As well as Courtney Barnett and Tame Impala winning pretty much everything, the other big talking point about this year’s ARIA Awards was Matt Okine and his hilarious Drake outfit truth bomb about the award show’s lack of female representation.
The triple j presenter opened up a can of pro-equality whoop-ass during his acceptance speech for the ‘Best Comedy Release’ gong, calling out the ARIAs for their lack of female performers and nominees.
To sum up, it was a bit of a legend move and got everyone’s gums flapping across social media land.
So, naturally, when Ten skipped over Okine’s provocative speech during their official ARIAs broadcast, plenty of internet residents cried foul.
Observe:
Looks like the telecast cut-out the 'controversial' @mattokine speech… Poor form. #ARIAs
— Leon Sjogren (Fifi, Fev & Nick – Fox FM) (@Leonsjogren) November 26, 2015
https://twitter.com/siilvp/status/669837032835805185
Matt Okine says after calling out lack of females "if I don't get invited back to the #ARIAs that's fine". Wonder if that will make it to TV
— Cameron Adams (@cameron_adams) November 26, 2015
"Yeah let's cut out the only intelligent thing anyone's gonna say all night out of the broadcast"-#ARIAs @mattokine https://t.co/s1elQL09lJ
— Dave (@davegrohlbloom) November 26, 2015
But, turns out, there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for why the ARIAs went full Kanye West on Okine’s ‘controversial’ pep talk.
As an official spokesperson explained to Pedestrian TV, regardless of what Okine did or didn’t say, his speech was never scheduled to air in the first place:
“Best Comedy Release was never scheduled to be part of the broadcast,” the spokesperson confirmed. “There are eight ARIA Awards in total that don’t make it to the broadcast because of time restrictions, however each of these off-air awards are posted on the night to ARIA’s official social media accounts to ensure all Australians can view the acceptance speeches in their entirety.”
And you can’t call bullshit on that. The evidence is below.
Meanwhile, you can check out the full list of winners from the 2015 ARIA Awards here or our pics for the top five best ARIA performances here.
Winner: Best Comedy: @mattokine – Live At The Enmore Theatre #ARIAs https://t.co/Z0aIWS83d7
— ARIA (@ARIA_Official) November 26, 2015
