Business of Media
News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson to front media inquiry
News Corporation chief executive Robert Thomson will next week front a long-running Senate inquiry into media diversity – becoming the fourth executive from the company to appear, reports News Corp’s James Madden and Sophie Elsworth.
The inquiry was established by Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young at the urging of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, who has led a lengthy campaign against News Corp.
Despite a wide-ranging brief to consider media diversity and the impact of online news on Australia’s media landscape, the inquiry has yet to hear from a number of the country’s largest media organisations.
Thomson is the only senior media executive slated to appear at next week’s hearing. He will be joined by Australian Press Council chief executive Yvette Lamont and a number of journalism academics.
Fox News inks 6-Book deal with HarperCollins
Fox News is expanding its publishing footprint, reports The Hollywood Reporter‘s Alex Weprin.
The cable news channel has signed a 6-book deal with News Corp.’s HarperCollins for its Fox News Books imprint. Fox News launched Fox News Books a year ago with a 3-book deal, also with HarperCollins.
The first two books were from anchors Pete Hegseth and Shannon Bream, and the third will be released next month: All-American Christmas, which will be written by Fox & Friends Weekend co-host (and former MTV The Real World: San Francisco star) Rachel Campos-Duffy, along with her husband and Fox News contributor Sean Duffy. The book will also include contributions from personalities like Steve Doocy, Bill Hemmer, Martha MacCallum and Geraldo Rivera.
Entertainment
Dannii: ‘It was a real mind-blowing moment’
While she and her pop-star sibling have spent decades in the spotlight, Dannii Minogue says she never expected to be working in the entertainment industry 40 years after first appearing on Young Talent Time aged 10, reports News Corp’s Alison Stephenson.
“I was absolutely, positively prepared to not still be working in the entertainment industry,” she explains.
“I had no idea what I was going to do. I left school at 16 and I had no qualifications for anything.”
Now a judge on The Masked Singer, Minogue has also fronted The X Factor in both the UK and Australia as well as Australia’s Got Talent, but says the lack of older women on-screen when she was a child led her to believe that her own screen career might be short-lived.
Reality TV star Abbie Chatfield fears going public about sexual assaults
Former Bachelor star Abbie Chatfield says she refuses to go public about several incidents of sexual assault because her attackers are violent and wealthy, reports News Corp’s Nui Te Koha.
Chatfield, a former property analyst, told the Brains Trust podcast in LiSTNR she’d been sexually assaulted “more than once in varying degrees.”
She added: “I think most women have, most women that I know have had something a bit off centre. We talk about it (in private) with our girlfriends, and we get collectively triggered.”
Asked why she won’t go public about being a victim of sexual assault, Chatfield replied: “One of the people that did something really f—ed, he is a very aggressive, angry person, and I would be scared to say anything publicly about him.
“The other has a lot of money, and could come for me,” Chatfield said.
“Another one was when I was a bit younger, and people would say I was lying.”
Television
From 150 pitches a year to 7 dramas in development
Yesterday speaking at Series Mania Industry Day, Sally Riley, ABC’s Head of Drama, Comedy & Indigenous, gave some insight into the numbers involved, as well as how notes from networks to producers are often received, reports TV Tonight.
“We have probably 150 pitches come in a year. In the last year we’ve only put 7 into development. In active development we have about 13 dramas. We don’t make those decisions lightly,” she said.
“We absolutely love the show and we are here to help you make the best show it can be. We come from an audience’s perspective. Sometimes we’ll say ‘the tone is getting too dark, our audience isn’t going to want that’ and try and keep them on track.
“But I don’t apologise for giving notes. We certainly don’t sit around going, ‘I’ve got nothing to do today, I think I might just write two pages of notes for Tony Ayres and drive him crazy.’ We don’t have time to do that.”
‘Squid Game’ had modest start in U.S., Nielsen says
The phenomenon that is Squid Game didn’t explode out of the gate, at least not in the United States, reports The Hollywood Reporter‘s Rick Potter.
Part of the narrative surrounding Netflix’s breakout Korean series is how it seemingly came from out of left field, and Nielsen’s streaming rankings for its debut week (Sept. 13-19) bear that out. The series, which premiered Sept. 17 on the streamer, racked up 206 million minutes of viewing time over its first three days, landing it outside the top 10 original series for the week.
With a total running time of 491 minutes for the nine-episode season, the average audience for the show was about 420,000 people.
UK soaps unite for climate change cause
For the first time in British television history, seven soaps have joined forces to highlight the issue of climate change and environmental issues, reports TV Tonight.
Casualty, Coronation Street, Doctors, EastEnders, Emmerdale, Holby City and Hollyoaks have each filmed scenes, or have references, to cover different aspects of climate change and, in a soap first, five of the soaps will also be referencing each other as each drama will also give a nod to another.
British viewers will see some characters pop up in another soap as they discuss, or see the moments, that have been debated in another show in a bid to raise awareness of climate change.
The event will see a Hollyoaks character pop up in EastEnders‘ Walford while villagers of Hollyoaks will learn about events at Holby City. A social media video featuring two of Emmerdale’s residents will be shown to Coronation Street characters, whilst one of Doctors will appear on the cobbles of Coronation Street.
The drama begins in the UK on Monday 1 November, the same week as World Leaders meet to discuss the climate crisis at the COP26 conference.