Stephen Quartermain: Why news is a different ball game now

Sometimes, the younger reporters at Ten News First Melbourne ask sports presenter Stephen Quartermain to regale them with stories from ye olden days of TV and radio news.

Typewriters, Teletext machines, International Roast instant coffee, overflowing ashtrays, cigarette smoke spiralling up to the ceiling … you get the general drift.

“They laugh,” says Quarters, as he’s universally known. “But they’re also mortified at what used to go on. People were smoking on TV sets.”

Back in the day, it was rumoured there was the odd newsreader who enjoyed a ‘beverage’ during the bulletin.

“I mean, you wouldn’t dream of doing it now. You’d be marched out in seconds,” says Quarters on the latest episode of the Food Bytes podcast, which drops today.

It’s a timely chat, given the continued belt-tightening and recent redundancies in news and programming at some of the major radio networks.

News, says Quarters, is a totally different beast these days.

“Like most industries, things are pretty tight and staff numbers are down.”

“But it’s still my life. I’m a journalist first. I still love it. I still love every day. Every day’s the same, but every day’s different.”

Quarters recently returned to the commentary box for SEN’s Hawks Radio, spearheading the parochial and biased AFL broadcast, as his beloved footy team continues its march towards the premiership.

Joined by fellow Hawks tragic and radio host Anthony ‘Lehmo’ Lehmann, Quarters excitedly promised fans the most biased call in Australian sporting history.

“I did it for the first time against Carlton a few weeks ago and – you might laugh at this – it was very, very difficult to be biased. It really was,” says Quarters.

“Now, some people might say it’s no different than when I used to call games, but because you’re a professional and you’ve been doing it for 25 years, it was really weird to try to be biased!”

“You always try to be subjective and balanced, but I warmed into it, with Lehmo by my side.”

And, with Hawthorn up against the Western Bulldogs in Friday night’s elimination final on the hallowed MCG turf, Quarters will be back behind the radio mic again, doing what he loves.

Quarters began his AFL radio commentary career at Melbourne AM station Magic in 1995, before joining Triple M – where he spent well over a decade – and then 3AW.

Come December, he’ll have chalked up 40 years at Channel Ten.

“Going back to the eighties and nineties, boy, did we have the best of the period, when money wasn’t really an object and perhaps you could be a bit – how should I put this? – a bit looser in the newsroom. Times have changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.”

“I think the glory days in that respect are gone … but it’s still a great job and a great career. I still get a buzz.”

Quarters marvels at the difference now in terms of how news is gathered.

“Social media has changed it 100%. It’s very different to when I started. In fact, when I started at the ABC, I was shooting news stories on film! That’s how old I am.”

“There were no such things and computers or mobile phones or internet, so you had to do it the old-fashioned way.”

“These days, for example, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump … we were looking at it live. It was all over X and Instagram and all over TikTok within a minute.”

“This is the way the world has changed. Anywhere in the world, you can have access to (news) within sixty seconds, whereas sometimes it used to take not only hours, but days.”

“To be honest, I would get 80 percent of my news now – as in breaking news and giving myself a head start in the newsroom – from X.”

“I guess the youngies take it for granted.”