Business of Media
JCDecaux seeks to wind up hospitality business over unpaid debt
French out-of-home advertising giant JCDecaux has applied to have liquidators appointed to a local hospitality business that did not respond to a legal demand for debts owed, reports Nine Publishing’s Max Mason.
JCDecaux wants the Federal Court of Australia to appoint Jones Partners managing principal Michael Jones as liquidator of Premium Fresh Meals. No liquidator has been appointed yet, and the matter will go to court next month when Premium Fresh Meals may challenge the wind-up application, or pay the debt before the court date.
The application to wind up Premium Fresh Meals has been made over an unpaid debt of just over $32,000. According to documents filed with the court, obtained by The Australian Financial Review, a statutory demand for payment of debt was sent on June 21.
“The respondent failed to pay the amount of the debt demanded or to secure or compound for that amount to the applicant’s reasonable satisfaction within 21 days after the demand was served on the respondent,” documents filed on behalf of JCDecaux said.
Activist investor Dan Loeb backs off pushing Disney to sell ESPN
Activist investor Dan Loeb signaled Sunday morning on Twitter that he is backing off his push to persuade Walt Disney Co. to spin off its popular sports television network ESPN, reports The Wall Street Journal’s Robbie Whelan.
The change of heart comes after Disney Chief Executive Bob Chapek said in media interviews at this weekend’s D23 Expo event—an annual gathering of Disney fans where the company announces new shows and films—that he has plans for ESPN to be a big growth engine and a large part of the company’s entertainment offerings.
“As Bob has said, ESPN is an integral part of the Walt Disney Company, and he believes that its full potential will continue to be realized,” said Disney spokeswoman Kristina Schake on Sunday.
Last month, Loeb’s hedge fund, Third Point LLC, said it had renewed its stake in Disney stock after having liquidated one earlier this year. He sent a letter to Chapek asking for major changes to Disney’s business, including spinning off ESPN, refreshing Disney’s board and cutting spending.
Advertising standards loom as new front in climate wars
Advertising standards loom as a new front in the climate wars as a group of anti-mining activists prepare to take Glencore to the advertising watchdog, alleging a series of advertisements by the mining giant – one of Australia’s largest coal producers – are “greenwashing”, reports Nine Publishing’s Elouise Fowler.
Bringing the strategy from Europe to Australia adds to the armoury of activists who are attempting to hold fossil fuel producers accountable.
This already includes getting motions to beef up climate risk disclosures and carbon reduction efforts onto the agenda at annual shareholder meetings, and so-called “lawfare” – taking companies, pension funds and government agencies to court to force them to cut their emissions and abandon or withhold approvals for new fossil fuel projects that will add to emissions.
These strategies have a mixed record of success, but even when they fail they intensify the focus on climate issues facing big producers.
News Brands
ABC to outsource set construction
ABC will close down its long-running set construction facilities in Sydney, reports TV Tonight.
The end of construction comes as part of the closure of its Lanceley Place site in Artarmon, expected to wind down by January 2023.
Internally-produced shows include Play School, The Set, rage, Good Game: Spawn Point, Frankly, Take 5 with Zan Rowe, Art Works, Mikki vs the World and a range of news and current affairs productions produced externally such as Gruen.
Journalists at Nine Entertainment newspapers set for two-day walkout over pay dispute
Hundreds of journalists across Nine’s flagship mastheads The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and The Australian Financial Review are set to walk off the job this week over a protracted pay dispute, threatening to decimate the company’s newspapers during one of the world’s biggest rolling news stories of the past two decades, reports News Corp’s James Madden.
The proposed two-day strike, slated for Thursday and Friday, would gut the newspapers of all specialist news reports and analysis in the days leading up to the Queen’s funeral, and would curtail the mastheads’ coverage of the AFL and NRL football finals.
The planned walkout would be the first of its kind since the Nine-Fairfax media merger in 2018.
Publishing
Queen Elizabeth II souvenir print editions fly off the shelves
The digital age may be well and truly upon us, but on Saturday printed newspapers wore the media crown, reports News Corp’s James Madden.
Newsagents, supermarkets and convenience stores across Australia reported huge spikes in newspaper sales, as customers rushed to collect souvenir editions chronicling the life and times of the Queen. Despite most newspaper mastheads increasing print runs on Friday night to accommodate the anticipated surge in demand, many retailers reported selling out on Saturday.
Ben Keating, News Corp’s general manager of print revenue, said the feedback from retailers was “extraordinary”.
“We were hearing reports that customers were ringing stores on Saturday morning to reserve copies of newspapers to make sure they didn’t miss out,” he said. “That doesn’t happen very often – there was a real feeling that these editions were going to be keepsakes.”
Print vs online: New polling shows magazine readers still prefer print
More than half of American and British news consumers now prefer reading newspapers online than in print. But the picture is the other way round for magazines, where the preference is still strongly for the print experience, according to new Yougov data polling 111,000 people in the UK and 55,000 in the US, reports Press Gazette’s Charlotte Tobit.
In the UK, 54% of people now prefer reading news content online than in print newspapers – and the preference is even stronger in the US where it is 60%.
The desire for print is unsurprisingly strongest in the 55-plus age group, but especially in the UK where they remain the only group to prefer reading news in print.
In the UK, some 70% of 18 to 24-year-olds and three-quarters of 25 to 34-year-olds prefer reading news online, but only 36% of over-55s say the same, with 46% of that older age group having a clear preference for print.
Television
Gulf nations and Egypt demand Netflix remove ‘offensive’ titles
Arab countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have demanded Netflix remove what they deem “offensive content”, reports News Corp’s Wenlei Ma.
The call to ban streaming movies and TV shows featuring gay relationships or interactions initially came from the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and the UAE. Egypt followed soon after, issuing its own statement.
The Gulf Cooperation Council said the offending programs “contradict Islamic societal values and principles” while Egypt threatened legal action against any titles which “conflicts with societal values”.
The UAE said its media watchdog would be closely monitoring all programs on Netflix for any violations.
Wildcards in ACA’s hunt for new Tracy Grimshaw
Which TV host can go toe-to-toe with a prime minister in an election campaign interview – but minutes later introduce a story about a dodgy tradesman who’s ripped off customers, asks News Corp’s Nick Tabakoff?
With Tracy Grimshaw’s shock announcement last week that she will quit A Current Affair in November, the search is already on among senior Nine executives to find a replacement capable of matching her formidable on-air presence.
We hear that Nine wants to spread the net as widely as possible to find the right contender to replace Grimshaw – and that the process will include looking at talent from other networks.
Following Grimshaw’s memorable interrogations of former PM Scott Morrison during his last term – which became media events in themselves – interviewing skills are considered the most important attribute for the successful candidate. From an internal Nine perspective, there are four frontrunners: Grimshaw’s regular A Current Affair stand-in, Sylvia Jeffreys (who is currently co-hosting Today Extra); her brother-in-law, Karl Stefanovic (who for years has famously coveted escaping breakfast TV to host his own prime-time show); Today co-host Allison Langdon; and Saturday ACA host Deb Knight.
See Also: Tracy Grimshaw to leave A Current Affair after 17 years as host
Sports Media
Record AFL broadcast deal went down to the wire, says chairman Goyder
AFL chairman Richard Goyder says the record $4.5 billion broadcast rights deal secured by the code went down to the wire, with all three bidders in the game right until the final whistle, report Nine Publishing’s Colin Kruger and Elizabeth Knight.
“Foxtel/Seven was not a knockout bid, all three of the final contenders were close in price,” he told The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald. “The last 48 hours of negotiations was about terms and conditions.”
The tight contest ensured that the seven-year broadcast deal, easily the largest in Australian history, exceeded even the AFL’s hopes for $600 million per year. The code will receive $642 million a year when the deal commences with the 2025 football season.
NRL to seek millions in compensation from Foxtel after monster AFL deal
The NRL will seek tens of millions of dollars in compensation from broadcast partner Foxtel after the pay-TV giant struck a mammoth rights deal with the AFL last week, reports Nine Publishing’s Michael Chammas.
Some clubs are under the impression the NRL has an ace up its sleeve that will allow them to return to the negotiation table with Foxtel for the seven-year deal it signed in 2020.
As reported by the Herald at the time of the renegotiated television deal, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, ARLC chairman Peter V’landys and NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo tried to include a “most-favoured” clause in its five-year extension with Foxtel.
It would have prohibited the pay television provider from striking a better deal with the AFL without compensating the NRL for the difference.
Foxtel rejected the NRL’s request, but the club’s are under the impression that the governing body believes there was an understanding between the two parties to revisit the deal if the AFL’s deal gazumped that of rugby league. Foxtel did not respond to requests for comment. The NRL declined to comment.