Business of Media
Departing Southern Cross Austereo boss Grant Blackley plans to works overseas
Southern Cross Media Group chief executive Grant Blackley has led media companies for nearly two decades but he says his career is far from over, after announcing his exit last week, reports The Australian’s Sophie Elsworth.
The 56-year-old says the timing for his departure was right, particularly after the media company engaged the services of consulting firm Korn Ferry last year to find replacements at Southern Cross Austereo including a new CEO.
“We have been through a tumultuous time with Covid and we have performed a whole range of things, the debt levels have come into a highly manageable area,” he said.
“When I joined the company we had $648m of debt; one of my first jobs was to stabilise the debt and today we sit at a debt level of around $100m.
“We’ve just completed a five-year digitisation program and have fully digitised our entire workplace and structure; we have 60 offices and 300 studios that are completely connected and can talk to each other..”
Blackley – who officially leaves the business on June 30 – has booked a three-month European holiday with his family for later this year. He bought a home in Barcelona 18 months ago, which he said was all “part of the plan”.
Twitter admits to ‘security incident’ involving Circles tweets
A privacy breach at Twitter published tweets that were never supposed to be seen by anyone but the poster’s closest friends to the site at large, the company has admitted after weeks of stonewalling reports, reports The Guardian’s Alex Hern.
The site’s Circles feature allows users to set an exclusive list of friends and post tweets that only they can read. Similar to Instagram’s Close Friends setting, it allows users to share private thoughts, explicit images or unprofessional statements without risking sharing them with their wider network.
But, in an email to affected users seen by the Guardian, Twitter admitted tweets had escaped this containment. “A security incident that occurred earlier this year,” the email says, “may have allowed users outside of your Twitter Circle to see tweets that should have otherwise been limited to the Circle to which you were posting.”
For weeks, users had been reporting Circles tweets receiving likes and views from accounts that should not have been able to see them. Twitter, whose press office has been largely destaffed and set to autoreply to requests for comment with a poo emoji, did not acknowledge the reports.
Now, the company says the issue “was identified by our security team and immediately fixed so that these tweets were no longer visible outside of your Circle”.
Annette Sharp: Roxy Jacenko considers moving to Singapore
Roxy Jacenko is talking of relocating to Singapore following the forthcoming sale of her Vaucluse home, reports News Corp’s Annette Sharp.
The former PR woman last week listed her family home for sale with expectations of $14m.
A move to Singapore is being seen by some as a last-ditch effort to save her marriage to convicted insider trader Oliver Curtis.
Having struck out initially for Tasmania to work for his father Nick Curtis’s tech start-up Firmus following his release from jail, it emerges Curtis more recently has relocated to Singapore, an information and technology hub in the Asia Pacific for established multinational businesses and start-ups.
Jacenko last week told The Wentworth Courier the couple “haven’t been living together in a full-time capacity for about four years”.
However, she continues to deny the couple are divorcing.
News Brands
The Financial Review has disappeared from Qantas lounges
Qantas has pulled The Australian Financial Review from its lounges and from digital distribution following critical coverage of chief executive Alan Joyce from the masthead’s Rear Window column, report Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones and Mark Di Stefano.
The Financial Review has appeared alongside The Australian and curated ABC news bulletins on Qantas Wi-Fi networks in a deal announced in July last year. Copies were also available free in the Chairman’s Lounge and for sale in the Qantas Lounge.
But some time over the past couple of weeks, after a critique of the outgoing Joyce’s reign, copies of the Financial Review were suddenly hard to find in Qantas lounges.
This paper’s stories were also no longer showing on the Qantas news pages when accessing its Wi-Fi. Qantas declined to comment on the changes.
Rear Window columnist Joe Aston has been covering Joyce’s tenure for years, writing about his claims not to be a public figure, flight cancellations and subsequent travel credits, staff troubles, spiralling flight costs, Covid-19 management, and more.
It is understood Qantas executives have gone up the Nine ladder to express their concerns about Aston’s coverage.
Murdoch confidante, News Corp magazine chief a winner in restructure
Two weeks ago, News Corp executives and HR staff commenced more job cuts at the company’s Holt St offices. It was the second round of redundancies to sweep through the Australian arm of the business since late last year. To say thank you, some axed staff were offered a one-year’s subscription to The Australian, report Nine Publishing’s Sam Buckingham-Jones and Mark Di Stefano.
Among those shown the door was David Meagher, the editor of The Australian’s WISH magazine, one of the most lucrative, advertising-filled titles at the company. He had been axed by Edwina McCann, the editorial director of News Prestige – the umbrella term for the ever-expanding portfolio of glossy magazines that News Corp publishes.
See Also: Long-serving News Corp editor departs: David Meagher farewells WISH readers
The exit raised eyebrows within News Corp. The latest restructure has consolidated more power behind McCann, one of the leading figures in Australia’s magazine industry and a close friend of Sarah Murdoch, the wife of the company’s co-chairman, Lachlan Murdoch.
Insiders say McCann, with Sky News Australia boss Paul Whittaker, are the big winners in the new slimmed-down News Corp Australia, with some believing she’d be a natural successor to one day leading the local office of the Murdoch media company.
McCann spoke to The Australian Financial Review about developments at the company, her relationship with the Murdochs and Condé Nast supremo Anna Wintour. With spiralling costs associated with printing the glossy magazines she oversees, McCann wants to bring more high-end, luxury advertising to The Australian, with an increasing number of inserts in the conservative broadsheet.
How a Murdoch-backed media start-up built on drugs, sex and war reporting crumbled
Shane Smith was outraged at suggestions he spent $US300,000 ($450,000) on a single dinner in Las Vegas. “It wasn’t a $US300,000 dinner,” the heavily tattooed founder of Vice Media told the Wall Street Journal in 2016. “It was $US380,000, plus tip. I broke the Vegas tip record,” reports Nine Publishing’s James Warrington.
Smith was riding high, with his business valued in the billions and backed by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox.
His interview with the Journal centred around a tour of his new $US23 million Spanish Colonial mansion in California and ran under the tagline “Living Large”.
Yet today, Smith’s comments look hubristic. After months of struggling to find a buyer, Vice – a start-up once valued at $US5.7 billion – is reportedly preparing for bankruptcy.
The company’s decline has mirrored a wider slump in the digital media world, with BuzzFeed and Insider recently announcing lay-offs.
“It looks like we’re at the end of the road for a generation of digital media companies,” says Joseph Teasdale at Enders Analysis.
Radio
Prodigal son Jules Lund signs with new network Disrupt Radio
After a seven-year hiatus from radio, broadcaster Jules Lund is making a comeback to the airwaves with his own drivetime show, reports The Australian’s Sophie Elsworth.
The Melbourne-based media presenter – turned entrepreneur – has signed with new talkback station Disrupt Radio, which is set to launch in the coming months.
Lund will be weekday drivetime (4-6pm) host for the digital network, with his show to focus on business, entrepreneurship and innovation.
“I’m ecstatic because I’ve worked in radio and then start-ups and now I get to talk about start-ups on radio, so it’s the perfect bridge between two of my key passions,” the 44-year-old said.
“I have missed radio, for me I really enjoy the live aspect.
“Now I’m able to share some of the insights I’ve been able to extract from some of the world’s best leaders and innovators with an Australian audience.”
Television
TV networks oppose content requirements for streaming services
Australia’s television networks are opposing government attempts to put local content quotas on streaming service providers, saying the abundance of local content on free to air and streaming services shows there is no need for this intervention, reports Nine Publishing’s Colin Kruger.
A submission by industry body Free TV, which represents Nine Entertainment (the owner of this masthead), Seven West Media and Network 10, said it opposed the introduction of investment requirements for streaming services such as Amazon, Netflix and 10’s owner Paramount, given research that shows the screen production industry in Australia is booming.
“There is no demonstrable market failure which would suggest a need for the introduction of these obligations,” it said.
Last month, the federal government said it was considering forcing streaming giants, which are under no obligation to produce or even carry Australian content, to spend up to 20 per cent of the money they make locally on new Australian programs. Investment in sports or buying local films or programs will not count towards any new quotas.
Free TV says any benefits of the quota system being considered by the government would flow only to those viewers with the wealth and technology to access it behind streaming paywalls.
‘A lad that refused to get old’: 10 honours Jock Zonfrillo as MasterChef returns
A week after the shock death of MasterChef judge Jock Zonfrillo, Network 10 has paid tribute to the Scottish chef. 10 aired a special episode of The Project – A Tribute To Jock – looking back at the life of Zonfrillo on Sunday, followed by the launch of the new season of MasterChef, reports Nine Publishing’s Thomas Mitchell.
The season debut comes six days after the original planned launch date on Monday, May 1.
Using excerpts from Zonfrillo’s 2022 biography, Last Shot, The Project recounted the chef’s journey in his own words.
Zonfrillo went from being a precocious teenager who door-knocked Michelin-starred chef Marco Pierre White looking for a job to a world-renowned food personality who landed the gig of a lifetime in 2019 hosting MasterChef.
The loss of Zonfrillo sent shockwaves through the tight-knit hospitality industry, with some of the world’s most famous chefs paying tribute on The Project.
Gordon Ramsay, who worked alongside Zonfrillo in the 90s, broke down in tears recalling his fellow Scotsman. “Jock behind the scenes was just a lad, a lad that refused to get old and toe the line, and he wanted to let some steam off,” said Ramsay.
King Charles’s coronation watched by peak TV audience of 20m in UK
The coronation of King Charles was watched by a peak television audience of 20 million Britons on Saturday, according to official viewing figures, reports The Guardian’s Jim Waterson.
This makes Saturday’s event the most watched TV broadcast of the year by some way, but the audience is substantially smaller than the 29 million Britons who watched the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in September.
The viewing figures for the coronation at Westminster Abbey may have been boosted by the poor weather in parts of the UK, which forced people to stay inside and meant outdoor viewing parties were largely empty due to the rain.
The vast majority of the audience watched the BBC’s coverage, which was helmed by Huw Edwards and broadcast across BBC One, BBC Two and the BBC News channel to a peak audience of 15.5 million. ITV’s coverage topped out at 3.6 million viewers and Sky’s coverage peaked at 800,000 across Sky News and Sky Showcase, according to official Barb viewing figures provided by agency Digital-i.
Tucker Carlson wants to return to TV before 2025. Will Fox let him?
Tucker Carlson is making it clear to people close to him that he would like to be back on the air somewhere soon. But he first needs Fox News to agree to a deal that would allow him to work elsewhere, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions, leaving it unclear whether he will be able to start a new chapter in his media career before his current contract expires in January 2025, reports The New York Times’ Jeremy W. Peters and Benjamin Mullin.
Since Carlson was taken off the air by Fox News last week, his lawyers have been in touch with Fox to negotiate an agreement to set the terms of his departure. And he has been the subject of unofficial courting by right-wing media outlets who’ve let it be known they would hire him if they could.
But a swirl of embarrassing disclosures about the prime time host’s private remarks have cast a shadow over those discussions.
Some of Carlson’s allies have accused the network of being behind the disclosures. Fox insists that it doesn’t like the leaks any more than Carlson does and is considering taking legal action to stop them.