It's no secret that I'm not a big fan of Kyle Sandilands, but I was suprised to read this story in the Herald Sun. Apparently Sandilands accepted free tickets worth $500 to The Boy From Oz then failed to turn up. Now, if the story ended there, it wouldn't be so bad - after all, I can imagine that circumstances might prevent someone from going to the theatre. But there's more. Not only did he not apologise, he apparently went on air the next morning "almost boasting about being invited and not bothering to go". The fact of the matter is that "free" tickets have to be paid for somewhere along the line. The costs of putting on a show are enormous and the financial risks for producers are many.

This morning on 612 ABC, Spencer Howson and I spoke about my radical idea that entry to the Ekka ought to be free, and about the shows The Woman in Black (which opened last night at the QPAC Playhouse) and Keating!.

I may escape going to the Ekka this year. If I do, I know that I won't have missed a thing. Now that doesn't mean I'm anti-Ekka, because it is a Brisbane institution. I just think the entertainment mix could be given a bigger shake from one year to the next, and I think the organisers have to acknowledge that the expense of it all can be a problem for families on lower incomes. I know the RNA struggles, but the entry fee really should be a little lower - or free, even - and efforts should be made to ensure the prices charged by food vendors are closer to those in the city than those at the airport.

Who owns music posted at web community sites? That's a question singer-songwriter-activist Billy Bragg has been asking. In this Media Guardian story Bragg praises My Space for changing its terms to respect artists' rights but questions Bebo's terms and conditions.

I've just seen Keating! and I am impressed. The folks at the Brisbane Powerhouse have had to add an extra show because of overwhelming demand for this amusing musical about the prime minister Australia had to have. I especially liked the scenes with Gareth Evans and Cheryl Kernot, and the Alexander Downer segment with its nod to The Rocky Horror Show. See it if you can.

Talking about radio ratings made me think of Rob Duckworth, who used to host breakfast on Brisbane's Triple M in the early 1990s. Back then, Duckworth and on-air partner Dave Gibson achieved ratings that would have made them No.1 these days, but they got sacked anyway. I'm pleased to report that Duckworth, with whom I once shared a rather exciting trip to the Beenleigh Tavern to see Jimmy Barnes, is back on Triple M in Sydney. Here's his profile.

So what's the upshot of yesterday's radio ratings?
+ Nova 106.9 continues its stranglehold on the youger audience once "owned" by B105, although B105 did register some small improvement in audience share and has respectable figures when it comes to cumulative audience. Lots of people are sampling, but they're not sticking around - suggesting, perhaps, that the music is right but the other content isn't?
+ 97.3FM isn't hitting the dizzy heights, but it is scoring where it counts in commercial radio - with the grocery buyers that advertisers need to target.
+ Talk is doing well for 4BC, which increased its audience across the day, but not so well for 612ABC, which dropped in every shift.
+ Despite it being a very "newsy" period, both locally with the water crisis and internationally, Brisbane listeners aren't turning to the ABC for their information. (News Radio actually had small falls.)

The manipulation of photographs has been an issue as long as there have been photographs. This week, news agency Reuters announced it was deleting all the pictures in its database by a particular Lebanon-based photographer when it was discovered that some of his images had been manipulated with the editing software Photoshop. As Media Guardian reports, the photographer allegedly added smoke to one photo and increased the number of flares being dropped from a plane in another picture. This is a serious issue in news photography, where people have a right to expect that what they see in the picture is what really happened. I once went to a seminar when an expert said it was ethical to change a photo if the image was one that "could have been taken". For example, if you were shooting through a crowd where people were constantly moving in and out of frame, you could remove somebody's head from the foreground of one picture and insert what was behind it from another picture, as long as the resulting image truly represented what was happening. Others take a much harder line, saying you can only publish what you've actually photographed. Where does that leave cropping then? There is an infamous, real photograph of the broadcaster Alan Jones with his head obscuring the letter O on a banner which, I believe, reads "Country". The last two letters of the word either were not in the original frame or had been cropped out subsequently. The resulting photograph associates a four-letter word with Mr Jones's image. Is that acceptable or not?

Nova 106.9 has convincingly won the Brisbane radio ratings, both in the overall results and the important breakfast shift. Triple M was second overall and in breakfast, with 4BC third in breakfast but fourth overall. 973FM came third overall and fifth in breakfast, while 612ABC was fourth in breakfast. The biggest gains overall were made by 4BC and 4BH and in breakfast, 4BC and Nova. Onetime market leader B105 was equal fifth overall and, despite a marginal gain, seventh in breakfast. In the survey of grocery buyers, 97.3FM was the leading station.

The mainland capital-city radio ratings will be released today, and the Brisbane results promise to be interesting. Triple M and Nova 106.9 will most likely be neck-and-neck for the top spot overall and in breakfast, but it will be the fate of B105 that's most interesting. The station has struggled to find a new identity since the departure of Jamie Dunn and the planned resurgence of the Triple M brand (when some programming genius discovered that not everybody is aged under 25). More later today.

The British version of Big Brother may not have had a trukey-slapping incident like its Australian cousin, but it's still generating a fair number of complaints. No, not about naughty behaviour, but about the decision to bring back a housemate who was evicted. Apparently more than 1000 people complained; everyone else has a life to worry about.

You know you're getting old when ... Barry Manilow has hip surgery. Seems he hasn't been hip for years.

Tom Cruise is, according to this article in The Australian today by John Harlow, officially unemployed. His contract with Paramount Pictures has not been renewed, and is unlikely to be renewed until he agrees to a substantial pay cut. It is, Harlow says, the latest sign of a struggle between actors and studios that dates back to Charlie Chaplin's decision to set up his own studio in 1919. Harlow writes: "Studios are feeling more bullish because many northern summer hits, from Cars to Superman Returns, have been driven by strong scripts and computer effects rather than celebrities." I would add that many good films would have succeeded without their big-name stars but few films succeed despite a star who puts in a bad performance.

The death overnight of former National Party powerbroker Sir Robert Sparkes reminds me of a pivotal incident in my awakening to political realities. Back in my days as a reporter for The Queensland Graingrower newspaper, I was assigned to interview a bloke who lived near Dalby at a time when Sir Robert was not just the president of the Nationals but chairman (mayor) of Wambo Shire. Unsure of where my man lived along a very long country road, I asked directions from a local. "You can't miss it," he said. "He lives just opposite Sir Robert Sparkes's spread." "Where's that?" I asked. "Where the bitumen ends," came the reply.

Congratulations to the Nova 106.9 promotions team. They've sent me the first Christmas card of the year. Or perhaps it's the last Christmas card of last year ...

It must be a slow news day. According to this SMH report, actress Scarlett Johansson might be coming to Australia to promote her latest film Black Dahlia. The report says: "If Johansson agrees to the visit, she is likely to attend a Sydney premiere for the film, with the possibility of a similar event in Melbourne." So, Brisbane misses out again. Maybe we should have had a star of Johansson's status at the BIFF opening.
PS: We can add Al Gore to the list of people who are coming to Australia, but not to Brisbane. It was announced this morning that the former US Vice President will be here appearing down south in support of his doco, An Inconvenient Truth.

Channel 10 has axed its "reality" show Yasmin's Getting Married after just a week on air. The troubled program - original participant Rene dropped out when she found her ideal man without anyone's help - was to have run in a nightly "strip" format for nine weeks. Instead, in the short term, we'll be getting the animated series Futurama at 7pm. The good news for Yasmin Dale is that when she does find Mr Right, Ten will pay for her wedding.
PS: I wonder whether B105's similar stunt involving Gabby Milgate was a ratings fizzle, too? The radio ratings are out on Tuesday.

In a world that is in chaos politically, socially and environmentally, how can the human race sustain another 100 years? It's an intriguing question, and it was asked online by one of the most brilliant minds in history, Professor Stephen Hawking. Unfortunately, he doesn't know the answer.

Can't get enough of Walking With Dinosaurs? Read my story from today's Sunday Mail, and see more pictures of the launch of the live show, here.

Thanks to Brenden Wood from 4KQ, I've been able to post audio of John Knox's farewell speech, plus a tribute version of the song Big John played on air yesterday.