Business of Media
From Network 10 & Mamamia to running Flemington: The rise of Kylie Rogers
Horses have been a constant in Kylie Rogers’ life. In good times and in bad, reports Nine Publishing’s Danny Russell.
She grew up three blocks from the Donvale equestrian centre where she first learned to ride. Her family kept horses on their weekend getaway farm at Lake Eildon, near Mansfield.
She worked as a sales representative for Network 10 when it was broadcasting the Melbourne Cup during the late 1990s, selling the slots during the carnival to advertisers.
Her husband, Andrew, was a Victoria Racing Club member. When they moved to Sydney for 20 years with work, their three boys learned to ride at a pony club.
There were always horses. Even, as she explains, in grief.
“My husband passed away in April, and I needed to get away, and I went to a friend’s farm. And I went riding,” she says. “Because that is my happy place.”
Rogers laughs about it now, as she sits in the VRC boardroom at the top of Flemington’s iconic straight. She is 30 days into her role as the club’s first female chief executive.
In 2015, after 17 years at Network 10, she was appointed managing director of Australia’s largest women’s digital network, Mamamia, founded by Mia Freedman.
“I really saw firsthand the power of a purpose-led organisation,” Rogers says. “The purpose at Mamamia is to make the world a better place for women and girls. It’s hard not to resonate with that. And it brought exquisite clarity to the business.”
Samsung’s local staff to be axed amid major global workforce reduction
Samsung will sack about 10 per cent of its global workforce, including Australian staff, as it reins in costs as high interest rates and subdued consumer spending hits the technology giant, reports The Australian’s Joseph Lam.
The Korean company is the next in a long list of global tech companies that have made major cuts amid rising interest rates, inflation and lower consuming spending seen across the board.
The global tech giant, which has about 267,800 total staff, is understood to employ some 147,000 staff outside of Korea.
A Samsung spokeswoman confirmed to The Australian that its staff will be part of the round of lay-offs.
“Some offices are conducting routine workforce adjustments. We are unable to speak for other regions or markets,” she said.
News Brands
ABC news boss Justin Stevens reveals Tony Armstrong targeted on social media
This statement from ABC Director, News Justin Stevens was released yesterday regarding racist attacks on ABC staff:
Yesterday the ABC released an independent report that included calling out the racism ABC employees are subjected to and looking at how we defend them in the face of external attacks on them and their work. This is an industry-wide issue, and all media should take responsibility and ownership for what they choose to platform, elevate and legitimise when focusing on the work of individuals.
I am dismayed that within 24 hours of that important report I’m issuing a statement to publicly call out more racist abuse by members of the public directed at one of the ABC’s highly valued staff members, who also happens to be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.
Tony Armstrong is one of the ABC’s best and most talented presenters. This week he has again been targeted on social media and in public comments on news websites in a despicable way.
The ABC stands by Tony and will not tolerate any racist abuse. The ABC has logged the details of the abusive social media posts and made a complaint regarding the moderation of the comments. A previous incident involving a message sent to Tony was referred to police and resulted in an individual pleading guilty to using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence.
This sort of behaviour in the community is often fed by the inflammatory nature of mainstream media coverage. The prominence of stories, tone of headlines and copy, photos run and selection of story angles can foster division and outright hate.
The ABC belongs to the public and is rightly subject to appropriate scrutiny and feedback. However, at times the nature of the scrutiny on particular ABC employees is unsettling, and the incessant coverage targeting them has real impacts.
As the ABC strives to ensure our workplaces are safe and inclusive we also call on all media organisations to reflect on whether their own behaviour is meeting the highest standards.
Television
7 mornings a week-man: Clint Stanaway juggles TV and radio
He must be the hardest working man in media right now. Juggling his TV and radio commitments, Clint Stanaway is working 7 days a week.
“I’m seven mornings a week, yeah,” he tells TV Tonight. “The radio/TV double has been so addictive. I’m really enjoying it.”
For Nine Melbourne-based Stanaway flies to Sydney every Friday in readiness for hosting Weekend Today on Saturday and Sunday. He flies back to Melbourne on Sunday to present Sport in the 6pm News alongside Peter Hitchener.
On Monday and Tuesday he files Sports items for the 6pm News.
In further commitments, Stanaway is part of the top rating Nova 100’s Jase & Lauren Breakfast show from Monday – Friday (the show that made way for Kyle & Jackie O and now outranks it).
Molly Meldrum health update as 50th anniversary of Countdown looms
Music guru Molly Meldrum is “enjoying a quieter life” as a “normal person” as the 50th anniversary of the launch of his iconic show, Countdown, looms, reports News Corp’s Fiona Byrne.
Meldrum’s extraordinary influence on the Australian music scene through Countdown has been celebrated with the release of a coin marking half a century since he put Australian music and international stars into prime time on the ABC. Countdown premiered on the ABC on November 8, 1974 and ran until July 19, 1987.
The Royal Australian Mint in partnership with the ABC launched the Countdown coin at the Australian Music Vault in Melbourne on Wednesday.
Meldrum, 81, did not attend the launch with Gavin Wood — who was the voice of Countdown for seven years — representing the TV legend.
“He is struggling,” Wood said of Meldrum, noting his well publicised health battles in recent years linked to a horror fall at his home in 2011.
New Block crisis as another key team member suddenly quits
This season’s Block walkouts continued during Wednesday’s episode of Nine’s reno show, with another team’s trades dramatically quitting the show – this time over rumours about unpaid bills.
In a drama that had played out in recent episodes, husband-and-wife team Courtney and Grant had not paid a bill from a local company who provided their shower screens, reports News Corp’s Nick Bond.
As Courtney explained on camera, they had paid “two of the three invoices” for the job, but there had been a dispute about problems with the glass and they didn’t want to pay in full until it was rectified by the company.
But that had some major knock-on effects, with word spreading among Phillip Island’s construction community that The Block wasn’t paying trades on time.
With Kevin McCloud’s help, Grand Designs’ new local host shows his credentials
The new season of Grand Designs Australia does not get off to a good start, with producers falling into that evergreen TV trap: thinking that audiences love seeing non-comedians doing comedy, reports Nine Publishing’s Ben Pobjie.
Hence, we must watch host Anthony Burke and the host of the show’s British forebear, Kevin McCloud, perform a weird, excruciating, but mercifully brief, little skit – presumably to let us know this is going to be the wacky fun kind of prestige architecture series.
Thank goodness it doesn’t live up to that promise: Grand Designs Australia’s trademarks are friendliness, informativeness and boundless enthusiasm for the subject, but wacky it is not, and would be well advised never to be. The first episode of the new season does depart from the formula somewhat with the presence of McCloud, as if to bestow his stamp of approval on Burke’s endeavours. This is a big deal: anyone who is into the Australian edition of the franchise is almost certainly a big fan of the UK one, and McCloud, the all-powerful God of Grand Designs, provides the sort of thrill to GD-heads that the Logies used to try to generate by paying American stars to turn up to stare blankly at the autocue for a few seconds.
Sports Media
‘Neanderthal’: AFL great Tim Watson sorry for Matty Johns swipe
AFL great Tim Watson has retracted the blistering attack he launched on Matty Johns, reports news.com.au.
The Bombers legend last week jokingly called the NRL cult figure a “caveman” and a “neanderthal” as barbs flew during a code war stoush.
Watson last week had a light-hearted crack at Johns over those comments.
The pair are both on the books at the SEN radio network with Johns regularly featuring on the SEN Breakfast show in Melbourne which is fronted by Watson and Demons legend Garry Lyon.
Lyon described Watson’s comments last week as “disrespectful”.
With his tongue planted in his cheek, Watson told his co-host: “I don’t know if we’re overtaking all of Sydney, but there’s a very big part of Sydney that has now embraced the idea of having their own AFL team there.”
Watson cheekily poked fun of Johns again, hinting Johns’ wife Trish had texted him.
“I went too far. I reflected on my bad behaviour,” he said on Tuesday.
“I got a message from Trish over the weekend. She said he’s been in the foetal position ever since he heard the Wisp (Watson’s nickname) had hat a crack at him.
“I’m going to have to retract it.”