Business of Media
Aussies added 189,000 streaming services despite cost-of-living crunch
Amazon’s Prime Video and Foxtel-owned Binge scored the most new Australian streaming subscribers in the first quarter of 2023, returning the sector to growth after a year of decline, reports Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
About 1.1 million Australians nationwide cancelled their streaming plan in the January-March, but 1.34 million signed up to a new one, meaning there were, overall, 189,000 new services added in the first quarter.
Kantar’s quarterly Entertainment on Demand streaming data shows 61.5 per cent of Australian homes – or 6.12 million households – had at least one subscription streamer, but the average per home stayed at 3.4.
The research firm has an ongoing panel of 10,000 Australians around the country it surveys every quarter for their streaming behaviour and sentiment.
This has been the first time since the streaming data began at the beginning of 2022 that the market has grown, Kantar’s Tamsin Timpson said.
Dominion wants ‘accountability’ over Fox News election lies, co-founder says
Dominion Voting Systems, which last month reached a $787.5m settlement of its $1.6bn defamation case against Fox News, is seeking wider accountability for the broadcast of Donald Trump’s election fraud lies and will “not … stop until we get it”, a co-founder said, reports The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly.
A Dominion lawyer, meanwhile, said he hoped messages redacted in court filings but reportedly linked to the dramatic firing of Tucker Carlson would soon be revealed.
John Poulos, chief executive of Dominion, Hootan Yaghoobzadeh, an investor from Staple Street Capital, and Stephen Shackelford, a partner at Susman Godfrey, the law firm representing Dominion, spoke to Axios in an interview published on Monday.
Fox still faces a $2.7bn suit from Smartmatic, another election machine company targeted by Trump and his allies in their lies about voter fraud in his 2020 defeat by Joe Biden.
Axios noted that Dominion is pursuing defamation lawsuits against two Fox competitors, One America News and NewsMax, and four Trump allies: Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, and Patrick Byrne.
Poulos said: “As we said from the beginning, we’re seeking accountability and we’re not going to stop until we get it. We have six more cases and we are completely aligned as we have been from the beginning.”
Super Mario Bros. Movie crosses the US$1 billion mark
The animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie crossed the US$1 billion box-office threshold on Sunday, making it the fifth movie to do so since the start of the pandemic and the surest sign yet that the theatrical movie business is on the rebound after a prolonged downturn, reports The New York Times’ Nicole Sperling.
Despite middling reviews, the Universal Pictures film, which features Chris Pratt as the voice of the beloved video game character Mario, has been in theaters for only 26 days and is now the seventh biggest film in Universal’s history, passing both Jurassic World Dominion and the animated Despicable Me in worldwide box office grosses.
Of the five films to cross the $1 billion mark since the pandemic began, Super Mario is the first animated one. Geared to families with young children — and fans of the uber-popular Nintendo video game — the movie provided a welcome reprieve to theater owners who had been concerned that the family film business was at risk of not returning to prepandemic levels. In fact, Super Mario helped push the April domestic box office up 11.5 percent compared with prepandemic levels, according to the box office analyst David A. Gross.
Gross called the stat “a breakthrough” since it marks the first month that has surpassed its prepandemic average. The 2023 year-to-date box office deficit is now down 21.8 percent compared with that average.
Radio
Celebrity guests say what went down at Kyle Sandilands’ wedding
The who’s who of Sydney were nursing sore heads on Sunday, but say radio King Kyle Sandilands and Tegan Kynaston’s lavish celebrity wedding in Darling Point was the event of the year, reports News Corp’s Mikaela Wilkes.
“It was an absolutely fabulous wedding,” Karl Stefanovic told The Daily Telegraph of the no-expense-spared extravaganza at Swifts $60 million mansion on Saturday.
“A great big Aussie mix of family and friends. And a Premier and a PM whose partners are more fun than them.
“The best part,” Stefanovic said, “was Tegan’s grandfather walking her down the aisle, 97 years young.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese dodged the DJ decks at the KIIS FM shock jock’s reception, after courting controversy for taking a day off to attend.
“I’ll be honest with you, it was a big effort for him to come,” Beau Ryan said.
See Also: What Kyle Sandilands thought about Albo’s attendance at his wedding
Television
TV sources give an insight into MasterChef Australia’s next steps after losing Jock Zonfrillo
The shock passing of Jock Zonfrillo has left all in the air on the new season of MasterChef, reports News Corp’s Jonathon Moran.
Network 10 immediately made the decision to push out the much publicised premiere from Monday night and are working on what comes next for the hugely popular reality cooking show, of which Zonfrillo was integral.
Production had wrapped a month ago at Melbourne’s Flemington MasterChef headquarters with the full slate of episodes in the can and a series winner already crowned.
Sources say season 15, which would have cost millions of dollars to produce, will go ahead but changes will be made.
“With all episodes already in the vault, they will be watching every episode carefully to ensure there is nothing that will distress viewers and more pertinently, family and close friends,” the production source said.
“It is not something you can get wrong so they will take their time.”
10 boss Beverley McGarvey will over the coming days meet with producers to iron out next steps.
See Also: “An extraordinary man”: MasterChef’s Jock Zonfrillo passes away aged 46
“The Christmas Eve of my life”: Inside Barry Humphries’ final TV shoot
“He said several times that he was in the ‘Christmas Eve of his life.’ Isn’t that a lovely quote?” says executive producer Maxine Gray, reports TV Tonight.
For Gray, it isn’t often that a celebrity reaches out to request being featured on SBS genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?
“It happens sometimes, but not usually with someone of Barry’s standing.”
But that’s just what happened when Humphries’ agent reached out. Gray met with Barry and wife Lizzie Spender in early 2022 to discuss the idea. The result is a very special episode -one that Humphries never got to see.
“I do feel that he was interested in a kind of legacy project. He said,” on camera, ‘This could be the last thing I do on television,’ so it did seem to be something he’d thought about. He said, ‘What I’m slowly becoming to realise is I will be someone’s ancestor soon,’” she recalls.
Sports Media
‘I wish I had come out then’: The Ian Roberts story to be told on screen
Ian Roberts, reflecting on a remarkable life that is set to become the subject of a documentary film, wonders whether it would be easier for a footballer to come out as gay today than when he became a trailblazer way back in 1995, reports Nine Publishing’s Adrian Proszenko.
“It’s still very much seen as a weakness in men’s sport. That is the perception,” Roberts says. “I think back now and me being gay was the worst-kept secret for five or six years. I used to take my boyfriend, Shane, to functions.
“My thinking of it then was, ‘I shouldn’t have to come out.’ That people should get it around their heads that I’m gay.
“Reflecting now, as soon as I started playing for Souths [in 1986], I wish I had come out then. I wish I had never been in the closet, if that makes sense. It’s not even about being in the closet, I wish I didn’t have that militant take that I shouldn’t have to come out. But I also understand that you can’t be what you can’t see … That was a time when there was no internet, no one had cameras in their phones.
“I honestly think maybe it would be harder to come out now. It’s so much more instant, there’s so much more media and hype on hand, because of everyone having phones [and opinions].”