Business of Media
Government to pursue tech giants for social harm
The Albanese government has escalated its war with the tech giants, promising to hold them responsible if Australians suffer harm, reports The AFR’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
In a speech at The Sydney Institute on Wednesday night, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the government would legislate a “digital duty of care” that placed responsibility for keeping Australians safe online onto the tech companies. The move would be in addition to banning people aged under 16 from using social media and YouTube.
“Where platforms seriously and systemically breach their duty of care we will ensure the regulator can draw on strong penalty arrangements,” Rowland said.
This means Facebook could be taken to court for breaching its duty of care to users if someone livestreams a mass shooting, as a far-right terrorist did during the 2019 tragedy in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Optus’ new chief executive vows to get back to basics to rebuild customers’ trust
Optus’ new chief executive, Stephen Rue, vows to take the nation’s second biggest telco back to basics as he works to rebuild customer trust after two crisis-ridden years, reports The Australian’s Jared Lynch.
In his first interview as CEO, Rue, has left the door open to a strategic reset but wants to “test” his thinking, listening to customers, regulators and staff before making wholesale changes – which could include more redundancies.
Optus has shed hundreds of staff – axing its entire smart home device installation unit – as it reeled from 2022’s cyber attack and last year’s nationwide outage which cut off almost 10 million Australians and ultimately led to former chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s resignation.
News Brands
Second Nine news executive leaves in wake of cultural review
Nine’s Sydney news boss is leaving the business, making him the second major city news director to leave the company just weeks after the findings of a comprehensive review of the culture at the media conglomerate were made public, reports Nine Publishing’s Calum Jaspan.
Simon Hobbs, who has overseen Nine’s Sydney newsroom for 12 years, will leave on Friday. Hobbs’ deputy, Margie McLew, has assumed his role and responsibilities on an interim basis, effective immediately.
The news comes just days after Nine’s top Queensland news executive, Amanda Paterson, also left the business.
In separate emails to staff, Nine’s director of news, Fiona Dear, provided no explanation for either executive’s departure. Both exits follow last month’s publication of the bombshell review of Nine’s workplace culture, sparked by the departure of Dear’s predecessor, Darren Wick, this year.
Trump picks Pete Hegseth, a veteran and Fox News host, for defence secretary
President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday chose Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host and veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to be his next defence secretary, elevating a television ally to run the Pentagon and lead 1.3 million active-duty troops, reports The New York Times.
The choice of Hegseth was outside the norm of the traditional defence secretary. But he was a dedicated supporter of Trump during his first term, defending his interactions with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, embracing his “America First” agenda of trying to withdraw U.S. troops from abroad and energetically taking up the cause of combat veterans accused of war crimes.
Hegseth is a co-host of Fox & Friends. He joined the network as a contributor in 2014 and has been the host of Fox’s New Year’s coverage for years.
Andrew Bolt on Jamie Oliver children’s book: ‘What woke impertinence’
It’s astonishing that an author is now expected to consult race groups before writing even a children’s book to see what he’s allowed to say, reports News Corp columnist Andrew Bolt.
What woke impertinence. Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Commission now wants to drag in celebrity chef Jamie Oliver to tell him how to write about Aborigines.
Oliver has offended this Orwellian commission – a government-appointed Aboriginal body with the power to summon witnesses – by writing Billy and the Epic Escape, an adventure story for children, with a woo-woo message about keeping the world in balance.
It’s set mainly in Britain, but in one chapter Oliver writes about the abduction of an Aboriginal girl living in Alice Springs with a foster family.
Shock! The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Corporation demanded the book be banned, claiming it somehow contributed to the “erasure, trivialisation, and stereotyping of First Nations peoples and experiences”.
‘Go to hell’: Project 2025 chief kicks Guardian reporter out of New York book event
Kevin Roberts, the head of the influential rightwing thinktank Heritage Foundation, told a Guardian reporter to “go to hell” at the launch of Roberts’s new book on Tuesday night, then threw the reporter out of the venue, apparently in response to reporting on the organization, reports the news brand.
The Guardian was invited last week to Roberts’s book events in New York and Washington DC. They were billed as an opportunity to celebrate Dawn’s Early Light: Taking Back Washington to Save America – Roberts’s new book, which features a foreword by vice president-elect JD Vance.
Approached by the Guardian, a staff member at the Heritage Foundation said Roberts would be available for a brief interview. The Guardian waited patiently before being introduced to Roberts, who was tidily dressed in a suit, tie and cowboy boots.
“You’ve got two minutes with our best friend Adam from The Guardian,” the Heritage Foundation employee told Roberts.
Guardian will no longer post on Elon Musk’s X from its official accounts
The Guardian has announced it will no longer post content on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, from its official accounts.
In an announcement to readers, the news organisation said it considered the benefits of being on the platform formerly called Twitter were now outweighed by the negatives, citing the “often disturbing content” found on it.
“We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X,” the Guardian said.
Responding to the announcement, Musk posted on X that the Guardian was “irrelevant” and a “laboriously vile propaganda machine”.
Television
ABC studios rock to Countdown anniversary
The walls of ABC studios were shaking once again and (ageing) pop devotees were cheering for Daryl Braithwaite when Countdown 50 Years On was filmed in Southbank last night. Joining them was TV Tonight’s David Knox.
It may not have been the original Ripponlea studios but none of the audience, many of whom had dressed for the occasion, seemed to mind. Instead it was a party atmosphere.
While some were privately happy for the few available seats, others were grooving on the studio floor, hands in the air and swaying to the nostalgia of it all.
Countdown 50 Years On, marking 50 years since the iconic show ignited a generation of pop fans across the country, lured original acts – and crew – as well current acts reimagining classic hits.
Without giving too much away, the special hosted by Myf Warhurst and Tony Armstrong opened with a medley of memorable hits by Ross Wilson, Kate Ceberano, Grace Knight, Joe Camilleri and Daryl Braithwaite.
Do yourself a favour…
Countdown 50 Years On – 7.30pm Saturday 16 November on ABC.
Could Countdown be reborn on the ABC?
“We’ve been able to uncover [previously unseen] moments from all eras but particularly from the early years when Countdown was in its formative stage,” says ABC executive producer Cathie Scott about the ABC TV special Countdown 50 Years On screening on Saturday night. It’s well known that scores of episodes were erased by the ABC in the ’70s and early ’80s, but the archive contains around 480 of the 580 episodes, she says. Recovery of the lost hundred from other sources is ongoing, reports Nine Publishing’s Michael Dwyer.
“Countdown 50 Years On will focus on what made Countdown the cultural phenomenon of its time, a must watch institution for a generation of young Australians and a series that transformed both the local music industry and music on television,” Scott says.
What she can’t or won’t say is whether this once-vital service to culture and industry might stage a return to the national broadcaster in 2025, as per the latest cycle of rumours that buzz around music and media corridors every few years.
The streaming wars didn’t kill the little guys. In fact, they’re thriving.
Executives from the Hallmark Channel made a curious decision this fall: They started a new streaming service, reports The New York Times.
It seemed like an awfully late date to do so. Most media companies entered the streaming fray years ago, and few have had success going head-to-head against titans like Netflix, Amazon and Disney.
But Hallmark executives decided the timing was not an issue. Their app, Hallmark+, did not need to appeal to the whole country, they said, just their core audience – the people who regularly flock en masse to the network’s trademark holiday and feel-good programming.
“We don’t have to make content that are all things to all people,” said John Matts, Hallmark Media’s chief operating officer.
About two dozen smaller, low-cost specialty streaming services have generated significant subscriber growth over the last couple of years, according to a new report from Antenna, a subscription research firm. This includes streamers from traditional cable networks (AMC+, BET+) as well as those that fall under specific genres, including British television (BritBox, Acorn TV), horror (Shudder) and anime (Crunchyroll, Hidive).
Consistently compelling, this actor continues to fly under the radar
Director Greg McLean has described it as “Dallas with dingoes”. But Territory, the latest Netflix series to excite the world, could also be described as Yellowstone in the Top End or Succession in the Outback. Or maybe The Hatfields & the McCoys Go West, reports Nine Publishing’s Debi Enker.
A canny exercise in box-ticking, the six-part series, set in what is frequently described as “the biggest cattle station in the world”, incorporates many of the elements that have previously fuelled popular stories and shaped successful TV series. However the tale of the Northern Territory’s fictional Marianne station and the Lawson family, its embattled owners, adroitly tweaks its variation on the theme.
When it comes to the people, the standout is the consistently compelling Anna Torv. From her first scenes, confidently striding around Marianne as if she innately knows and capably runs the place, she’s convincing. Emily Lawson (nee Hodge), we soon learn, can fly a chopper, shoot like a cowboy, muster cattle, corral raging bulls and rebrand stolen cattle to conceal where they came from. She can also lie, cheat, fight and scheme with the best – and the worst – of them.
As is often the case when Torv is on screen, she brings strength and gravitas, and here it’s the sense that something significant is at stake beyond the brawling and macho posturing. Playing the most fully fleshed character in the drama, she becomes its wounded and conflicted heart.
You’re all wrong, Joker: Folie a Deux is a masterpiece
Sitting in the darkness of the cinema, watching Joker: Folie a Deux, it was hard not to be swept up in the film’s complex and challenging themes, the truly haunting soundtrack and the genuinely stunning performances from the film’s two leads, Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, reports Nine Publishing’s Michael Idato.
Cut from the cloth of DC Comics and set in Batman’s Gotham City, this was a comic-book film so good that it basically broke the box. For all of its perceived faults, and dark, fantastical touches, director Todd Phillips created a universe so plausibly bleak that the only thing it could never have stood was the arrival of a character as ridiculous, in this context, as Batman himself.
In the cold, hard light of day, however, Joker: Folie a Deux was torn to shreds by film critics and then abandoned by audiences in response, who took the collective huff-and-puff from the cinematic cognoscenti’s answer to the big bad wolf as irrevocable confirmation that the film was not worth seeing.
What a terrible, terrible loss. And what a collective waste of breath from a class of thinkers who ought to understand there is more to movies than popularity and adherence to comic-book canon. It wasn’t Joker enough? It was too Joker? Who is to know? And who, in the end, decides what is art, and whether art is good?
Viewers flee MSNBC, and flock to Fox News, in wake of election
The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC’s highest-rated program, drew 1.3 million US viewers on Monday, about a million shy of her October average, according to Nielsen. In a crucial ratings metric — viewers under the age of 54 — it was the least-watched edition of the show since April 2022, reports The New York Times.
That performance mirrors much of what has been happening at MSNBC in the week since Donald Trump’s election win. MSNBC has averaged 550,000 viewers since Election Day, a 39 percent decline compared with the network’s average in October. In prime time, MSNBC’s audience has declined 53 percent, according to the Nielsen data.
The opposite has happened at Fox News, MSNBC’s conservative rival. Fox’s audience in prime time has grown by 21 percent since last Wednesday, with an average of 3.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen. Its total day audience has jumped 38 percent.
Sports Media
ABC Radio hires AFL star to host ABC breakfast in football capital
Former Western Bulldogs captain Bob Murphy will join Channel 7 journalist Sharnelle Vella as the new ABC breakfast team, writes News Corp’s Scott Gullan and Alice Coster.
The unlikely couple are replacing Sammy J who announced on Wednesday morning that he was stepping down after five years.
Murphy has previously worked on radio with SEN before moving to Fremantle where he worked in the football department before returning to Melbourne in recent months.
The 42-year-old retired after 17 seasons with the Bulldogs in 2017.
He was a natural in the media space in the later part of his career appearing on Fox Footy and regularly featuring on the ABC. In 2019, he joined Andy Maher as host of SEN’s late afternoon show.
(Former Triple M head of content Mike Fitzpatrick oversees the ABC metro radio network and sport. Triple M stations in all metro markets feature a football star on the breakfast teams.)
More Thursday night AFL in 2025 than ever as new TV deal kicks in
Fans will see more Thursday night football than ever before in 2025, with matches scheduled in the prime slot in all bar two home and away rounds next season, reports AAP.
The move was confirmed by AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon ahead of Thursday’s release of the full season fixture.
It comes as part of the AFL’s new $4.5 billion broadcast deal, which starts next year.
“There has been a strong desire from fans and our broadcast partners for more Thursday night football and we are excited to be able to deliver in spades next season,” Dillon said.
“Fans will be able to take in a total of 23 games of Thursday night football next season, which is more than there has ever been.”
The 2025 season will start on a Thursday night when reigning premier Brisbane hosts Geelong at the Gabba in Opening Round.
Sunday nights set to be AFL’s new primetime frontier
THE AFL is banking on Sunday night football as its newest initiative for 2025, with next season’s fixture set to include a host of games in football’s fresh primetime slot, reports afl.com.au’s Riley Beveridge.
It’s understood the 2025 fixture, which is set to be released later on Thursday, will feature nine Sunday night fixtures in the opening 16 weeks of the campaign.
The initiative is born from the new TV rights deal, which kicks in next season, with Channel Seven set to broadcast a handful of the Sunday night games including a blockbuster Gather Round fixture between Port Adelaide and Hawthorn.