According to research based on the Australian Bureau of Statistic 2012 Personal Safety Survey 15.7% of women had experienced economic abuse in their lifetimes with the risk of economic abuse peaking at 20.9% for women between the ages of 40 and 49.

The campaign, entitled Financially Fit Females, will be run across Bauer’s 36 media brands, including ELLE, Harper’s Bazaar, The Australian Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day with a combined readership of some 7.5 million.

At a breakfast in Sydney to celebrate International Women’s Day, Jane Waterhouse, general manager of Bauer’s Story 54 said that the campaign is centred around one of the most serious problems facing many Australian women; not having full control and understanding of their finances and how this can lead to financial and economic abuse.

“This campaign will sit at the heart of Bauer’s activist agenda over the coming year and into the future,” Waterhouse said.

Bauer’s finance editor Effie Zahos said, “Women are just as much a part of our economy as men, but many still seem to have a poor understanding of important financial concepts and activities.

“The way a woman deals with savings, superannuation, separation, the gender pay gap and other significant issues can spell the difference between living a financially comfortable life or not.”

Womans Day editor-in-chief Fiona Connolly said major problems could emerge when a woman does not understand her finances and more significantly leaves their management to a partner.

“The situation can become dire for older women whose partners take control of their joint finances, leading to women being forced to live in domestic poverty and suffering from financial abuse.

“The facts are that financial abuse is highly gendered with more than 15 percent of women experiencing financial abuse often in romantic relationships.

“Sexually transmitted debt and inappropriate financial affairs are very real problems for tens of thousands of Australian women,” Connolly said.

Paul Dykzeul, Bauer Media CEO said the Financially Fit Females campaign will build on Bauer’s successful participation in the community push last year to have the GST on female sanitary products, aka “the tampon tax” removed.

“What is now clearer than ever is that a concerted media campaign by a publisher like Bauer around significant women’s issues can have an impact and force real change.

“At Bauer we make no apology for fighting hard for the things women value and we look forward to whichever political party forms government after the election joining with us to drive education for women around their financials,” Dykzeul said.

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Photo: Bauer Media editors Elle Lovelock, Effie Zahos, Lisa Green, Fiona Baker, Fiona Connolly

The logo flip, first adopted internationally by MTV in 2017, will make its way on air and online again to mark its commitment to this very important day.

Throughout the day, MTV Australia will include special online coverage of impressive and inspirational Australian woman. Those profiled include Miranda Tapsell, Penny Wong, Shareefa J, Jean Hinchliffe, Ellia Green.

MTV Music will host a full day takeover of girl power hits including bespoke countdowns and curated playlists that celebrate female artists. MTV Dance will start the day with a Who Run The World? Girls! playlist that you can catch on Foxtel and Fetch.

The “SHE!” initiative, which will span across the network’s on-air, digital and social franchises, will salute boss women everywhere and feature empowering messages from the women of E! The day will include E!’s popular slate of female-driven shows when the E! logo transforms into “SHE!” for 24 hours.

E! News has been running a week-long series telling the stories of impactful women making great strides in their communities. From young female executive producers taking over Hollywood to powerful girl bosses running their own companies. Other interviews will include Afghanistan refugee turned investigative journalist Nelufar Hedayat who put herself in dangerous positions to uncover the black market and a conversation with famed photographer Kate Parker who is capturing the attention of celebrities as she features young aspirational girls looking to make a difference.

Additionally, each episode of Busy Tonight, hosted by Busy Philipps, will showcase strong women including activist and actress America Ferrara, Australian actress Isla Fisher, comedian Margaret Cho and culinary expert Elizabeth Chambers.

Christine Fellowes, managing director International Networks (APAC) said: “We are honoured to support such an important campaign celebrating strong, passionate, courageous women around the world. E! is the home of many successful and empowering females both on and off the screen, making it the perfect platform to drive this initiative.”

The agency’s staff, clients and media partners came together in Sydney to celebrate this year’s global theme #BalanceForBetter, with Zenith CEO Nickie Scriven presenting a panel discussion featuring Luxottica’s VP Marketing, Milena Cavicchioli; Nine’s Chief Sales Officer, Michael Stephenson and SBS’s Director of Marketing, Jane Palfreyman.

Key issues discussed included the challenges of gender balance in the media and marketing sectors, how to change workplace cultures and people’s mindsets, and addressing diversity and female stereotypes in advertising and the media.

Scriven said: “The theme #BalanceforBetter is about exploring how we can build a gender-balanced world – at leadership levels, in our workplaces and society in general.

“At Zenith Australia, 63% of our national executive leadership team are women, and we have over 14 nationalities represented within our national workforce. We take a progressive approach in how we ensure there is equity, diversity and overall respect for our co-workers, contractors, job candidates, clients and associates, as well as visitors to our workplaces.”

Last year, Zenith’s parent company, Publicis, launched the VivaWomen! program in Australia, to support and enable the 1,000+ women within the group to thrive within the businesses through programs that encourages both personal and career development.

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Top Photo: Nickie Scriven, CEO, Zenith; Milena Cavicchioli, VP Marketing, Luxottica; Michael Stephenson, Chief Sales Officer, Nine; Jane Palfreyman, Director of Marketing, SBS

Tracks will include Adele – Rolling in the Deep, Tina Arena – Sorrento Moon, Olivia Newton-John – Xanadu, Whitney Houston – I Wanna Dance With Somebody, Aretha Franklin – Respect, Madonna – Into The Groove and Cyndi Lauper – Girls Just Want To Have Fun to name a few.

Jennifer Hansen

smoothfm’s leading ladies Bogart Torelli, host of smoothfm’s 95.3’s Sydney More Music Breakfast, and Jennifer Hansen from smoothfm 91.5’s Melbourne More Music Breakfast Show, have nominated their favourite female artists and the songs that reflect this special day for them.

Jennifer Hansen said, “The most obvious and favourite for International Women’s Day would have to be Helen Reddy’s I Am Woman. Reddy was honoured this year at Say G’Day in LA with a Lifetime achievement award and this song also won her a Grammy in 1972 beating Barbra Streisand and Roberta Flack. It’s the most iconic feminist song of all time and I adore it. Still on empowerment… Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive. I sang this with actress, and now director Kate Kendall, one year at the Alannah and Madeleine Foundation’s charity fundraiser Starry Night Ball at Crown. We had a ball performing on stage and it will always be a favourite karaoke number for me. Finally Dixie Chicks’ Not Ready To Make Nice is another great song about empowerment and standing up for what you believe in. I really admire the girls for their bravery in speaking out at the time about the US involvement in the war in Iraq and their thoughts of freedom of speech and this song also won a Grammy for Song Of The Year in 2007.”

Bogart Torelli

Bogart Torelli selected Tina Turner’s Simply The Best, saying, “I saw her in Sydney on the Private Dancer Tour and she blew me away. An amazing human from singing in the Nutbush church choir to leaving an abusive relationship to super stardom. Tina is the best. Another is Tina Arena, and the award winning Chains the song highlighted her amazing talent. She is the daughter of Italian immigrants just like me, who’s hard work and self-belief has cemented her success. Adele, Don’t You Remember, Someone Like You.. I love all her songs. Not surprisingly one of the bestselling artist in the world. I love her voice, her attitude and the fact she does not crave the world of celebrity.”

The column reveals iflix chief executive Mark Britt – formerly an executive in Nine’s old digital division mi9 – and executive director Luke Elliott will meet with institutional investors in Sydney on Tuesday and Melbourne on Thursday at Macquarie Capital’s offices.

The pair are set to discuss the potential for fundies to jump on board in the streaming business’ pre-initial public offering funding round.

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He column reveals Foxtel management and its bankers kicked off the pitch to potential backers this week, meeting credit teams at the big Australian superannuation funds and institutional investment houses on Wednesday and Thursday.

It is understood investors were told Foxtel was seeking more than $2.5 billion across three parts; an Australian dollar term loan B deal, a US dollar term loan B deal and a US dollar high yield bond raising. The funds would replace the company’s $2.5 billion-odd debt pile, which was starting to fall due this year.

The company had close to 2.9 million subscribers as at December 31, according to disclosures from its majority shareholder News Corp last month, which was higher than the prior year.

However, its revenue and earnings are struggling. Foxtel’s revenue in the three months to December 31 was down 11 per cent to $US562 million.

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Opposition communications spokeswoman Michelle Rowland said “a question mark hangs” over the so-called Enhanced Newsgathering Program, which was introduced by the Labor government in 2013 under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The program received $20 million annually over three years, but the Liberal government cut the funding to $15 million a year.

ABC acting managing director David Anderson has warned that it faces a $127 million budget hole over the next three years if the news gathering program isn’t extended. The Liberal government has already announced an $83.7 million cut to the ABC’s tri-annual budget.

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It’s a particularly sharp point – a posse of Australia’s biggest advertisers are heading off on a Facebook-bankrolled trip to its headquarters in Silicon Valley this month.

Facebook and YouTube deliver extraordinarily “cheap reach”, which means the cost of advertising is so low, marketers can’t say no.

The CEO of IPG Mediabrands, Danny Bass, says he doubts the local broadcasters’ video on demand (BVOD) services will benefit from the current YouTube boycott in Australia. “Look at the cost of BVOD,” he says. “Let’s says the effective CPM [cost per thousand people] is $5 on YouTube. BVOD can be $70. Advertisers will ultimately go back to Facebook and YouTube because it’s so cheap.”

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In a wide-ranging interview with Boss magazine in Friday’s The Australian Financial Review, recently appointed Google Australia and New Zealand managing director Melanie Silva said she would welcome some new regulations as a result of the ACCC review, but the company was looking to lessen new oversight where possible.

It claims it already has extensive tools in place to speedily take down infringing content and says introducing new requirements in Australia, with large fines, would lead to tech companies greatly reducing the amount of content they looked to serve up in Australia.

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So why did they agree to guest edit Friday’s edition of The Advertiser? asks Kara Jung.

Because they all believe in celebrating women and continuing to campaign for gender equality.

These four successful and inspirational South Australian women descended on the newsroom to co-edit an International Women’s Day edition of The Advertiser. They pitched story ideas, had their say on others in terms of treatment and placement and have contributed columns and their own stories.

Politics were (mostly) put aside, when the SA Labor senator and the state Liberal Deputy Premier stood side-by-side to edit the news pages, while Phillips took over the sports section and Palmer became boss of opinion, entertainment and world.

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Top Photo: Vickie Chapman, Teresa Palmer, Erin Phillips and Penny Wong will edit The Advertiser for International Women’s day

Source: Naomi Jellicoe/The Advertiser

Charan sued The Australian’s publisher, Nationwide News, just before Christmas in 2015 over an article which incorrectly stated that he was a director of ACN.

In fact he was a major shareholder in the company.

The Australian told Charan’s lawyers that it expected to incur costs of close to $1m by the end of the trial and asked him to pay the newspaper $100,000 as a contribution to its legal costs to walk away.

Charan responded by demanding The Australian pay him $120,000, plus his costs, and give an apology.

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The documentary was this week televised in the US and UK; it will air in Australia on Friday and Saturday night on Network Ten.

“The decisions we make about the music we play on any of our stations are dependent on the relevance to the audience and the current context,” said Paul Jackson, Nova Entertainment’s group program director. “In light of what is happening at the moment, smoothfm is not currently playing any Michael Jackson songs.”

The Australian Radio Network (ARN), which hosts easy-listening station WSFM, is awaiting a stronger response from its listeners.

“At this stage, ARN stations with music formats that play Michael Jackson won’t be removing his music. However, as always, we will continue to regularly review our playlists based on what audiences want to hear,” an ARN spokesperson said.

And Southern Cross Austereo (SCA), whose stations include Triple M and 2DayFM, have no immediate plans to remove Jackson’s songs.

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Podcasting shows explosive year-over-year growth as gains in spoken-word audio mark the 2019 Infinite Dial Study by Edison Research and Triton Digital. Among the US population ages 12 and older, the total number of people who have ever listened to a podcast passes 50% for the first time.

“This is a watershed moment for podcasting – a true milestone. With over half of Americans 12+ saying that they have ever listened to a podcast, the medium has firmly crossed into the mainstream,” noted Tom Webster, senior vice president at Edison Research.

One-third of the population reported having listened to a podcast in the last month, representing 90 million monthly listeners. The spoken-word audio sector also saw increases with audiobooks, as the portion of the US population that has ever listened to an audiobook surpasses one-half for the first time.

Regarding social media, the latest study finds the number of current users of Facebook continues to drop. The study shows an estimated 15 million fewer users of Facebook than in the 2017 report. The declines are heavily concentrated among younger people.

The percentage of Americans who listen to online audio (defined as listening to AM/FM radio stations online and/or listening to streamed audio content available only on the internet) has doubled since 2012, growing from one-third of the population to two-thirds.

Other survey highlights included:

• Time spent listening to online audio has reached a record high this year, with weekly online audio listeners reporting an average of nearly 17 hours of listening in the last week.

Download a copy of the report here.

“I’m thrilled to say that John Casey will be joining Foxtel to take up this role,” said Cooney. “John comes to us from Supercars. Prior to this he has had a long and celebrated career in marketing, including Vodafone and NBN Co.

“John will start with us on 22 March. The key roles that will report into this new role are: entertainment marketing, sports marketing, product marketing, brand and retail marketing.”

The BBC boss said high-profile dramas such as Luther and Bodyguard reached larger audiences with a smaller budget on the public broadcaster than expensive Netflix shows.

“I mentioned the Bodyguard finale reaching 17 million viewers,” he told a media conference in London. “That was in one month. Our data suggests The Crown reached seven million users in 17 months.”

A BBC spokesperson said Hall’s source for the viewing figures was a nationally representative survey commissioned by the corporation last year, which asked Britons whether they had watched at least 15 minutes of an episode of The Crown.

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The TV and radio regular told the Highs Heels and Hangovers podcast that he was approached by producers to be the leading man on last year’s season (which starred Nick “Honey Badger” Cummins).

“They called me,” Williams said. “They were like ‘Do you want to do The Bachelor?’ and I was like, ‘Well, I’m not doing anything for like the next five years so I can spare three months’.”

Williams told Highs Heels and Hangovers hosts Jana Hocking and Carla “Biggzy” Bignasca that he packed a bag and waited for The Bachelor producers to call to lock everything in, but he never heard from them again.

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Amanda Laing, Foxtel chief commercial officer

The Foxtel consultant was one of the architects behind the NRL’s last billion-dollar broadcast in her previous role as managing director of Nine. She is currently on the ARL Commission and is also an Sport Australia director.

Caroline Wilson, journalist

The chief football writer for The Age for nearly two decades, “Caro” is a Walkley-award winning journalist whose opinions and reports have long held sway within the game’s corridors of power.

Lucy Zelic, journalist

One of the present day faces of football on SBS, Lucy Zelic has not just become an icon of football in Australia but of women’s sport.

The younger sister of Socceroo Ned Zelic, she’s been the presenter of The World Game and SBS sport for the past six years, covering the 2014 and 2018 World Cups, the English Premier League, UEFA Champions League, A-League, Socceroos and Matildas games.

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