It’s amazing how spontaneous live television can be. Just ask Sunrise’s David ‘Kochie’ Koch, who’s interview with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh yesterday ended in a fantastic idea to organise tradies to help with the reconstruction, dubbed Operation Bounce Back.

But was it as spontaneous as it seemed? One Crikey reader thinks not. If you take a look at the video of the interview from Tuesday morning, it seems a little like Kochie’s line of questioning is leading up to his epiphany and Bligh seems like she’s been ambushed or hesitant to reject any kind of help.

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According to Whois, a domain registry and search site, www.operationbounceback.org.au was registered on the 17th of January at 7.07 am, a day before Kochie told Bligh that his Sunrise “web geeks” could get something up. So was this interview a place for Kochie to get support from the Premier and amp up Sunrise’s compassion ratings, or just coincidence?

Whether a stunt or not, one must also ask if Bligh was in on it from the start.

Later that morning, Sunrise newsreader Samantha Armytage tells the audience of a planned announcement by the Premier and that it is a joint venture:

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While helping out with the flood clean up isn’t something Crikey wants to discourage, shouldn’t Anna Bligh and Sunrise look to organisations such as Volunteering Queensland, who are already involved in recruiting volunteers, rather than a television program?

Either Bligh prefers Sunrise to Channel Nine’s Today, or Sunrise needs to look up the dictionary definition for ‘announced’. — Crikey intern Emma Buckley Lennox