with that same music, sounding exactly the same so he was clearly miming the first song anyway.

Rieu has two more shows in Melbourne, one tonight and one tomorrow night with conformation he will return with his show next year sometime. Meanwhile Foxtel subscribers can watch this Saturday night concert on Main Event for $24.95, or as I understand tickets can still be purchased but they would be for the grand stand and believe me with my eagle eye vision I even had trouble seeing the stage so imaging those without that luxury.

Below are some photos of the stage before people had arrived and at the beginning of the show, I hope to be able to add some more here soon and one of the car park below.

With Rieu in the country and his enormous popularity the television networks have gone into overdrive with the reports and cross promotion, in particular the Nine Network. Monday morning a free concert was held at Melbourne’s Federation Square for the Today show, as well as this Nine News in particular featured a story about the composer on tonight’s bulletin.

André Rieu on Nine News Melbourne…

Subscribers of pay TV through Foxtel, Austar and Optus are able to watch Saturday night’s concert live from Melbourne on pay per view channel Main Event. It will set you back $24.95 to view the concert, but if you ask me you are better off waiting for the DVD to come out.

Over the next three night’s I will attempt to get some photos of the stage at Telstra Dome as well as I’m hoping to get a look at the reinforcement of the car park as seen in the story above, and will post my findings when I can.

Unfortunately the results have shown that we are far less inclined to support locally made drama which is very expensive for the networks to make, meaning it has a bigger risk attached. Drama has found its way to the bottom of a list of first-release broadcast hours; of course sport is on the top accounting for 22,200 hours in the 2006 to 2007 period.

The study by the ABS shows that the average production cost of sport is just $12,000 per hour (excluding the fees paid for the right to telecast), with News and Current Affairs averaging a cost of $20,000 and Drama a whopping $341,000 per hour.

While the figure of $341,000 per hour for Drama is shown in the study, hit dramas such as Sea Patrol and Underbelly actually cost an average between $800,000 to $1 million per episode for the Nine Network.

The survey found that Sport, News, current affairs, light entertainment and variety accounted for around about three quarters of the total TV production costs in 2006-2007.

Source:

Today at 12:30pm was the next major debate in the election campaign, this time it was Peter Costello up against the man who want’s his job Wayne Swan. The debate was held at The National Press Club and was broadcast by The ABC who invited other networks to take their feed of which the Nine Network and Sky News took up.

Nine’s coverage was again presented by 60 minutes and hosted by Ray Martin who had with him an audience of 50 people who would control the worm.

After a brief introduction it was time for the debate from The National Press Club, and their was a little trouble getting things underway when trying to flip the coin. The coin fell under the desk and it couldn’t be found.

The it was time to get the opening statement out of the way and Wayne Swan was first man off the mark followed by Peter Costello.

After the opening statement it was time to take questions from journalists…

At the end it was back to Ray to wrap things up and once again their was a phone poll where you can vote to say who won the debate, results will be shown tonight in A Current Affair.

Technorati tags: Nine Network, Channel Nine, 60 Minutes, Ray Martin, Election 2007

Sunday October 21st was the day where John Howard and Kevin Rudd went head to head in the first and most likely last election debate. The debate was shown live on the ABC, Nine Network and Sky News on Foxtel. In an exceptional situation, Nine’s feed was cut by the National Press Club and then there back-up feed was also disconnected as the press club did not want Nine to show ‘the worm’ during the telecast.

Nine’s coverage was hosted by Ray Martin who explained later on that the network then had to resort to taking the live feed from Sky News to continue the telecast. Below is a video I put on YouTube showing when the feed was cut and switched to Sky News, also notice the delayed reaction of the 60 Minutes watermark to return.

Also you will see below that the Sky News graphics were visible at times…

Now back to the debate… It was hosted by David Speers from Sky News who was also joined by a panel of five journalists to ask the questions, which included the Nine Networks Laurie Oaks.

At the end of Nine’s telecast Ray invited viewers to participate in a phone poll, and when this was shown it just reminded me of people voting on Big Brother and I wasn’t the only one who thought this. On Triple M’s Get This with Tony Martin and Ed Kavalee they had Ray reading out the numbers with the Big Brother theme playing in the background which I thought was hilarious.

Results were shown on A Current Affair…

Technorati tags: Channel Nine, Nine Network, 60 Minutes, Ray Martin, Election 2007

Only recently the Seven Network was spruiking how great their coverage will be for the upcoming 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, only to just learn now that they have lost the right to broadcast the games for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games and the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games.

Arch rival the Nine Network partnered with pay television operator Foxtel have secured the rights to the games, promising to have the most comprehensive coverage ever seen on Australian Television. Nine CEO David Gyngell said that this will enable Nine to take another step towards reclaiming its crown as Australia’s number one television channel.

“We believe the London Olympics will be a great event - London is a solid cultural fit with our viewing audiences and will achieve strong ratings particularly with the historical links in sporting and cultural terms between Australia and the United Kingdom,” he said.

Foxtel is promising outstanding coverage also with extra channels to complement…

“Not only will FOXTEL provide dedicated extra channels, we will broadcast many elements of our coverage in high definition, which together with the FOXTEL iQ disc drive set-top units, FOXTEL Mobile and Broadband will give our subscribers the ultimate control, choice and personalisation of how they watch the Olympics,” he said.

Source: Click Here…

Technorati tags: Seven Network, Channel Seven, Seven Sport, Nine Network, Channel Nine, Wide World of Sports, Foxtel, Fox Sports, 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, 2012 London Summer Olympic Games, Olympic Games, IOC, Australian Television