Business of Media
BT enters exclusive talks with Discovery on BT Sports
BT has entered exclusive talks with the US pay-TV firm Discovery to create a joint venture business that will include BT Sport, which has rights to sports including the Premier League and Champions League, reports The Guardian’s Mark Sweney.
The joint venture, which BT expects will be operational later this year subject to regulatory approval, ends almost a year of uncertainty over the future of the telecoms company’s decade-old pay-TV sport operation.
Discovery owns Eurosport, which broadcasts a wide range of sports including tennis and cycling and holds the pan-European rights to the Olympics.
The decision to combine with Discovery, which in the past has considered bidding for the UK TV rights to the Premier League, is a blow to the sports streaming business Dazn.
SAS soldier accused of ‘lying’ after telling court Ben Roberts-Smith involved in two war crime killings
Ben Roberts-Smith’s lawyers have accused his former SAS squadmate of “lying” and asked whether he “enjoys killing people” after the top-secret witness accused Roberts-Smith of involvement in two alleged war crime murders, reports News Corp’s Perry Duffin.
The unnamed SAS soldier, who remains in active service, told the court Roberts-Smith had shot one Afghan prisoner with a short burst of machine gun fire during a raid on a Taliban compound known as Whiskey 108.
The SAS witness, known in court as Person 41, claimed Roberts-Smith had ordered a junior soldier shoot another detained Afghan at point blank range in a courtyard just a few minutes earlier in the 2009 raid.
Barrister Arthur Moses SC spent the day questioning Person 41’s recollections, memories and claims of the Whiskey 108 raid.
He accused the SAS soldier of lying about details including when Person 41 claimed another soldier had called out in English as they searched for Taliban in Whiskey 108.
News Brands
After Jeff Zucker’s exit: CNN holds “tense” meeting with Jason Kilar as staff reels
Jeff Zucker’s stunning resignation from CNN has left staff at the company reeling at one of the most critical points in its 42-year history, reports The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Weprin.
The channel is in the midst of two corporate-level shifts: Entering the streaming wars via its CNN+ service this spring, and preparing to operate under new ownership once the merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc. is completed.
At the same time, the channel still has a hole to fill in its critical 9 p.m. hour after Chris Cuomo was fired in December, while also preparing for what could be a wild 2022 midterm election, one that company executives had been hoping could turn around its ratings fortunes. (While CNN drew record-breaking ratings in 2020 and 2021, the channel’s numbers have fallen in recent months, in line with the slower news cycle.)
But no initiative has been more important to Zucker than CNN+, according to multiple CNN sources. One source said they believed that Zucker, who initially planned to step down at the end of last year, stuck around in large part so he could oversee the launch of the streaming service.
‘Kamikaze journalist’: Why Peter van Onselen is a headline magnet
Some journalists consider their job a calling, not just an occupation. Peter van Onselen isn’t one of them, despite being one of the nation’s most prolific and high-profile political reporters, reports SMH’s Matthew Knott.
“I’m not passionate about journalism, I’m passionate about politics,” the Channel 10 political editor and columnist at The Australian has told associates. It reflects the fact the long-time university professor still considers himself an academic at heart.
Which is just as well, given van Onselen has repeatedly broken one of journalism’s golden, if unwritten, rules over recent weeks: don’t let yourself become the story.
Entertainment
In the digital space, everyone can hear you stream
Staking out the high moral ground is a financial win for septuagenarian singer Neil Young, with global streaming of his music surging since he pulled it from Spotify in protest at claimed Covid misinformation, exclusive analysis for The Australian shows, reports News Corp’s Jamie Walker.
One of the men who helped build the platform into a transnational powerhouse, former chief economist Will Page, has run the ruler over demand for Young’s songs and unearthed the surprising finding: streams are up 50 per cent since the Canadian-born performer made Spotify choose between him and controversial podcaster Joe Rogan.
While Spotify agreed to take down his music as well as that of his contemporary Joni Mitchell, who followed Young out the door, both artists can still be accessed on the site.
Television
Whoopi Goldberg slammed by former View co-star Meghan McCain
Meghan McCain has chimed in with her own thoughts on former The View colleague Whoopi Goldberg‘s controversial assertion that the Holocaust “isn’t about race,” reports News Corp’s Abby Monteil.
“I hate commenting on my old employer because I have moved in every way a person can move on,” McCain wrote on Twitter. “That being said I am an activist against antisemitism and it is a big part of my life. The growing threat is real and virulent and everywhere. I am heartbroken about what was said.”
McCain also addressed Goldberg’s “bizarre, incoherent, and even dangerous” comments in the February 1 edition of her Daily Mail column.
TV pilot in tribute to Meatloaf
The music of Meatloaf will be celebrated when new dating show I Would Do Anything for Love takes place next week at FOX Studios in Sydney, reports TV Tonight.
ITV Studios Australia is filming the pilot for a US network inspired by the song by the iconic singer.
The pilot sees couples tested on what they will or won’t do for love via hilarious and sometimes frightening challenges. It combines a live band, 80’s rock and an audience mosh pit.
Sports Media
What Mick Molloy really thinks of the Winter Olympics
Mick Molloy says starting work again was like going back to school along with his twin boys this week, reports News Corp’s Jackie Epstein.
The Front Bar host and publican is ready to talk all things Winter Olympics after a long summer break.
He will be joined on The Front Bar on Friday night by Andy Maher and Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald, as well as gold medallists Steven Bradbury, Lydia Lassila and paralympic great Michael Milton.
“It’s the good looking Olympics for rich people,’’ Molloy said.
“I’m pumped to be back on the telly.”
Johanna Griggs on why the Olympics gave her sleepless nights and the power of positivity
Johanna Griggs says she was so worried about last year’s Tokyo Olympic Games that it gave her “sleepless nights”, reports News Corp’s James Wigney.
The versatile swimmer turned Channel 7 presenter says she agonised over whether the already postponed Games should even be going ahead while the Covid-19 pandemic raged around the world.
Although her duties were going to be confined to the relative safety of Seven’s Docklands studios in Melbourne, she feared for the welfare of the athletes who were competing and the media and support staff in Japan, and wondered if she was going to be in some way complicit if it turned out to be a dangerous, superspreader event.
“All that was running through my head and then I got halfway through day one thinking ‘I am so glad these Games are going ahead and how nice is it to focus on something other than the doom and gloom we have been fed this entire time?’,” she says.