By James Manning

Although that weekend breakfast show guarantees her a pretty big audience across 93 stations, Hennessy is perhaps better known for her work as a Facebook content creator.

She does post to YouTube but most of her work appears on Facebook, where she has an audience of 1.1m. Although the platform recognises the talents of Hennessy, she isn’t able to generate revenue. “I can’t monetise on Facebook, which really sucks,” she told Mediaweek during VidCon 2018 in Melbourne. She noted the views she is gathering via Facebook would have generated a sizeable cheque if they happened on YouTube.

That means, despite the massive video views, Hennessy’s old media career in a way is funding her new media career.

“I have just written a book [for publisher Allen & Unwin] and I am also writing for news.com.au,” she explained. “I am one of those people with fingers in many pies and I definitely do sit between traditional media and new media.”

Hennessy is working on breaking into a bigger league though and she has management based in Australia as well as representing her interests in the US. “I would love to write a TV show,” she revealed. “I am learning to write scripts, which has been difficult because it’s so different from radio. Having to write a narrative with different characters has been really challenging.”

Without Mediaweek revealing just what she has been working on, we can report Hennessy has two different concepts that she has been pitching in Los Angeles.

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This is an excerpt from the full article, which appears on Mediaweek Premium. Read the full article here or subscribe to Mediaweek Premium here.

The arrival of Mike van Acker at 97.3 in breakfast coincides with the station in a new ratings brawl in Brisbane. Van Acker has replaced Terry Hansen at breakfast and it seems the audience might have used the change in personnel to check out what else is available in the market.

97.3’s ratings are hardly in freefall, but it has recorded its lowest 10+ and breakfast shares this year.

The station is currently #2 in 10+ cume and #3 breakfast cume.

ARN’s Duncan Campbell always used to call it a two-horse race in Brisbane between 97.3 and Nova, but he can’t say that any more. It is actually a four-horse race with just 0.4 separating the four market leaders.

“Everyone is very close. We are equal #2 with Triple M, which has had a bit of a spike, and we shall watch to see if that holds or carries forward,” Campbell told Mediaweek.

“The change in the Bianca and Bob breakfast show has seen Terry leave and Mike come on board. 97.3 remains a strong station and we’d love to get back ahead of the pack, which is our goal.”

A big spike in breakfast at Triple M sees 97.3 breakfast rank #4. “There is no trend behind that so Triple M could settle next survey,” Campbell added confidently.

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Top Photo: 97.3’s Bianca, Mike and Bob

By Kruti Joshi

“I didn’t believe it. I thought it was a hoax,” Meldrum-Hanna told Mediaweek.

Lane is a former water polo player who was convicted of the 1996 murder of her newborn baby Tegan. She is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence, of which eight have already been spent behind bars.

“I was in university when the Keli Lane saga erupted. Then when I became a journalist, I never reported on her case or approached her or her family for an interview,” Meldrum-Hanna said. “It was something I had no connection to.

“When I received that letter from Keli Lane, it was astonishing.”

Lane explained that she’d followed Meldrum-Hanna’s work from prison: “She wanted me to reinvestigate her case.”

Meldrum-Hanna documents her findings about Lane’s case in a new three-part ABC series Exposed. Lane has always maintained that she did not kill Tegan.

Meldrum-Hanna describes Lane’s case as “like no other” and “baffling”.

“It’s unsolved in the fact that Tegan has never been found.”

The immediate challenge facing Meldrum-Hanna were resources. Many officials have looked into the case before her and have not been able to solve exactly what happened to the newborn baby. “What chances did I have?” Meldrum-Hanna questioned. “It was an enormous proposition and risk to take.”

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This is an excerpt from the full article, which appears on Mediaweek Premium. Read the full article here or subscribe to Mediaweek Premium here.

The original series ran for three seasons and Graham Webb was its founding presenter. Channel 5 in the UK brought back the dating game show to TV screens in the country last year.

On the upcoming Australian edition of Blind Date, each week one person will ask three hidden potential suitors three questions to determine which person is right or wrong for them. They can only do this by speaking to each other. The contestants do not get to see to see each other until they have made their decision.

A premiere date for the show has not been announced yet. However, Blind Date is expected to air later this year on Ten and the WIN Network.

Since its launch in 2013, it has recorded 1.2 million registered users. iHeartRadio Australia’s offering includes Australia’s largest podcast library with 1.4 million episodes available to audiences from almost 12,000 contributors globally, live radio from ARN, SBS, ABC, ACE and Fairfax radio networks, and curated genre and seasonal stations including ACRA Award-winning Christmas station Elf Radio.

The brand is also know for its live events. In the last five years, iHeartRadio Australia has hosted live performances by Kylie Minogue, Ed Sheeran, Noah Cyrus, Jennifer Hudson, Halsey, Zara Larsson, Alessia Cara, Rag’n’Bone Man, Culture Club and Justin Bieber. Annually, iHeartRadio Australia also has competitions for users to win tickets to the biggest iHeartRadio overseas music events including the annual Jingle Ball, iHeartRadio Music Awards and iconic iHeartRadio Music Festival, which takes place this weekend, Friday September 21 and Saturday September 22, in Las Vegas.

In 2017, the service had major product upgrades with the launch of the global iHeartRadio app in Australia and the added capability of targeted advertising technology and integration into Google Home, Amazon Echo and HEOS by Denon home smart speakers.

ARN CEO Rob Atkinson said: “iHeartRadio Australia has managed to both adapt and thrive in an ever changing audio landscape over the past five years. We’ve positioned iHeartRadio Australia as the audio platform of choice for many Australians and created some incredible content through our iHeartRadio Live events. The plans for the next five years will see iHeartRadio Australia be our key vehicle in delivering on ARN’s promise to create the future of audio entertainment in Australia.”

iHeartRadio Australia’s content director Brett Nossiter said: “I am immensely proud of all iHeartRadio has achieved in only five years in an ever changing and dynamic landscape. We have launched 125 new stations to the platform, and countless pop-up stations. We have created some incredible content for music fans, and over 30 iHeartRadio Live events – the biggest being the incredible Bieber Island performance. And we have even bigger plans in place for the future. The next five years are going to be next level.”

iHeartRadio Australia COO Geraint Davies said: “It is amazing to see the continued rapid growth of iHeartRadio in Australia year after year, and we are really only just getting started. I want to thank the huge team in the US at iHeartMedia who go above and beyond to support us, and locally I want to thank the publishers and labels for all their support since day one of launch. In partnership with them we have flourished in this very competitive music space. The biggest highlight for me over these five years, apart from some of the amazing performance I have seen, is meeting listeners who love what we are doing at iHeartRadio Australia – it’s really rewarding to hear their stories.”

Building on its work in 2018, the company will be looking to get further into the event space next year.

Mamamia also announced a new premium partners program called M-Plus, which will be headed by its chief revenue and operations officer Tony Prentice. Details about the program will be revealed in the next few weeks.

Mamamia Women’s Network has emerged as Australia’s #1 women’s media brand this year with a monthly unique audience of four million. Its podcasts have been downloaded over 51 million times worldwide.

Due to the popularity of its four flagship podcasts – Mamamia Out Loud, No Filter, Lady Startup and You Beauty – the publisher started taking them on the road with live events. The publisher particularly used You Beauty has an example of what it will be trying to do more of next year.

The company launched a podcast for its beauty and style vertical earlier this year, has had a video series and hosted live events with Mamamia’s executive editor Leigh Campbell.

Mamamia co-founder and chief creative officer Mia Freedman said: “I am more excited about where things are headed than I’ve ever been. This has been a big year of growth for us, not just in an upwards way but outwards as well. We’ve really expanded the ways we reach women into so many new areas including events, business education, small business promotion, ecommerce, an influencer marketing agency and an ambitious plan to put philanthropy as a driving force behind our strategy over the next few years.”

Prentice said: “The new Nielsen Digital Content Ratings (DCR) need to be put in context.

“While they don’t yet include our extensive audiences across Apple News, MSN and podcasts, we welcome the progress and the fact that Mamamia’s number one position in the women’s digital media sector is verified.

“The noise from the IAB around lack of Facebook video time qualifiers doesn’t add up because currently the same video on large publisher websites (the publishers who control the IAB) is also not subject to time qualifiers, and yet it counts them. For the record, our position is that time qualifiers are good and we look forward to them being applied when that is done fairly across everything, and we would be happy for it to be applied across all content, not just video.”

Mamamia CEO Jason Lavigne said: “Mamamia is the super channel for women, starting candid conversations across 360° of their lives. From dawn to dusk, on whatever screen – and earphone – they want, on whatever topic they want to talk about.”

Mamamia audience: Key facts

• 4.046m UAs (all people 2+), Nielsen DCR monthly, August 2018
• 2.646m UAs (women 18+), Nielsen DCR monthly, August 2018
• 1.239m UAs (women 18+) on Apple News, rank category #1
• 1.032m UAs (women 18+) on MSN
• 1.2m Facebook and 164,000 Instagram followers, and counting – rank category #1
• To date, Mamamia has had over 51 million podcast downloads
• 57% of Mamamia’s regular podcast listeners listen daily
• 44% of Mamamia’s regular podcast listeners binge-listen for over three hours in a row 

Atypical is a new entry in the Digital Originals chart coming in at number 4 after dropping its new season last week. It is joined by BoJack Horseman, which has improved on its position from last week after also releasing a new season on Netflix.

Star Trek: Discovery and Voltron :Legendary Defender have dropped out of the top 10 Digital Originals chart for both Australia and New Zealand after a long run in the charts.

By Kruti Joshi

Nine

The channel won its second consecutive night of the week, thanks to The Block, News, A Current Affair and True Story.

Keith threatened to shut down all work taking place in Hayden and Sara’s apartment on last night’s episode of The Block. In his own words, “It’s the worst site I’ve ever seen.” Sara – unsurprisingly – didn’t take this news well and chucked another tantrum. Meanwhile, Hayden and the rest of his crew worked on cleaning in the hallway.

Scott Cam called Bianca and Carla to The Block Shop to fix up inconsistencies with their invoices. They paid $500 for lighting worth $10,000. This broke the competition’s rules, which require all contestants to pay at least 50% of the retail price of every item they buy for their apartment. The girls claimed they did not know this and Cam did not believe them. He ordered them to pay up the difference.

Last night’s episode of The Block was watched by 983,000 and was the channel’s most-watched show.

Seven

The News was the night’s best performing program. The half-hour starting at 6pm had 993,000 watching. Audience slipped for 6.30pm to 965,000.

Home and Away was its next best at #10. It did 643,00.

TEN

Australian Survivor was the channel’s best at #9 overall with 654,000 tuning in.

The Betoota Advocate editors Clancy Overell and Errol Parker were the special guests on last night’s episode of The Project, which had 514,000 watching. Mediaweek’s Trent Thomas spoke to Overell and Parker recently about the rise of the satirical news outlet. Read the article here.

ABC

The public broadcaster’s best-performing shows on television last night were the News (735,000), 7.30 (591,000), Foreign Correspondent (502,000) and Catalyst (409,000).