Business of Media
‘Pretending to care’: Walkley Awards face renewed boycott after doubling down on fossil fuel sponsors
A year after promising to review its sponsorship policy, the Walkley Foundation has doubled down on its fossil fuel links, pledging to honour its commercial arrangement with Ampol and refusing to rule out similar sponsorships in the future, reports Crikey’s Nick Feik.
The Walkley Foundation, responding to questions I posed about its “Platinum” sponsorship deal with the petroleum company, has also refused to reveal how long its contract with Ampol lasts, and won’t comment on any details of the commercial partnership, “for business confidentiality reasons”. Last year the nation’s finest cartoonists started a boycott of the Walkley Awards, which other journalists (including me) soon joined.
Former television reporter charged with choking woman
Veteran television reporter turned corporate consultant Liam Cox has been charged with choking and assaulting a woman in an alleged domestic violence incident which led to her hospitalisation on Saturday night, report Nine Publishing’s Sally Rawsthorne and Sarah McPhee.
Police say that they were called to a Vaucluse semi-detached house just before midnight on Saturday.
“A 39-year-old woman was treated at the scene by NSW Ambulance paramedics and taken to St Vincent’s Hospital in a stable condition,” NSW Police said.
Disney to ‘focus on quality’ as it plans to cut output – including Marvel movies
Disney plans to release fewer movies and “focus more on quality” in its key franchises, following of a string of high-profile flops at the box office, reports The Guardian’s Callum Jones.
The Hollywood giant is cutting back on productions from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which ramped up releases in recent years as Disney embarked upon an expensive bid to take on Netflix.
“I’ve been working hard with the studio to reduce output and focus more on quality,” Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, told Wall Street analysts. “That’s particularly true with Marvel.”
Meta to expand AI image generation offerings for ads
Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on Tuesday it was expanding its suite of generative AI ads products to offer tools that can automatically create variations of images and overlay text atop them, reports Reuters.
The tool will launch in test form without the watermarks the social media company is applying to all images generated by its user-facing Meta AI assistant, which it has touted as a key safety feature, executives said at a press conference.
Jack Dorsey quits Bluesky board and urges users to stay on Elon Musk’s X
The Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has left the board of Bluesky, the decentralised social network he helped start, and encouraged users to remain on his first site, now owned by Elon Musk and called X, reports The Guardian’s Alex Hern.
Dorsey confirmed he had cut ties with Bluesky on Sunday, telling a user on X that he was no longer on the social network’s board. The announcement was apparently unexpected, since Bluesky still listed him as a board member until late on Sunday evening.
Television
Daryl Somers could return for Hey Hey It’s Saturday tour
A new look Hey Hey It’s Saturday is potentially in the works, reports News Corp’s Fiona Byrne.
The show’s creator, Daryl Somers, is being encouraged by fans to find a way to take the show on the road.
While it is very early days, Somers is toying with the idea of a Hey Hey tour that would showcase the archive of clips and celebrity moments from the 28 years of the show.
James Weir recaps The Bachelor break up
After years of ghosting him and dodging his calls, The Bachelor has finally taken the hint: we’re not interested, reports News Corp’s James Weir.
It took a while. He kept showing up at our houses, unannounced, usually at dinner time while we were trying to chill with our new fling of the moment — Ted Lasso, Paul Murray, Costa.
He’d peer in through the glass and try suck us back into the drama we escaped. There was always theatrics with him. Some big new drama every week. When he wasn’t involved in love triangles and petty scandals, he was stringing us along before washing his hands of commitment.
See Also: 10 confirms axing of The Bachelor and The Masked Singer
Netflix reportedly plotting return of The Crown as series of stand-alone movies
Netflix’s smash hit series The Crown looks poised to return as a miniseries or a movie following the huge success of the streaming service’s film about Prince Andrew, Scoop, reports News Corp’s Joshua Haigh.
The one-off drama starring Gillian Anderson as Newsnight host Emily Maitlis and Rufus Sewell as the disgraced Duke of York, is believed to have reminded execs how much of a draw the royals are to its streaming platform.