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Is this the beginning of a worldwide trend? Australian television awards show the Logies has banned Twitter from the event.
Invitations from Logies organiser TV Week, owed by ACP Magazines, said mobile phones won’t be permitted, and later ACP publisher Peter Holder defended the ban as a means to protect the online voting system after last year Dani Minogue accidentally spilled the beans early with a tweet saying Home and Away star Ray Meager had won the Gold Logie.
“Criticising the Logies may fill air time and space on a page, but we’ve recognised historical faults in the system and have gone to considerable lengths over the last few years, and this year in particular, to address them,” Holder said.
However, it’s also to prevent disasters – such as comedian Catherine Deveny’s 2010 twitter-inspired downfall – detracting from the event, and stop the high level of Logies-criticism.
Deveny was sacked from The Age newspaper after she tweeted her hope that 11-year-old Bindi Irwin, daughter of Crocodile Hunter star Steve Irwin, “gets laid” and Rove McManus’s wife Tasma “didn’t die too”, following the 206 death of his first wife Belinda Emmett of cancer.
A Logies spokeswoman said the organisation wouldn’t go as far as searching bags and hoped guests would “observe that request”.
The Logies has been struggling with falling viewer numbers for years, and the twitter ban has been criticized as another reason to turn younger people off watching and an example of how out of touch the television station Seven Network is with viewers.
Celebrities have voiced their displeasure on Twitter, saying they won’t be leaving their mobiles at home.
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