Business of Media
Nine’s Airlie Walsh sues network amid workplace culture fallout
One of the Nine Network’s highest-profile reporters is suing the broadcaster amid the fallout of a major sexual harassment scandal and a workplace cultural review that has led to the departure of senior executives, reports the AFR’s Max Mason and Sam Buckingham-Jones.
Airlie Walsh filed a human rights sex discrimination claim against the company in the Federal Court this week. Her lawyers, Maurice Blackburn, declined to comment, citing court rules.
Walsh’s claim comes as the media industry undergoes a cultural reckoning. Seven West Media has had a torrid year after a producer claimed the network paid for drugs and prostitutes to convince former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann to sit for an interview for its Spotlight current affairs program. The show’s executive producer left in the aftermath.
Why Emirates dropped F1, Melbourne Cup to go all in on tennis
Tennis Australia has secured another five-year sponsorship with Emirates worth an estimated $35 million for the Australian Open Grand Slam, and the airline’s marketing chief has revealed the real reasons it dropped two other Melbourne sporting fixtures, Formula One and the Melbourne Cup, reports Nine Publishing’s Patrick Durkin.
Tennis Australia also signed a $107 million deal with Kia last year to extend its 22-year partnership with Tennis Australia for another five years as the major sponsor, the biggest sports sponsorship deal in Australian history.
Emirates’ global vice president of marketing, Boutros Boutros, told The Australian Financial Review the airline had spent more than $US150 million on sponsorships in Australia over three decades. It also sponsors AFL club Collingwood and the Melbourne and Sydney Symphony Orchestras.
Television
Out of the fold, in with the who? All the changes on breakfast TV for 2025
They say when it rains it pours, and the Australian breakfast TV landscape has experienced a veritable deluge this year, reports SMH’s Thomas Mitchell.
On Monday morning, ABC presenter Michael Rowland announced he would depart News Breakfast after nearly 15 years as co-host, making him the latest in a long line of high-profile departures across the breakfast TV space in 2024.
During his farewell speech, Rowland noted that his children were aged seven and five when he started on breakfast TV, and are now in their 20s. In that time, morning shows – and free-to-air TV more widely – have had ratings dip with the rise of streaming and increasing competition from social media platforms and non-legacy platforms such as YouTube.
Newsbrands
ABC compiled dossier of Crikey columnist Guy Rundle’s abusive messages
Allegedly rude and abusive messages by Crikey columnist Guy Rundle, targeting a suite of ABC presenters and guests, was handed to Private Media bosses Eric Beecher and Will Hayward after an on-air reveal of his latest missive, a Freedom of Information request shows, reports The Australian’s David Ross.
Documents released to The Australian reveal ABC management was alarmed Rundle, who was sacked from his columnist role at Crikey on October 18, had been allegedly targeting a number of journalists and presenters for months.
The documents show the message from ABC managing director David Anderson, sent to Hayward and Beecher, contained a number of attached screenshots of Rundle’s messages.
However, the ABC has declined to release the concerning messages, on the basis they constitute program content.
Over a year on, how is Capital Brief going?
Startup independent business publisher Capital Brief has made a splash in the Australian media landscape, and after over a year of operation, Crikey’s Daanyal Saeed chatted to CEO Chris Janz about how the publication is faring.
Capital Brief, described in Crikey as “a new Australian business publication that’s like if the Australian Financial Review was written for people without grey hairs but fired any subeditors who tried to reduce their word count”, launched last year with a subscription-based model that promised to eschew targeted advertising. Since its launch, it has leaned on Janz’s former Nine/Fairfax stable for its staff — Janz left Nine in 2021 as chief digital and publishing officer, having joined Fairfax in 2016. Capital Brief co-founder David Eisman was the former director of subscriptions growth at Nine/Fairfax, while chief political correspondent Anthony Galloway joined from The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Media reporter John Buckley joined from Crikey, but was also at Nine previously.
Radio
Explosive new documents reveal details of charges against Alan Jones
Former broadcaster Alan Jones is alleged to have fondled penises, stroked thighs, squeezed bottoms and pulled one man’s scrotum, according to explosive court documents obtained by the Herald’s Sarah McPhee and Kate McClymont.
The charge sheets reveal details of the 26 allegations against Jones relating to nine complainants.
Streaming
Of course Martha doesn’t like it, but the doco about her is compelling
Martha Stewart isn’t happy. Of course she isn’t. One thing that emerges with diamond-bright clarity from Martha (Netflix), R. J. Cutler’s profile of this extraordinary and divisive woman, is that she’s a perfectionist obsessively devoted to detail. So having someone else tell her story was bound to annoy her as she’d have undoubtedly done it differently, and, in her not-so-humble opinion, better, writes SMH’s Debi Enker.
So she was extremely forthcoming about her objections to the feature-length documentary when The New York Times called her for comment. Among her objections: unflattering camera angles were used for the interview with her. The scenes of her walking in her garden make her look like she’s a doddering old woman (she’s 83) when she was only limping because she was recovering from surgery on her Achilles tendon. She hates the music. There’s no mention of her grandchildren.