Business of Media
Weak Aussie dollar stirs Hollywood’s hunger for more content
US media giants are continuing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the local film and TV industry as the weak Aussie dollar makes it increasingly attractive to buy and produce content from Australia, reports Nine Publishing’s Mark Di Stefano.
Disney is the latest major media company to make an investment in the country, with local executives announcing on Monday the newest film in the Planet of the Apes franchise will be produced in Australia.
And in a sign of the times, the company said it would rename the Fox Studios lot in Sydney, where the film will be produced, to Disney Studios Australia.
Fox Studios was opened at Moore Park in 1998 and has been the headquarters for major Hollywood film productions including The Matrix, Moulin Rouge and, recently, Thor Love & Thunder.
Disney bought Rupert Murdoch’s film studios, 21st Century Fox, for $96 billion in 2017.
Consultation begins on changes to Anti-siphoning scheme
The Federal Government has commenced consultation on the Anti-Siphoning scheme, which aims to give Free to Air broadcasters an initial opportunity to buy television rights to major events, reports TV Tonight.
Subscription television broadcasters are unable to acquire the right to televise an event until a Free to Air broadcaster has a right, or the event is removed from the list 26 weeks prior to the event.
The list includes key sporting events including the Olympic Games, Commonwealth Games, AFL, NRL, rugby union, soccer, tennis, netball, motorsports, horse racing and cricket. The current list is due to expire in April 2023. The consultation process will develop a new list.
The review will also assess the operation of the scheme in the contemporary media environment.
See Also: Explained: The nuts and bolts of Australia’s anti-siphoning laws
What’s in the public interest? Murdoch v Crikey trial could test new defamation defence
Lachlan Murdoch’s role as the controller of his family’s media conglomerates in the US and Australia was “inseparable” from the reputation of those organisations, the federal court has heard, reports The Guardian’s Amanda Meade.
The relevance of Murdoch’s leadership of the US Fox Corporation and its role in the January 6 riots was discussed at length in a preliminary hearing for the upcoming defamation trial against Private Media’s Crikey.
Murdoch’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC wants parts of Crikey’s defence struck out because she says they are irrelevant, embarrassing and will waste time at the trial.
Chrysanthou argued on Monday it was not necessary for the court to watch an incalculable number of hours of Fox News coverage to establish whether Crikey could successfully use the new public interest defence.
She argued the new defence – which has not been tested in a case yet – was not applicable to Crikey. “The new dawn promised to the media by reason of this defence is not going to happen,” she said.
Kanye West’s posts land him in trouble on social media
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, has set off one controversy after another in the last week, first at his fashion show and then on social media, prompting accusations of racism and antisemitism, reports the New York Times’ Stuart A. Thompson.
On Monday, at Paris Fashion Week, he debuted a T-shirt for his fashion line bearing the phrase “White Lives Matter.” On Friday, he suggested on Instagram that Sean Combs, the rapper known as Diddy, was being controlled by Jewish people. Ye’s account was restricted by Instagram that day.
Early on Sunday morning, he went on Twitter and lashed out against Jewish people in a series of tweets.
Ye tweeted that he would soon go “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to the United States’ defense readiness condition, known as Def. Con.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Twitter said Ye’s account was locked for violating Twitter’s policies. A spokeswoman for Meta said it places restrictions on accounts that repeatedly break its rules.
News Brands
CNN reporter Anna Coren has been fined for entering a Thailand crime scene where dozens of people were murdered
Two CNN journalists including Australian reporter Anna Coren have been fined by Thai authorities and have left the country amid the fallout that eventuated after they entered a crime scene where dozens of people were murdered, reports News Corp’s Sophie Elsworth.
Coren and another CNN colleague entered Thailand on tourist visas to report on last week’s massacre at a daycare centre, where at least 24 children and 12 adults were murdered.
Latest reports state that the pair have since been fined after entering the crime scene where there are still blood-spattered walls and the belongings of children who attended the centre – many items remain untouched.
John Cleese to host GB News show as he rails against ‘cancel culture’
John Cleese has signed up to become a presenter on the rightwing television channel GB News, while also complaining that “cancel culture” is keeping people such as himself off TV screens, reports The Guardian’s Jim Waterson.
The Monty Python star, who will present shows on GB News from next year, said: “There’s a massive amount of important information that gets censored, both in TV and in the press. In my new show, I’ll be talking about a lot of it. You should be prepared to be shocked.”
Asked how his show with GB News came about, Cleese told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I was approached and I didn’t know who they were … And then I met one or two of the [GB News] people concerned and had dinner with them, and I liked them very much. And what they said was: ‘People say it’s the rightwing channel – it’s a free speech channel.’”
The 82-year-old said he would not be offered such a show by the BBC: “The BBC have not come to me and said: ‘Would you like to have some one-hour shows?’ And if they did, I would say: ‘Not on your nelly!’ Because I wouldn’t get five minutes into the first show before I’d been cancelled or censored.”
Television
Mother of Dahmer victim condemns Netflix series: ‘I don’t see how they can do that’
The mother of aspiring model Tony Hughes, who was among more than a dozen men murdered by Jeffrey Dahmer, has condemned the recently released Netflix series about the serial killer who took her son’s life, saying she doesn’t understand how the television show could be made, reports The Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas.
Shirley Hughes told The Guardian on Sunday that she hadn’t seen all of Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which focuses one of its 10 episodes on her son, who was deaf and just 31 years old at the time of his slaying in 1991. Nonetheless, she’d concluded that “it didn’t happen like that”.
“I don’t see how they can do that,” Hughes said, before adding that it was difficult to talk about Tony’s murder and politely ending the call. “I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there.”
Now 85, the still-grieving mother joined a growing chorus of people whose relatives were murdered by Dahmer and who have mounted a loud backlash against Netflix’s dramatization of his killing spree in Milwaukee.