Business of Media
Peter van Onselen to pay Network Ten’s legal bills following contract dispute
Political commentator Peter van Onselen has been ordered to foot 10’s legal bill after a judge found he breached his contract when he wrote a “disparaging” story documenting the company’s financial woes, reports The Australian’s Ellie Dudley.
Justice David Hammerschlag earlier this month ruled van Onselen’s article, penned for this masthead, was “pejorative” and breached a non-disparagement clause which covered his former employer and its owner Paramount when he left his role at Network 10 in March.
The clause set out that van Onselen could not disparage 10 or make “any statement or publication, whether oral or in writing” which brought the broadcaster into disrepute or adversely affected its reputation.
Justice Hammerschlag found this clause had been breached by the article, which was “undoubtedly” disparaging and plainly intended to be.
“One of the clear implications … is that Dr van Onselen took up the (political editor) position because Ten’s future looked bright, but he ‘walked away’ from it because this turned out not to be the case,” Justice Hammerschlag said.
“To my mind, this is a disparaging comment in the context of Dr van Onselen’s employment and its termination.”
See Also: Peter Van Onselen loses contract breach lawsuit brought by Network 10
Meta, Microsoft, hundreds more own trademarks to new Twitter name
Billionaire Elon Musk‘s decision to rebrand Twitter as X could be complicated legally: companies including Meta and Microsoft already have intellectual property rights to the same letter, reports Reuters’ Blake Brittain.
X is so widely used and cited in trademarks that it is a candidate for legal challenges – and the company formerly known as Twitter could face its own issues defending its X brand in the future.
“There’s a 100% chance that Twitter is going to get sued over this by somebody,” said trademark attorney Josh Gerben, who said he counted nearly 900 active U.S. trademark registrations that already cover the letter X in a wide range of industries.
Musk renamed social media network Twitter as X on Monday and unveiled a new logo for the social media platform, a stylized black-and-white version of the letter.
Owners of trademarks – which protect things like brand names, logos and slogans that identify sources of goods – can claim infringement if other branding would cause consumer confusion. Remedies range from monetary damages to blocking use.
Spotify hits record 551M active users amid growing expenses
Spotify reported 551 million monthly active users in its second quarter, adding 36 million from the previous quarter and hitting an all-time high for the company, reports The Hollywood Reporter’s Caitlin Huston.
Additionally, the music giant added 10 million paid subscribers, three million above its guidance forecast and a record for the second quarter, to reach 220 million.
Still operating losses at the company, which has been promising to focus on profitability, grew to reach €247 million (approximately $273 million), missing the company’s guidance of €129 million ($142 million). The number was impacted by “charges related to our actions to streamline operations and reduce costs,” the company said, which includes reducing its real estate footprint and making changes its podcasting business. These charges had been excluded from Q2 guidance. Excluding these charges, the company reported an operating loss of €112 million ($124).
‘It’s unsustainable’: Can Hollywood survive without transformation?
It was a pink mushroom cloud that even enveloped the White House. “Did you see Barbie or Oppenheimer this weekend?” a reporter asked the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. She replied: “I knew I was going to get that question. I did not. But heard that it did very well,” reports The Guardian’s David Smith.
Both films did very well: Barbie collected $162m in ticket sales while Oppenheimer, about the father of the atom bomb, earned $82.4m. It was comfortably the best weekend at the domestic box office since the coronavirus pandemic. But when future historians come to study the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, they may still have a question: was this the dawn of a Hollywood renaissance or glorious last stand of an industry in decline?
Even with the weekend’s sugar rush, the box office is still down 20% from pre-pandemic levels. Actors and writers are on strike simultaneously for the first time in more than 60 years. Online streaming services and artificial intelligence, or AI, are upending the business model and exposing the wealth gap between studio bosses and anyone who is not a household name.
Barry Diller, former chief executive of Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox, told CBS’s Face the Nation programme: “You have almost a perfect storm here, which is, you had Covid, which sent people home to watch streaming and television, and killed theaters. You’ve had the results of huge investments in streaming, which have produced all these losses for all these companies.”
News Brands
Sun stands by Huw Edwards story and is investigating Dan Wootton, MPs hear
The Sun has said it stands by its reporting on Huw Edwards and is continuing to investigate the former employee Dan Wootton, as the tabloid faces scrutiny over its reporting standards and internal culture, reports The Guardian’s Jim Waterson.
The editor, Victoria Newton, told MPs the Sun was a “responsible media organisation which has strict editorial and legal frameworks” to ensure accuracy in its reporting, while also taking allegations about internal misconduct very seriously.
The Sun reported earlier this month that an anonymous BBC newsreader, later identified as Edwards, had paid a 17-year-old for explicit images, which is a criminal offence. Once Edwards had been suspended by the BBC, the Sun rowed back on its suggestion that any illegal behaviour had taken place and blamed other news outlets for suggesting criminal acts had occurred.
Newton said the Edwards story was clearly in the public interest, as it involved parents seeking help on behalf of a “vulnerable young person with an addiction to crack cocaine” who was allegedly receiving tens of thousands of pounds from one of the BBC’s best-known presenters.
Television
Reality show finale winners: Million Dollar Island, Rush
Two reality shows wrapped last night, giving away big cash prizes, having struggled to attract viewers, reports TV Tonight.
There were three finalists in the Million Dollar Island arena, after eliminating 97 other players across the series.
The finale required them to choose from up to 42 boxes which mostly contained $10,000 each -but the Beat-the-Bomb style jeopardy meant finding a booby trapped bomb eviscerated all their accrued cash.
Chelsea took home the biggest prize of $110,000 cash. Jordan won $70,000 and Brett won $10,000 (having risked and lost a further $90,000).
Meanwhile Rush finished in South Africa with a bungee jump and Table Mountain hike. The trek involved two months of filming to nine countries, with the last three standing: Sophia, Hamish and CK.
Hamish was declared the winner, when a green flare confirmed his final position. He won $100,000 and 2 x first class round the world tickets.
Tucker Carlson’s Fox Exit Helps Boost Newsmax Ratings
Conservative news channel Newsmax saw its prime-time viewership more than double in the second quarter, as it held on to a good chunk of the gains it made following the departure of Tucker Carlson from rival Fox News, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Isabella Simonetti.
Newsmax drew 247,000 prime-time viewers in the period, through June 25, compared with 111,000 in the first quarter.
“We definitely saw a dramatic increase after Tucker,” said Christopher Ruddy, Newsmax’s chief executive. “The departure obviously jolted a lot of his strong supporters.”
Carlson’s last show on Fox News was April 21, and Newsmax’s viewership quickly surged, averaging 334,000 during the last week of April. Ratings have declined from those peaks, but the average remains substantially above first-quarter levels.
Newsmax’s average rating in the second quarter was higher than in the period of the 2020 election, when it gained viewers as it attracted pro-Trump viewers upset about the outcome. That ratings jump didn’t last.
Sports Media
Football reporter Tom Browne quits TV, where is he going and his likely replacement
Channel Seven has been rocked by the sudden resignation of chief football reporter Tom Browne, reports Herald Sun’s Scott Gullan.
In a massive shock the leading newshound is moving into the private sector, taking up a role as a video content producer with Sydney chairman Andrew Pridham’s MA Financial Group.
Browne, who also works for Triple M, has been one of the most successful and controversial figures in the AFL media landscape.
He has been with Channel Seven for over 12 years, working his way up to the chief reporting role where he has broken some of the biggest stories in the game.
A qualified lawyer with a finance background before he moved into the media, Browne is relocating his family to Sydney.
His wife, Tara, is from the Harbour City and the couple recently had their second child in March.
Collingwood president Jeff Browne, who is also Tom’s father, is the non-executive director and independent chairman of the MA Financial Group.
Gullan has also reported on the candidates Seven could chase for the vacancy in the Melbourne newsroom:
Channel Seven has a ready-made replacement for Tom Browne with Mitch Cleary his anointed successor as chief football reporter.
But the intrigue lies in who the network will get on board to help fill the void left by Browne as Cleary’s off-sider.
There are a number of candidates throughout the football industry who Seven are likely to look at.
Former Fox Footy reporter Tom Morris has slowly introduced himself back into the media with SEN and certainly ticks the boxes in terms of on-air experience.
SEN host and reporter Sam Edmund would be high on the wish list along with AFL website young guns Josh Gabelich and Sarah Olle.
A left-field candidate could be Xander McGuire, the son of former Channel Nine boss Eddie.
Xander has been working part-time in the Ch Nine sports department over the past 12 months and there are many who are predicting he has a bright future in the media.