Business of Media
Coalition pitches $46m tax cut to TV networks after gambling ad attack
The Coalition has written to major television broadcasters after Peter Dutton’s surprise attack on wagering advertising – a lucrative source of revenue – to offer an olive branch in the form of tax cuts, report Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones and Mark Di Stefano.
David Coleman, the Coalition’s communications spokesman, said if elected, his party would remove the commercial broadcasting tax – the levy the broadcasters pay as part of their transmitter licence.
The CBT was part of a reform by the Turnbull government in 2018 that cut spectrum fees by $100 million. Broadcasters paid $46.5 million through the tax in the 12 months to June 30.
But the changes would also include a ban on betting advertising during live sport and an hour either side. “Families shouldn’t have to wade through gambling ads in order to watch a game of football,” he said in a statement. “I don’t think the arguments made by the big sporting codes are sustainable.”
Chris Janz’s (attempted) journalist poach-a-thon bears its first fruit
Former Nine Entertainment executive turned media entrepreneur Chris Janz has spent months calling and meeting the country’s top journalists in a bid to lure them to join his “generational” start-up Scire. He hopes to emulate the success of North American publications like Puck, Semafor and The Information, and has been desperate to find reporters to do so, report Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones and Mark Di Stefano.
It seems he has finally had some success. The Sun-Herald and Sunday Age’s political correspondent Anthony Galloway is the first to jump ship, with the second hire ex-Wall Street Journal South Asia correspondent Philip Wen, an erstwhile reporter at The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
Meanwhile, Janz was sat awfully close to The Australian’s technology editor David Swan at the Australian IT Journalism Awards in Sydney two weeks ago. Swan, after a few drinks, assured Media Observed he was not moving publications. That’s left Janz – who brought over another Nine executive, David Eisman, and ex-Herald business editor John McDuling – ruling over an empire of five men, all of whom have worked for Nine/Fairfax.
Janz declined to comment.
Instagram readies Twitter competitor for summer release
Instagram is planning to release a text-based app that will compete with Twitter, reports Bloomberg’s Sarah Frier.
The company is currently testing the project idea with celebrities and influencers, according to people familiar with the matter. Instagram has been in discussions with select creators for months, though none of them has had access to the full version of the app, according to one of the people.
The app, which will be separate from Instagram but will allow people to connect accounts, may debut as soon as June, said Lia Haberman, who teaches social and influencer marketing at UCLA and published a screenshot of an early app description. It may eventually be compatible with other Twitter competitor apps, including Mastodon, according to Haberman’s screenshot.
Instagram, owned by Meta Platforms, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Twitter’s chaotic takeover by Elon Musk has caused some users to look for alternatives and created an opening in the market.
Hank Green, novelist and YouTube star, announces he has cancer
Hank Green, a novelist and longtime host of quirky YouTube educational videos, announced on Friday that he was recently diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a form of cancer, reports The New York Times’ Lauren McCarthy.
“Good news and bad news. One, it’s cancer,” he said in a video on his YouTube channel, Vlogbrothers. “Good news, it’s something called Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” he added. “It’s one of the most treatable cancers. It responds very well to treatment.”
Green first started Vlogbrothers in 2007 with his older brother, John Green, the best-selling author of young adult novels, including The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns.
Hank Green’s debut novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, was a best seller inspired by having achieved internet fame and experiencing the anxiety and awkwardness it can bring.
News Brands
PM privately met Murdoch editors to woo them on Voice
Anthony Albanese privately met executives and senior editors at News Corp last month in a bid to convince the publisher that it should back the Indigenous Voice to parliament at a referendum later this year, report Nine Publishing’s Mark Di Stefano and Tom McIlroy.
The prime minister’s briefing included details of the Yes campaign’s plans, according to two people familiar with the matter. News Corp Australia executive chairman Michael Miller was present at the meeting.
Those plans included the involvement of major sporting organisations and Indigenous sports starts in the Yes campaign including Ash Barty, Patty Mills, Johnathan Thurston, Adam Goodes and Cathy Freeman.
Albanese’s office believes that News Corp’s support could be crucial because the publisher influences the news agendas in commercial television, on broadcasters including Ray Hadley and Ben Fordham at 2GB Radio (owned by Nine Entertainment), and at Daily Mail Australia.
But News Corp remains the publisher and broadcaster of some of the most prominent voices against the Voice, which is opposed by its most senior columnists including Peta Credlin, Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen.
Inside Australia’s Newsmax, the Alan Jones-backed outrage network
In an unassuming back alley building in inner Sydney is Australia’s Newsmax, an Alan Jones-backed, right-wing online media network that broadcasts the views of those who aren’t welcome anywhere else, reports Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones.
For five hours each weekday, Australian Digital Holdings – ADH TV – airs talk shows featuring Jones, Family First party director Lyle Shelton, The Australian columnist Nick Cater and arch-monarchist David Flint.
Topics range from COVID-19 – health bureaucrats “spouted utter lies” – and migration, to the Voice to parliament and “woke slacktivism”.
“Freedom of speech and religion is under violent attack,” Shelton says in one of his shows. “If you think I’m exaggerating, you’ve been living under a rock.”
ADH TV launched last May and reaches up to 130,000 people a day across its shows. Its young chief executive Jack Bulfin says it often has a larger audience than the News Corp-owned Sky News Australia.
Television
RN’s Patricia Karvelas set to front Q+A after Stan Grant’s shock exit
With Stan Grant’s shock decision to step away from Q+A after Monday night’s episode because of racism, the ABC is being forced to scramble to find a temporary host for the show, reports The Australian’s Nick Tabakoff.
There is understood to be uncertainty in ABC management about when Grant will return to Q+A, or even if he’ll come back at all.
In his viral column published on the ABC website on Friday about the racism that drove him away from the show, Grant left the question of his return open. “On Monday night I will present my Q+A program, then walk away. For how long? I don’t know.”
The large void left by Grant’s sudden departure means that the ABC has been forced to scramble to find interim hosts for Q+A until Grant’s long-term position becomes clearer. Grant is rumoured to have more to say about his leave on Monday night’s show. But in the meantime, Diary is reliably informed that RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas is likely to be the initial replacement while Grant considers his future, with a stint of two shows from May 29 seen as most likely.
Another who has been mentioned around Aunty has been ABC Radio Melbourne host Virginia Trioli – who Q+A executive producer Erin Vincent immediately turned to for several weeks after Hamish Macdonald hurriedly departed Q+A to return to The Project in mid-2021.
The word is that Trioli is willing to act as a pinch-hitter for the ABC amid the current situation.
See Also: ABC apologises to Stan Grant, announces it will review its response to racism
How Alone Australia went from near-flop to record-breaking smash
When Alone Australia debuted on SBS in March, it drew the kind of ratings that make commercial TV bosses weep: across the five biggest capital cities, barely 200,000 viewers tuned in for the live broadcast. Yet Alone is now the most-watched full-length series SBS has ever commissioned – and the envy of every other network, reports Nine Publishing’s Michael Lallo.
“It feels like the whole nation is talking about this show,” says SBS’s head of unscripted content, Joseph Maxwell. “It marks quite a shift in how Australians are consuming television … the numbers are just staggering.”
Traditionally, Australia’s television industry relied upon overnight metropolitan ratings to gauge its performance. But Alone, which production company ITV Studios Australia adapted from a US format, illustrates how outdated this approach has become. According to the recently-introduced ratings system VOZ, which stands for “Virtual Australia”, city viewers who watch the series live account for less than one-sixth of its overall audience. Alone’s first episode, for instance, attracted more than 90,000 regional viewers, with another 600,000 streaming it live on SBS on Demand or within 28 days of its initial airing. A further 430,000 people watched it on a personal video recorder.
All up, that’s 1.33 million viewers. And subsequent episodes will almost certainly reach similar heights, although complete figures won’t be available until one month after its finale is broadcast this Wednesday, followed by a reunion special on Thursday.
Abbie Chatfield’s conditions for joining new reality TV show FBoy Island
Abbie Chatfield is hosting a cheeky new reality television show in what she has described as a full circle moment after rising to fame as a runner-up on The Bachelor four years ago, reports News Corp’s Chantelle Francis.
In Chatfield’s first taste of reality TV back in 2019, she had no control over how she would be portrayed to the world.
These days, she has cemented herself in the Australian media landscape as a well-known radio presenter and television personality, and things are very different.
Chatfield told news.com.au she had two conditions to sign on as host.
One: She wanted control over what she said in her scripts.
Two: She wanted diversity.