Business of Media
Meta to focus less on metaverse, more on revenue and AI
Less mucking about in the metaverse, more focus on results and revenue. Facebook’s parent company, Meta, had a simple message for advertisers this past week: “We’ve changed”, reports Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
After a horror year for tech firms that saw Meta’s share price plummet from $US338 to just over $US120, increasingly stiff competition for revenue from TikTok, and what chief executive Mark Zuckerberg called “headwinds” in the form of privacy changes from Apple, the company says it has turned a corner in 2023.
Presenting to staff at the Sydney offices of media agency Carat, Meta’s representative presented a slideshow with a montage of headlines warning of a recession.
It was “less focus on the metaverse and more on the now”, according to those present.
“We need to maintain a growth mindset,“ execs declared in the slideshow, seen by The Australian Financial Review. It said keeping costs down as much as possible was important for brands, adding that Meta’s ad products had fallen in price between Q2 2021 and Q2 2022.
Under pressure, Disney does streaming deals with Seven and Nine
Disney has cracked open its content vaults to negotiate deals with major free-to-air television networks Seven and Nine, after taking the bulk of films and TV shows in-house to push its Disney+ streaming service, reports Nine Publishign’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
Over recent months, shows such as Prison Break and Ghost Whisperer have appeared on Seven’s streaming platform, 7plus, while Nine’s 9Now app now lists M*A*S*H and blockbuster Homeland. All were once exclusive to Disney+.
The apparent shift in content strategy is significant because it comes as rising interest rates and costs of living squeeze Australian spending, with the average home’s number of streaming subscriptions dropping slightly at the end of 2022.
Disney is also under pressure to improve the financial performance of its online video business, which posted a $US1.5 billion ($2.2 billion) loss last quarter and led to chief executive Bob Chapek being replaced by his predecessor, Bob Iger. Iger will share his first results since returning to the company on February 8.
News Brands
ABC apologises for Alice Springs report
The ABC has apologised for providing an incomplete picture in a radio report about an Alice Springs community forum held to address alcohol-fuelled violence in the community, reports Nine Publishing’s Zoe Samios.
Matt Paterson, the mayor of Alice Springs, demanded on Thursday that ABC chair Ita Buttrose retract stories that appeared on the national broadcaster’s platforms that claimed a community forum at the Alice Springs Convention Centre expressed elements of “white supremacy”.
The forum, which took place on Monday, was attended by thousands of residents who were concerned about drunken violence and property crime in the area.
Paterson demanded an apology to the Alice Springs community and told The Australian that the ABC reports had misrepresented what took place.
In a statement on the ABC’s website, the national broadcaster said one report on its radio current affair program AM did not adequately provide listeners with the context of the meeting or a variety of perspectives expressed at it. The ABC said that while the meeting was “accurately reported” and newsworthy, the report had fallen short of some standards.
“ABC News apologises to audiences for providing an incomplete picture of the event in this instance,” the ABC said. “Over the course of the day, the coverage included information and perspectives that provided a balanced understanding of the event, including additional comments from the meeting and further context regarding allegations of racism. ABC News stands by its journalists covering this story.”
News Corp Australia prepares to slash costs by $20 million
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation will slash $20 million in costs from the business that owns The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, and The Herald Sun over the next two years, in a bid to make the newsrooms financially viable over the long term, reports Nine Publishing’s Zoe Samios.
The project, which staff are referring to as ‘Audience 25’, is the latest move by the Murdoch-controlled media company to find efficiencies against the backdrop of rising inflation and broader global economic pressures. Media sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the project is confidential, said senior executives are in the process of identifying where to reduce costs.
The sources said the program was being led by national community masthead network editor, John McGourty, and Rowan Hunnam, head of digital, national regional and community network. News Corp declined to comment.
Podcasts
Number of new podcasts drops by 80%
New industry figures have revealed that the number of new podcasts fell rapidly in the last year; a worldwide decline of 80% compared with the two previous years, reports The Guardian’s Vanessa Thorpe.
These statistics suggest the podcast balloon has burst, but closer study shows that the slowdown marks a major change in direction prompted by “a case of the jitters”, according to one leading British podcast producer.
Analysts at Chartr uncovered the dramatic drop using international data supplied by the podcast engine Listen Notes. In 2020, 1,109,000 podcasts were launched. In 2021, 729,000 new titles came out, while last year only 219,000 shows debuted. (For some perspective, there are thought to be at least 3m podcasts running across the globe, and most made are in America and Brazil. The vast majority are made in the English language, with Spanish in second place.)
Television
All the shows Programmers confirmed as not returning this year
Over this past week TV programmers from Seven, Nine, 10, ABC & SBS all spoke in great detail to TV Tonight about their 2023 schedules, reports TV Tonight.
If you missed them, they also confirmed some big shows are not returning this year, while some are axed altogether.
A few others have decisions pending or remain in development for more.
Here’s a recap.
Sports Media
Eddie Betts turns his wildly popular books into new series for Netflix
When Eddie Betts joined Carlton Football Club as a teenager in 2004, he was barely literate. Now, aged 36, he is about to see the children’s books he co-authored with wife Anna Scullie become an animated series for Netflix and NITV, reports Nine Publishing’s Karl Quinn.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” says Betts in the boardroom of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, which has helped bring Eddie’s Lil’ Homies to the screen.
“It’s a pinch-me moment. Here I am, just this shy Aboriginal kid from the community that couldn’t read or write. I wouldn’t have thought I’d have the career I had in AFL football, let alone writing two children’s books and have an autobiography out. And now I’m a producer of a cartoon series. It’s crazy. It is crazy.”
Betts played 350 AFL games at Carlton and the Adelaide Crows across 17 seasons, kicked 640 goals, and was a three-time All-Australian, but his humility is as striking as his ambition. He’s still the kid from Kalgoorlie who got lucky in life. “If I didn’t get drafted, I had nothing,” he says. “The only thing I could do is work in the mines. Footy kind of saved me.”
But footy did much more than that. It also gave him a platform, one he’s determined to use to make it easier for other shy Indigenous kids to make their way in the world.