Business of Media
Paramount ends 2022 with 77m streaming subs globally, Paramount+ adds 10m in Q4
Paramount surpassed 77 million global streaming subscribers in Q4, adding 10 million to Paramount+ alone to reach nearly 56 million customers for that platform, reports Variety.
In comparison, the paid streamer added 4.6 million subscribers in the third quarter, reaching nearly 67 million global direct-to-consumer customers overall for Paramount by the end of September.
Paramount’s ad-supported platform Pluto TV approached 79 million monthly active users (MAUs) worldwide in Q4, up from 72 million at the end of Q3.
Paramount+ to raise subscription prices in US and some other markets
Paramount Global will raise the monthly subscription price for its rebranded streaming service Paramount+ with Showtime in the third quarter of 2023, executives said on an earnings conference call after reporting fourth-quarter results that saw Paramount+ post strong subscriber gains in the fourth quarter thanks to such hit content as Top Gun: Maverick, report The Hollywood Reporter’s Georg Szalai and Caitlin Huston.
“We all know streaming represents incredible value for consumers and the Paramount Plus offering is far from the industry price leader. We are on the value end of the pricing spectrum. And so in 2023, we will raise prices both for Paramount Plus Premium and Essential, both in the U.S., and select international markets,” CEO Bob Bakish said on the call.
HT&E’s biggest investor sees benefits to media consolidation
The biggest investor in HT&E, which owns iHeartRadio and Kiis FM, the home of Kyle and Jackie O, has spoken out about a possible M&A tie-up with Seven West Media, saying consolidation is likely but it is hesitant about free-to-air TV, reports Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
Fund manager Allan Gray, which owns 20 per cent of HT&E, says the company’s ability to generate clear cash flow makes radio a compelling asset. The fund also owns almost 22 per cent – also the major shareholding – of Southern Cross Media Group, the parent company of HT&E’s rival radio giant Southern Cross Austereo.
Allan Gray analyst Tim Hillier pointed towards well-publicised expensive sports rights being a hindrance to further investment in television broadcasters.
“We’ve been investors in a number of traditional media businesses over time. One thing that stands out is that a well-run radio business can generate very good cash flows, as we’ve seen from HT&E,” Hillier said.
“In contrast, [free-to-air] seem to have had a bad habit of overpaying for sports and broadcast rights, leading to problems down the line.
“I can see benefits of media businesses coming together. But HT&E’s ability to generate good, clean cash flow is a pretty rare feature in the media world today, and a feature that is probably underappreciated.”
Meta to test monthly subscription service priced at $11.99
Meta Platforms on Sunday announced that it is testing a monthly subscription service, called Meta Verified, which will let users verify their accounts using a government ID and get a blue badge, as it looks to help content creators grow and build communities, reports Reuters.
The subscription bundle for Instagram and Facebook, to be launched later this week, also includes extra protection against impersonation and will be priced starting at $11.99 per month on the web or $14.99 a month on Apple’s iOS system and Android.
Meta Verified will be rolled out in Australia and New Zealand this week, with gradual launches in other countries to follow.
Meta’s foray into subscription services follows Twitter, which announced last month that Twitter Blue will be priced at $11 per month.
The privacy proposal that could suppress unflattering but true stories
Business titans and politicians would be given a new avenue to suppress unflattering but true stories on what courts deem their personal lives under proposal to let Australians sue over privacy breach claims, reports Nine Publishing’s Nick Bonyhady.
The proposal, part the Attorney-General’s Department review of the Privacy Act delivered last week, is designed to protect Australians from online and physical intrusions into their personal lives.
It would allow Australians to sue if someone reported on the leaked contents of a personal email or intrusive photograph or any other serious “misuse” of private information. This has been recommended before but not legislated in Australia. The courts would have to take the “public interest” into account but whether a news story was accurate would not factor into the claim.
Overseas, a host of wealthy celebrities, sportspeople and business figures have used privacy claims to stop reporting on their personal affairs and drug issues. The full scale of these cases, especially in the United Kingdom, is unknown because the courts can issue legal orders preventing any reporting on the privacy case.
News Brands
The Australian reveals eight appointments including new deputy editor
Georgina Windsor has been promoted to deputy editor, bringing more than 30 years of experience and a deep understanding of the country’s biggest issues to The Australian’s leadership team.
Windsor, who will lead the newsroom alongside fellow deputy editor Petra Rees, has been Inquirer editor for the past five years. Previously Windsor was features editor, deputy business editor, deputy media editor and a reporter in the Canberra press gallery.
Christine Kellett has been named content director, where she will drive The Australian’s storytelling across all platforms. She was previously weekend digital editor and has been a news editor, chief of staff and senior reporter at titles including The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, Brisbane Times and news.com.au.
Jennifer Campbell has been named Inquirer editor. Campbell returns to the Inquirer role, having spent the past two years leading the masthead’s daily opinion and analysis through the 2022 federal election and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Nicholas Jensen has been promoted to commentary editor. He has spent the past two years in the masthead’s NSW bureau.
Elyse Popplewell has been named content strategy director, a role in which she will combine her news judgment with knowledge of audience growth tactics. Popplewell started her career at The Australian as social media editor and was most recently editor of theoz.com.au.
Bianca Farmakis has been named social media editor, spearheading the masthead’s content on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok.
Emilia Tortorella has been named digital design director, where she will lead illustration and graphics on The Australian’s website and apps.
Geordie Gray is the masthead’s new entertainment reporter, covering the worlds of TV, film, streaming, music, theatre and more.
Image: Georgina Windsor, Christine Kellett, Jennifer Campbell, Nicholas Jensen, Elyse Popplewell, Bianca Farmakis, Emilia Tortorella and Geordie Gray
Media union confident of industrial action majority at ABC
More than 70 per cent of the ABC’s media union workforce voted in the first three days of an internal ballot, which the union believes has already reached the majority needed for its first industrial action in more than 15 years, reports Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
Members of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) have been asked to vote on nine options for protected action, ranging from “an unlimited number of stoppages of all work other than emergency coverage” and bans on working on the ABC website, to wearing union campaign material in the workplace.
“It takes a lot for journalists at the ABC to consider doing something like this, they’re deeply committed to their role informing the public. But they’re at breaking point, and this dispute is about the future of the ABC,” Cassie Derrick, director of MEAA Media, said.
Good Weekend runs extract from Kate Legge’s book about husband’s infidelity
Journalist Kate Legge has written a book about her marriage and subsequent separation from the former Fairfax editor who became the group CEO, Greg Hywood.
Good Weekend magazine featured an extract. Legge recalled their first meeting:
I first glimpsed the man I would marry needling the then Labor leader Bob Hawke in a press conference at Sydney’s Boulevard Hotel during the 1983 federal election campaign. He stood out from the throng of scruffy journalists for his serious intent, peppery questions on budgetary policy, his horn-rimmed spectacles, eucalypt-green suit and bright red woollen vest. Our first conversation, at the bar of the National Press Club early in the Hawke government’s reign, lasted all night. We married two years later.
Legge also writes about showing her former husband what she had written:
When he read an early draft of my book, he got up from the table and left the house to go for a walk. Too judgmental, was his response. He was right. He has strong views that buttress his behaviour and tame the guilt, and he’s crafted a defence to shield his character. I admire his unflinching tolerance of my blowtorch. The telling of this story has been tempered by the passage of time and the shift in perspective that distance affords us.
Television
Annette Sharp: Small-screen stars in short supply on Aussie TV
Nine can still lay claim to top spot on television’s power list, with four-time Gold Logie nominee and two-time winner Lego Masters host Hamish Blake at the top, writes News Corp’s Annette Sharp.
Thanks to her incredible exposure, Seven’s 2022 Gold Logie nominee Sonia Kruger – who in 2022 hosted back-to-back prime-time offerings The Voice, Big Brother, and Dancing With The Stars – is currently the second-biggest star on Australian television.
Her stablemate, Sunrise host David Koch, lands at number three with his enormous live television workload and national appeal.
Global TV phenomenon Bluey is fourth, and The Block’s Scott Cam is at number five.
Positions six to 10 are, given the ABC’s successes, simply too close to call.
The contenders, in no particular order, are the ABC’s Tom Gleeson, Sarah Ferguson and the recently departed Shaun Micallef; Nine’s Andy Lee, Karl Stefanovic and Ali Langdon; and 10’s Tom Gleisner, Osher Gunsberg, Julia Morris and the last star standing at The Project, Waleed Aly.
See Also: Mediaweek’s 2022 Star Power Top 25
Why TV execs aren’t (too) worried about a 22pc plunge in ad spend
This time last year, television sales teams were riding high after a blockbuster month in January, reports Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
Ash Barty had won the Australian Open, driving 2.8 million viewers in the major cities to Nine. Another 1.7 million tuned in for Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis winning the men’s doubles. Australia had won the Ashes series, pushing big, consistent audiences to Seven and Fox Sports. 10’s I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! started the year strong for the network.
Clive Palmer’s spending spree had begun, adding, on some estimates, north of $70 million ahead of the federal election. Television sales teams banked about $155 million, up from $120 million in January 2021.
But this year, early data from Standard Media Index (SMI), which measures how much is spent with different media channels by the country’s big advertising agencies, reported metropolitan television ad spend on free-to-air networks had dropped by a forceful 22 per cent.
UBS analysts reported that the decline, which followed a 15.9 per cent fall in December, suggested “continuing headwinds” for free-to-air television.
Filmmaker: ‘SBS butchered my movie, and there’s nothing I can do about it’
A friend contacted me this week to say she’d watched my film Sleeping Beauty on SBS World Movies last weekend. “Oh no,” I said. “They always butcher it,” writes filmmaker Julia Leigh in Nine newspapers.
For some ungodly reason – well, a fiscal reason – the majority-publicly-funded broadcaster sees fit to jam advertisements into feature films. It’s a barbaric practice that would never fly in other countries. A Get-Up petition back in 2015 raised some 60,000 signatures in protest, to no avail.
The SBS audience deserves the chance to immerse themselves in a film, to be transfigured, to experience the real thing. Those who can’t afford paid streaming subscriptions shouldn’t be denied access to culture. For many years SBS would only show advertisements before and after films – never mid-film – and that seemed like a smart middle path for revenue raising.
With the change in government, the barbarians have left the building. Let’s now restore integrity to the broadcaster.
I’m A Celebrity … Get Me out of Here! drops first teaser trailer with celeb clues
The first promo for I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! has dropped – along with the first clues as to who’s entering the jungle this year, reports News Corp’s Bronte Coy.
The ninth season of 10’s reality series will premiere in April after being bumped back from its usual January timeslot to make space for The Bachelors.
In the almost two-minute new teaser clip, hosts Julia Morris and Chris Brown perform a high-energy musical number, set on a plane headed to South Africa.
And here’s what we now know about who’ll be on it: a Brownlow Medal-winning “famous footballer”, a “comedian”, a “TV host”, a “boxing lightweight” and a “famous chef”.
Radio
Kyle Sandilands wants to bring top-rating Sydney breakfast show to Melbourne
Controversial shock jock Kyle Sandilands is “gunning” to bring his top-rating breakfast radio show to Melbourne, reports News Corp’s Nui Te Koha.
“Why would you have the biggest radio show of all-time — ever — but only do it in Sydney?” Sandilands told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“My bosses say people love it local, but they’ve got no f—ing idea. That is such a 1970s mentality.
“If I was in charge, I’d put the biggest product they’ve got on air nationally.”
Sandilands said he would have moved into the Melbourne market already, but his good friend Jason Hawkins helms the KIIS FM breakfast show in the Victorian capital.
“If he ever left, I would make actual threats, ‘If we’re not put into Melbourne, we might vanish somewhere else’. I’m gunning for it,” Sandilands said.
His company, King Kyle, is reportedly worth $100 million.
“That’s my value,” he corrects, without a hint of arrogance.
“We did a $50 million radio deal, there’s TV deals, and I own alcohol companies, and all sorts of things. I get $10 million a year, just for radio.”
Sports Media
Why Matty Johns throws himself into media work: TV, radio, podcasts, columns
Matty Johns likes to keep busy. He doesn’t play golf, fish or have any hobbies and it’s why the face of Fox Sports throws himself into his media work, reports News Corp’s Phil Rothfield.
This year he will take on two live TV shows, three podcasts, a radio show on SEN and a column for The Daily Telegraph every Friday.
“In the off-season when I’m not doing anything I find myself down at the local having a beer all the time,” he said.
No other sporting media star has a schedule as busy as Johns. His Fox Sports shows will continue Thursday and Sunday nights.
It’s the same crew with Gordie Tallis, Fletch and Hindy.
He has three podcasts – one at Fox with Cooper Cronk and two at News Corp – his family chat with Trish and sons Cooper and Jack plus a new one called the Good Chat.
It’s a series of offbeat interviews with some of Australia’s most fascinating characters – like Kyle Sandilands, sports broadcast guru David Hill, rock promoter Michael Chugg, Stan Grant, Wendy Harmer, Matt Nable and many more.