Business of Media
Foxtel gets a short term Disney-ESPN deal
Foxtel chief executive Patrick Delany can exhale a little. The pay TV company struck a deal last week with ESPN to continue as the local go-to broadcaster for top sport played in the United States, report Nine Publishing’s Mark Di Stefano and Sam Buckingham-Jones.
Foxtel announced the deal on Wednesday morning with little fanfare and scant detail – issuing a press release which said the distribution deal was a “new multi-year” agreement to keep broadcasting the NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL and UFC in Australia. The release also carried a statement from Kylie Watson Wheeler, the local head of Disney, the parent company of ESPN.
When asked about the length of the deal, Foxtel said that even disclosing how many years it involved was commercial-in-confidence. But industry sources suggest the agreement was for about two years.
That’s a mini coup because the value proposition of Kayo – Foxtel’s sports streamer – hinges on having all key sport under one roof. The company signed a long-term deal with the AFL last year and now with the US sport, the NRL will be up next. As part of the announcement, Foxtel said Kayo now had 1.3 million subscribers.
Delany was able to secure a deal with Warner Bros Discovery-owned HBO earlier this year, which made sure Binge remains the home of Succession, White Lotus and Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon – for now.
Asia-Pacific emerges as weak spot in Netflix streaming figures
Netflix’s revenues in Asia-Pacific countries are falling, putting the region at odds with the company’s overall outlook, with the streaming giant recording a large increase in the number of subscribers in the United States after it put in place measures to prevent the sharing of accounts, reports Nine Publishing’s Mark Di Stefano.
The company, in a quarterly update on Wednesday, reported that it added 5.9 million subscribers after accounting for departing users and net income of $US$1.5 billion ($2.2 billion) for the three months to June 30. While subscribers grew strongly – up eight per cent – the market was disappointed with lower sales growth, just 2. 7per cent to $US8.2 billion.
While the company does not provide country-by-country revenue and subscriber numbers, it does break out figures by region. The Asia Pacific region, including Australia, has become the worst market for Netflix, with negative 13 per cent growth – or seven per cent, when foreign currency effects were accounted for – with average revenue per membership below that recorded in the Americas, Europe and the Middle East.
Those figures show revenues of $US919 million in the region for the three months to June 30, down from $US934 million one quarter earlier. The number of paid memberships had increased, from 39.5 million to 40.6 million, those figures showed, while average revenue had slipped from $US8.03 to $US7.66. One year ago, it was $US8.83 per subscriber.
The overall growth in subscribers, however, made the period Netflix’s second-best quarter since the COVID-19 pandemic and were well ahead of expectations from brokers of 2.07 million new subscribers. It is a significant turnaround from last year, when Netflix lost almost 1.2 million subscribers over the first six months as customers reconsidered their needs.
See Also: As streaming wars losses mount, Netflix remains the gold standard
Imprisoned journalist Cheng Lei will wait three more months after a verdict on her case delayed
Detained Australian television journalist Cheng Lei’s fight for freedom has been dealt another blow after her verdict was delayed for the eighth time, reports The Australian’s Sophie Elsworth.
The 48-year-old, who is approaching three years behind bars next month, will have to wait until at least October for a decision to be made about her future.
Cheng was detained by the Chinese Ministry of State Security in August 2020 after being charged with providing state secrets to foreign organisations and details around her arrest remain scant.
Her partner, Nick Coyle, who lives in Port Moresby, said the latest delay to a verdict being reached was “deeply disappointing” for her and her family.
“There is no doubt the longer this continues the more difficult it is for her and her two children,” he told The Australian.
“Having yet another birthday in a Ministry of State Security facility was difficult but she continues to show enormous courage and good humour.”
Elon Musk says Twitter will change logo from bird to an X
Elon Musk announced on Sunday that Twitter’s new logo, an X, would go live, replacing the distinctive bird logo in what would be the latest in a series of controversial shake-ups to the social media platform under his stewardship, reports The Guardian’s Joanna Partridge.
“X.com now points to twitter.com,” the Tesla chief executive tweeted Sunday afternoon. “Interim X logo goes live later today.”
Musk, who bought the site for $44bn (£34bn) last October, tweeted in the early hours of Sunday that he intended to replace the blue avian silhouette with an “X” logo by as early as Monday if a suitable design was offered.
Musk changed the company’s official name in April to X Holdings Corp, after his early venture X.com, to reflect his vision of creating “X, the everything app” performing social media and payment functions, similar to China’s WeChat.
News Brands
ABC chair Ita Buttrose ‘sorry’ for controversial King’s coronation coverage
ABC chair Ita Buttrose is sorry viewers of the public broadcaster’s controversial coverage of King Charles III’s coronation were left disappointed and admits lessons must be learned for covering future live events, reports The Australian’s Sophie Elsworth.
Buttrose’s apology was in a letter to the Australian Monarchist League obtained by The Australian. She was responding to the League’s June 19 demand for an apology for “outstandingly bad” coverage of the May 6 coronation, which was supported by 10,000 signatures from within Australia and abroad.
The TV panel, led by presenters Julia Baird and Jeremy Fernandez, was dominated by pro-republican voices — former Q+A host Stan Grant, Indigenous activist Teela Reid and Australian Republic Movement chair Craig Foster — with Liberal MP Julian Leeser the only monarchist.
As dignitaries flowed into Westminster Abbey, the coverage, overseen by executive producer Tim Ayliffe, was heavily focused on colonisation and the damage the monarchy had inflicted on Indigenous Australians.
In the days that followed the ABC received 1800 complaints.
ABC tracks Voice coverage down to the second
The ABC, battered by years of criticism about its political balance by the right and increasingly the left, has ordered staff to log everyone they get to speak on the Indigenous Voice to parliament down to 15-second increments, reports Nine Publishing’s Nick Bonyhady.
The internal Voice Tracker requires staff to fill out up to 10 questions about anyone who comments for an ABC story on the upcoming referendum, including their state, position and whether they are Indigenous.
It covers all forms of ABC news content, except for Facebook, YouTube and talkback, and could be used by the broadcaster in an attempt to show its coverage of the referendum is balanced and features diverse sources of commentary – or identify and resolve issues as they arise. Even people who have declined to appear have to be entered into the tracker and staff are encouraged to include Indigenous place names in the data they enter.
No other Australian broadcaster is known to track who reporters feature in their stories in the same minute detail. But no other outlet is regularly ordered to appear before the Senate and subject to questions from parliamentarians scrutinising how it spends its $1 billion annual budget.
Catharine Lumby, a media academic at Sydney University and a former ABC employee, said the broadcaster appeared to be adding a “bureaucratic form” to the daily tasks required of reporters.
Television
Lisa Wilkinson to skip the Logies, one year after her controversial speech at the event
It was supposed to be Lisa Wilkinson’s crowning career moment. At last year’s Logies on the Gold Coast, Wilkinson, still host of Ten’s The Project at that point, had just been announced winner of the Silver Logie for the Most Outstanding News Coverage or Public Affairs Report for her Brittany Higgins interview, reports The Australian’s Nick Tabakoff.
She stepped up to the stage in front of her peers to solemnly tell the by-then well lubricated Logies crowd: “This story is by far the most important work I have ever done. And I knew it from the very first phone call I had last year from a young woman whose name, she told me, was Brittany Higgins. As Brittany warned me before we went to air, her story would be seen by many of the most powerful people in this country not as a human problem, but as a political problem.”
But as the 2023 Logies loom next Sunday, Wilkinson must surely be having mixed feelings about what then appeared to be the biggest speech and moment of her media career. There will be no winner’s speech or Logie nomination for Wilkinson this time. Indeed, the departed Project host won’t even be present, with her TV career now on indefinite hold. Despite continuing to be paid a seven-figure salary by Ten, she hasn’t appeared on the network’s screens for eight whole months. And our mail says Wilkinson won’t be back on Ten’s screens until at least 2024.
Hamish Blake backs Leigh Sales to nab Gold Logie ahead of TV’s biggest night
Gold Logie frontrunner Hamish Blake has built his career on comedy but he is not joking when he says doubts he is a shot at a third trophy, reports News Corp’s Lisa Woolford.
“I do get the sense I’ll be the guy to hand it over this time, which I’m happy to do,” the hugely-popular Blake said.
“I mean, I’ll be voting for Leigh Sales – I think we all will be.
“Leigh and I bonded over our love of Survivor and I think she’d be happy to have that alliance heading into voting.”
Blake, Sales, Shaun Micallef, Sonia Kruger, Osher Gunsberg, Julia Morris and Mark Coles Smith gathered in Sydney for a shoot for TV Week’s annual Logies special edition, which is out Monday.
Sales might have Blake’s vote but she’s convinced someone made a terrible mistake including her on the list.
“It feels kind of surreal and it’s not lost on me that I currently have the least amount of (air) time on TV,” she said
“The less the Australian public sees of me, the more popular I become.”