News Brands
Susie O’Brien: Tweets should have to pass a front page test
Twenty years of good work can disappear in the blink of an iPhone, thanks to 20 characters on Twitter. Well-regarded professionals have had their public standing and good name disappear overnight as a result of just one errant tweet, comments News Corp columnist Susie O’Brien.
No doubt Sunrise presenter Edwina Bartholomew is sweating on a tweet she sent about Channel 9 reporter Seb Costello.
The tweet, which can’t be reproduced here for legal reasons, is the kind of offhand bitchy dig that one drunk person says to another on the couch. And yet, Bartholomew – who’s pregnant and a DrinkWise ambassador – was unlikely to be drunk.
The tweet was sent in response to a fairly mundane story by Costello about a security scare at the Victorian state parliament.
She replied: “Surprisingly articulate for a (censored)”.
Thanks to social media, bitchy comments can become career-ending moments. Swimmer Stephanie Rice took years to recover from a late-night homophobic tweet in 2010 after watching a rugby game.
SBS presenter Scott McIntyre was also sacked for posting “inappropriate and disrespectful” comments about Anzac Day.
Columnist at The Age Catherine Deveny was also fired after making disparaging remarks about Bindi Irwin, who has only 11 at the time.
As always, it pays not to tweet under the influence – whether it’s stupidity, tiredness, drugs or alcohol. If you can’t think of anything nice to say, don’t use Twitter to say it.
Radio
HIT105’s out of this world proposal for winning Brisbane couple
On Monday morning on Brisbane’s HIT105, an out of this world proposal came true, with local couple Christian and Ella winning a $20,000 diamond ring, after it was fired into space on Friday from Goondiwindi in the far west of the state, and landed in the lucky spot!
In the past, Hit105’s Stav, Abby & Matt have taken over the skies of Brisbane for Cashnado, and the mighty Brisbane River for their famous Goon Race, but their next adventure went into outer space.
Last Thursday, the Brisbane SCA station’s breakfast hosts Stav, Abby & Matt travelled to Goondiwindi in two Apollo Motorhomes with three couples who are ready to take the next step in their relationships and put a ring on it – but only after that ring was rocketed into space with the help of the brains at Australian Rocketry! Goondiwindi is the best place in Queensland to launch a rocket.
Photo: Matt, Abby and Stave with the HIT105 rocket
While in the region, Stav, Abby & Matt visited drought-affected farmers. Goondiwindi is part of the drought declared areas in what is officially the worst drought on record. Goondiwindi Mayor Graham Schue gave the breakfast hosts a tour of the town so they can experience the life of the locals.
On Friday 13 September, the rocket containing a $20,000 engagement ring from Xennox Diamonds was launched into space. The area where the rocket could possibly land was divided into three sections – one for Stav, one for Abby and one for Matt; each of them representing one of the three couples, and the winning couple was Christian and Ella.
The couple from Banyo started off as flatmates, which quickly turned into much more. Christian told the show how Ella moved from being ‘The Girl Downstairs’ to ‘The Girl Upstairs’ in just a few months! His stubbornness along with many missed opportunities mean that Christian still hasn’t proposed to Ella, even though they have a little bub!
Photo: Matt, Christian, Stav, Abby and Ella at HIT 105 recounting the outback adventurefedw
Television
SLR Productions reveals creative team and voice cast for Space Nova
Australia’s SLR Productions has announced the creative team for its new original CGI animated series Space Nova in association with Malaysian studio Giggle Garage.
SLR Productions’ Australian creative team will be headed by CEO and executive producer Suzanne Ryan.
Emmy-nominated director for Beat Bugs Pablo de la Torre has been named the series director along with Cindy Scharka and Gie Santos as first time episodic directors.
The series is produced by Suzanne Ryan and SLR Productions’ head of production Yasmin Jones.
The team will also be made up of SLR Productions’ Emmy Award-winning creative director Jo Boag, with multi-Australian Writers’ Guild Award winner Thomas Duncan-Watt announced as the head writer. Thomas will lead some of Australia’s most prolific writers including Melanie Alexander, Charlotte Rose Hamlyn, Georgina Love, John Armstrong, Joel Slack-Smith and Ben Levin.
The Giggle Garage team will be made up of executive producers Juhaidah Jeomin, Zeno Gabing and Sandra Khoo as creative director.
The Australian voice cast led by voice director Jo Boag stars Zachary Fuller (Jet Nova), Adelaide Tustian (Adelaide Nova), Stephen James King (Hugo Nova), Michelle Doake (Josie Nova), Darren Sabadina (G9), Rae Johnston (Janali Banks), Ash Ricardo (Aubrina Eridani), Christian Charisiou (Sol Erdani) and Jason Chong as (Andy Ling).
Space Nova, an original SLR Productions program commissioned by Super RTL, ABC Australia and Nine Network, has received major production funding from Screen Australia and is also financed with support from Create NSW.
With development funding from Super RTL, ABC Australia and the Australian Children’s Television Foundation (ACTF), Space Nova will be distributed worldwide by ZDF Enterprises, excluding Australia and New Zealand, which is being handled by ACTF.
Space Nova comprises 26 x 24 minute episodes for a global six to nine year old audience.
Seinfeld’s 180 episodes moving to Netflix after bidding war victory
Netflix has won won the rights to all 180 episodes of Seinfeld, which will come to Netflix globally in 2021, reports Bloomberg.
Sony Corp’s Sony Pictures Television, the distributor of the show, currently has a deal with Walt Disney Co’s Hulu.
Stan currently has the rights for all nine seasons of Seinfeld for Australia.
The bidding war for the show follows battles over the rights to The Office and Friends– two shows that Netflix is losing to streaming rivals. The Seinfeld deal shows that Netflix still has options to acquire popular library content even as Disney and AT&T Inc’s WarnerMedia pull back their most popular content to focus on their own streaming services.
“Seinfeld is the television comedy that all television comedy is measured against,” Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos said. “We can’t wait to welcome Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer to their new global home on Netflix.”
The Los Angeles Times reports:
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but since the rights are for worldwide distribution, Netflix paid far more than the $500 million NBCUniversal paid for “The Office,” and the $425 million WarnerMedia shelled out for “Friends”, people familiar with the deal said. Both of those five-year deals were for streaming rights in the U.S. only.
The ownership of “Seinfeld”, produced by the defunct studio Castle Rock, is spread among several entities, including WarnerMedia, CBS, Seinfeld and his co-creator, Larry David. All will share in the revenue from the Netflix deal after Sony receives a significant percentage as the show’s distributor.
None for six: Australian creatives take a hiding at the Emmys
Australia marched into the second of three Emmy Awards events in Los Angeles with nominations in six categories, recognising the work of our best cinematographers, production designers, musicians, producers and graphic designers.
We walked out empty handed, reports The Sydney Morning Herald’s Michael Idato.
Barely an hour into the ceremony, the bulk of the brutal work was done: cinematographers Zoe White (The Handmaid’s Tale) and Germain McMicking (True Detective) had lost their Emmys to Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and HBO’s Chernobyl.
Adding insult to injury, nominees Jasper Leak (Quincy), Patrick Clair and Raoul Marks (True Detective) and Anna Dokoza (Special) lost to, respectively, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, Game of Thrones and the Sundance series State of the Union.
Then the final blow came as the period or fantasy production design Emmy, which has been the virtual property of Australian Game of Thones designer Deborah Riley for the past few years, was lost to Chernobyl.
“A special place in hell”: Sam Armytage hits back at magazine (again)
Samantha Armytage has hit out at Woman’s Day after a story, “Samantha Armytage officially meets her new boyfriend’s daughters”, reports TV Tonight.
The magazine included paparazzi photos of a private lunch with unnamed sources weighing in.
The clearly unimpressed Sunrise host tweeted, “There’s a special place in hell for the people who work @WomansDayAus” and took to Instagram, adding Daily Mail into the mix.
She added, “Not looking for sympathy here, just setting the record straight”.
Armytage, like a number of other morning TV presenters, is frequently in the crosshairs of magazine gossip and has previously hit back at headlines before at Woman’s Day, Daily Mail and News Corp (there’s no word of New Idea published by Seven West Media’s Pacific Mags).
In 2016 she was issued an apology by Daily Mail.
Sports Media
Hopes for A-League with deal closer for weekly free-to-air television
Talks are continuing with the national broadcaster, the ABC, which could see A-League games telecast on prime-time free-to-air television as well as on the sport’s long-term partner, Fox Sports, reports The Sydney Morning Herald’s Michael Lynch.
The FFA has kept its own counsel about reports suggesting that a deal could be imminent, which would see the Saturday early evening (5.15pm) matches shown on the ABC as well as on the pay television network.
With the A-League season due to kick off on October 11 (when Adelaide United host champions Sydney FC), time is running out to iron out an agreement that would satisfy all parties.
Getting the A-League back onto a mainstream broadcaster with a national footprint would be a significant achievement and one that would enhance its appeal to supporters and, crucially, sponsors and investors.
News Corp’s Tom Smithies reports:
Talks with the ABC began after a mooted deal with the 10 Network – which would have involved two games being shown exclusively on 10’s main channel – fell victim to the merger of 10’s parent, CBS, with Viacom in the US.
Detailed negotiations in recent days have centred on ABC taking Fox Sports’s production of the game, with hopes it will deliver an audience well into six figures after several years of dramatic decline in TV ratings for A-League games.