Business of Media
Mark Spillane’s Upsense Media Capital fund to buy Dunk Island
An entertainment and media wholesale private equity fund will buy one of Queensland’s faded island resort gems, reports The Australian.
Upsense Media Capital, co-founded by Mark Spillane and RJ Bucaria, will pay between $20m and $25m for Dunk Island.
Spillane, who has interests in live music, television and film production as well as finance, artist management, and entertainment industry consultancy, said he was delighted to have the opportunity to bring new life to the “iconic Australian asset”.
Upsense Media Capital is a joint venture between Australia’s Unbreakable Group Holdings and US-based Prolific Media Holdings.
Spillane, the chief executive of the Unbreakable Group, has been in the Australian music industry for 20 years as a promoter, musician, artist manager, publishing and label owner and ran the live broadcast entertainment for the Indy 500 motor race on the Gold Coast each year.
Streaming content spend to hit $250 billion in 2021: report
London-headquartered research service is predicting a US$250 billion content spend from global streaming services for 2021, and is proclaiming that there is “no imminent ceiling in sight” for the accelerated growth that streaming has experienced during the pandemic, reports RealScreen.
The report, titled “An Industry Transformed,” stems from Purely, a fintech company connecting film and TV rights owners with streaming services, and its streaming research and analytics service, Purely Streamonomics. According to its findings, the gross cash amount spent by the streamers producing and licensing new entertainment content (excluding sports) rose by 16.4% in 2020 to reach $220.2 billion. Purely anticipates a total spend of more than $250 billion in 2021.
News Brands
Seven West Media to retire newspaper brand, relaunching as free PerthNow
Seven West Media has announced a new direction for its free suburban newspapers that will leverage WA’s most popular news website.
From August, SWM will retire the Community Newspaper Group brand and relaunch the products as free suburban PerthNow newspapers.
The new weekly PerthNow newspapers will be split into 10 localised editions stretching from Yanchep to Coogee. The papers will focus on telling local stories in an edgier fashion while still continuing Community Newspaper Group’s tradition of award-winning scoops and investigations.
PerthNow is WA’s most popular news website — attracting a monthly audience of more than 2.8 million unique browsers. On any given day the website records more than 1 million page impression.
Community Newspaper Group already transitioned its websites on to PerthNow in April 2020.
Residents of Rockingham and Peel will continue to be serviced by the Sound Telegraph and the Mandurah Coastal Times.
Combined with the new PerthNow products, these local free local newspapers will boast a print platform of about 530,000 readers per month.
West Australian Newspapers editor-in-chief Anthony De Ceglie — who oversees all of Seven West Media’s mastheads and websites across regional, suburban and metropolitan WA — said the company was proud of its continued investment in newspapers.
“Having achieved strong growth in our metro print products and kept our regional offerings strong during the pandemic, we are continuing our commitment to print media by investing in a new weekly suburban newspaper to shake up local news,” he said.
The first edition of PerthNow will hit letterboxes, shops and cafes from August 5.
Ben Roberts-Smith defamation trial headed for adjournment due to COVID lockdown
The defamation trial of war veteran Ben Roberts-Smith is “bedevilled by the virus”, his barrister says and appears headed towards an unavoidable adjournment, reports ABC’s Jamie McKinnell.
As his legal team closed their case on Monday after three weeks of evidence, the barrister for two of the newspapers, Nicholas Owens SC, told the Federal Court the prospect of their witnesses travelling to Sydney had been complicated by the city’s COVID lockdown.
Earlier, former Liberal leader Brendan Nelson told the court Roberts-Smith was “the most respected, admired and revered Australian soldier in more than half a century”.
Dr Nelson, who was the director of the Australian War Memorial from 2012, was called as a witness by Roberts-Smith’s legal team to give evidence about his reputation prior to the articles.
Oher reporters at the court case include:
Kieran Gair for The Australian
Harriet Alexander for The Sydney Morning Herald
Ben Doherty for Guardian Australia
Candace Sutton for news.com.au
Max Mason for The AFR
Perry Duffin for NCA NewsWire
Sam McKeith for AAP
Margot Saville for Crikey
Jon Faine’s lockdown column leaves bad taste for Sydneysiders
Former ABC radio presenter Jon Faine believes it will “do Sydney some good to be knocked off their high perch,” comments Daily Telegraph editor-at-large and novelist Matthew Benns.
In a column for The Age on Sunday he wrote that a two week lockdown for “smug and self-important” Sydney will finally “prick their self-righteous balloon.”
Now for every “Bad Jon” sentiment expressed on behalf of a lockdown weary Victoria “Good Jon” countered with a measured response.
Bad Jon and Good Jon are both absolutely spot on: “I’m so sick of Covid but we just have to stick together, follow the advice and get through somehow.”
It’s just a shame it involved kicking us when we are down to get there.
Television
Simon Cowell joins The Wiggles for new advertising campaign
Food delivery service Uber Eats has attracted plenty of big names to take part in their “Tonight I’ll Be Eating” advertising campaign, reports News Corp’s Bianca Mastroianni.
Local stars and Hollywood celebs including Ash Barty, Sacha Baron Cohen, Agro and Dr Chris Brown, and Kim Kardashian and Sharon Strezlecki (Magda Szubanksi) have all made appearances in the series of ads.
The latest big name to sign on is The Wiggles, with the unlikely companion of UK television star Simon Cowell, famous for hosting Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor UK.
Sports Media
AFL media’s biggest money men revealed: Jonathan Brown ranked #1
Everyone wants to know who the AFL’s million dollar men are — and they’re not just players on the field, reported News Corp’s Jackie Epstein on the weekend.
Media figure and former Richmond star Nathan Brown delved into rare territory when he put forward a list of former footy stars — in commentary, radio, digital, newspapers and podcasts — and their estimated salaries.
He uncovered five million dollar men. In comparison there were just two million dollar players in the AFL in 2020 (pay cuts due to Covid), down from nine in 2019.
FOOTY’S TOP MONEY MEN
Equal 10: Wayne Carey, $500,000
Triple M, Channel 7 and The Age
9: Nick Riewoldt, $550,000
Fox Footy and other media
8: Matthew Lloyd, $600,000
Channel 9, 3AW and AFL website
7: Brian Taylor, $650,000
Channel 7 and Triple M
6: Tim Watson, $675,000
SEN and Channel 7
5: James Brayshaw, $1 million
Channel 7 and Triple M
4: Mark Howard, $1.05 million
Fox Sports (footy and cricket), Triple M and Howie Games podcast
3: Garry Lyon, $1.15 million
SEN and Fox Footy
2: Brendan Fevola, $1.2 million
Fox FM
1: Jonathan Brown, $1.5 million
Nova and Fox Footy