4ZZZ announcer warned to play it safe

4ZZZ management has not seen fit to discipline the young announcer who we reported last week as back announcing a set of songs by saying “That was so good, I feel like f…ing someone’s brains out or smoking a load of weed.” Instead she’s been warned about the dangers of being a female alone in the studio during a mid-dawn shift.

A member of 4ZZZ’s management team, Michelle Brown, says that apart from a raft of standards found in the Community Broadcasting Codes of Practice, “Our own policy requires our announcers to give a language and concept warning at appropriate times, generally between 6am and 10pm when children may be listening.

 “As the announcer wasn’t intentionally being offensive, it was before 6am, the drug mention was not so much presenting use as ‘desirable’ and there were no complaints by listeners, we will not breach the announcer, however due to the nature of the time and what was said, a warning about safety is to be issued as she is a young female announcer alone at the station during late night and early hours of the morning.” 

While 4ZZZ has no problem with what their announcer said, they are less than pleased that a recording of the incident was made by an unidentified station. Says Ms Brown, “Basically this was just a commercial radio station getting a kick out of something they thought was ‘wrong’ and sharing it around to their staff etc, which would have been the case for the station in particular, however as I’m sure you are aware, the difference between commercial and community radio is huge.”