Queen Elizabeth II’s Funeral
‘Do it solemnly, quickly, and shut up’: how TV is preparing for the royal funeral
Miles of television broadcast cabling has been laid, almost every satellite truck in the UK has been hired out and international broadcasters are offering wads of money to anyone who can secure them a broadcast location overlooking the ceremony, reports The Guardian’s Jim Waterson.
Monday’s funeral of Queen Elizabeth II is a global TV event that has been planned for decades – yet at the same time pulled together in just 10 days.
“I’ve been in the business so long I first started rehearsing the Bridges Events 30 years ago,” said the presenter Dermot Murnaghan, 64, referring to an internal codename for deaths of major royals.
The presenter, who will be co-hosting Sky News UK’s coverage of the funeral with Anna Botting, said preparations had been quietly stepped up since the summer. “I’ve been travelling around with a black tie in my back pocket for the last few weeks. We saw the pictures of her with Boris [Johnson], we knew she had mobility issues, and she was 96.”
The Queen’s funeral may be the most-watched event in history
When some 2 billion people worldwide tuned in for Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997, mobile phones resembled bricks, broadband was yet to replace dial-up internet and social media didn’t exist, reports Nine Publishing’s Angus Thomson.
On Monday night Australian time, anyone with an internet connection will be able to watch and comment on the final farewell of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. Many in the media industry believe it will be the most-watched event in history, and there have been predictions as many as 4 billion people will tune in.
Australian commercial networks will follow the decision of UK broadcasters and show the ceremony commercial-free, foregoing potentially lucrative primetime advertising revenues.
The resources devoted to the event are significant. Nine has more than 40 staff there, the ABC has 27 employees, and Network 10 sent a team of 17. Seven and Sky News declined to disclose how many staff were sent to cover the event.
See Also: TV Guide: How to watch Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral
Business of Media
Remembering philanthropist Anne Kantor, sister of Rupert Murdoch
One of Australia’s leading philanthropists, Anne Kantor AO, passed away this week at her daughter’s farm at age 86, reports The Australian.
Like her mother, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, her philanthropic efforts – primarily run through The Dara Foundation – were substantial and included support of environmental, Indigenous, social justice, arts and educational organisations.
Eve Kantor said her mother – the sister of Rupert Murdoch – was a long-term supporter of the public policy think-tank The Australia Institute, which runs two fellowship programs named after her – The Anne Kantor Fellowship (General) and the Anne Kantor Young Women Environmentalists Fellowship.
Organisations she worked with included Casse Australia – Creating a Safe Supportive Environment, focusing on Indigenous issues.
She was also one of the founding funders of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.
Together with her late husband Milan Kantor AOM, Mrs Kantor was a lover of music and both were long-standing supporters of Musica Viva, Short Black Opera and the Melbourne Recital Centre.
“On behalf of Rupert and I, we are so sad that our sister Anne has passed away,” said Ms Kantor’s sister Janet Calvert-Jones AO. “We all loved and admired her greatly. She was full of kindness and quietly helped so many people.’’
Kantor is survived by her children Julie, Eve, Kate and Michael, and 11 grandchildren.
U.S. appeals court rejects big tech’s right regulate online speech
A U.S. appeals court on Friday upheld a Texas law that bars large social media companies from banning or censoring users based on “viewpoint,” a setback for technology industry groups that say the measure would turn platforms into bastions of dangerous content, reports Reuters’ Daniel Trotta.
The largely 2-1 ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in New Orleans, sets up the potential for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the law, which conservatives and right-wing commentators have said is necessary to prevent “Big Tech” from suppressing their views.
“Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,” Judge Andrew Oldham, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, wrote in the ruling.
The Texas law was passed by the state’s Republican-led legislature and signed by its Republican governor.
Walkleys walking a legal tightrope over Andrew Laming award
The contentious entry criteria for the Walkley Awards could be overhauled as part of the independent review into a reporting prize given to a since-discredited story about former federal MP Andrew Laming, report News Corp’s James Madden and Nick Tabakoff.
Last Wednesday, Dr Laming won a defamation case against Nine in relation to one key element of its award-winning report, after the network accepted that it was untrue.
On Friday evening, the foundation directors announced a review into the Walkley Award won earlier this year by Nine journalists Peter Fegan and Rebeka Powell for their March 2021 reports about Dr Laming, one of which falsely claimed the then politician had committed the criminal act of “upskirting” – taking a sexually intrusive photograph of someone without their permission.
In its statement on Friday, the Walkley Foundation said it would commission an independent review of the “particular award” given to Fegan and Powell, but it is widely expected that the review will also scrutinise the wider issue of whether journalism that is the subject of ongoing legal proceedings should have caveats attached as part of its conditions of entry.
Nine political editor Chris Uhlmann hands his job to young gun Charles Croucher
Nine political editor Chris Uhlmann made a shock revelation to this column earlier this year: that he would be quitting his role at the end of this year, reports News Corp’s Nick Tabakoff.
“I’m approaching retirement,” he told Diary in February. “It’s time to give someone else a crack.”
We’re told Uhlmann’s announcement prompted senior executives at the network to urgently step up efforts to talk him out of his retirement.
But they were to no avail. Uhlmann, now 62, was adamant that he wanted to step back and had long earned a lengthy European sabbatical.
Some of the best-known names in Australian political reporting have been bandied about in the TV industry in recent months as potential candidates for the plum Canberra-based role, including Sky’s chief news anchor Kieran Gilbert and AM Agenda host Laura Jayes, Seven’s political editor Mark Riley, 10’s political editor Peter van Onselen, and even Insiders host David Speers.
But in the end, fittingly for the news of the week, someone named Charles is on the verge of being crowned king of Nine’s national political beat.
‘Gifs are cringe’: how Giphy’s multimillion-dollar business fell out of fashion
It is rare for a multimillion-dollar company to explicitly state that its business is dying because it is simply too uncool to live, reports The Guardian’s Alex Hern.
But that is the bold strategy that the gif search engine Giphy has adopted with the UK’s competition regulator, which is trying to block a $400m (£352m) takeover attempt by Facebook’s owner, Meta.
In a filing with the Competition and Markets Authority, Giphy argued that there was simply no company other than Meta that would buy it.
Its valuation is down by $200m from its peak in 2016 and, more importantly, its core offering shows signs of going out of fashion. “There are indications of an overall decline in gif use,” the company said in its filing, “due to a general waning of user and content partner interest in gifs.
“They have fallen out of fashion as a content form, with younger users in particular describing gifs as ‘for boomers’ and ‘cringe’.”
Radio
Pin pulled (again) suddenly on long-time sports radio show
Popular sports commentators David Schwarz and Mark Allen have been left without a show after the pin was pulled on their 3AW weekend program The Twilight Zone, reports the Sunday Herald Sun’s Fiona Byrne.
The show, which has been a fixture for years on weekends on 3AW between 5pm and 7pm in the AFL off season, should be going into its summer programming run as of this weekend, however a sudden change has seen the show disappear.
“The summer series of The Twilight Zone is not on this year. David and Mark are aware of this,” a Nine spokesperson said on Friday.
In 2017, the Herald Sun also reported on a surprise axing when SEN pulled the pin on the radio duo:
SEN’s David Schwarz and Mark Allen axed from drive show
Kate Ritchie back on NovaFM after drink driving scandal
Kate Ritchie is back on the Nova FM airwaves on Monday with co-hosts Tim Blackwell and Joel Creasey, following a leave of absence after her drink driving scandal, reports News Corp’s Mikaela Wilkes.
The actor and radio host shared a group shot of the threesome to her Instagram on Saturday captioned: “Back with the gang on set today,” to announce her return.
The 44-year-old Home And Away actor apologised publicly after she was fined $600 and hit with a three-month driving ban. Ritchie was pulled over in Sydney’s east, where she allegedly recorded a blood alcohol reading of 0.06 at Maroubra Police Station in August.
Television
Annette Sharp: Seven is paying less than $250k for rights to TV Week Logies
TV Week publisher Are Media is dealing with the rather delicate question of whether it may have breached its contract with the Queensland government’s tourism agency TEQ – in addition to its longstanding gentlemen’s agreement with traditional Logies Awards broadcast partner Nine – by entering secret talks with the Seven Network to deliver the Logies to that network for the next five years, reports The Sunday Telegraph’s Annette Sharp.
For more than a decade it was widely held that the awards night’s sinking ratings had diminished the Logies appeal as a broadcast asset.
Seven is paying less than $250,000 a year for the event – a figure that represents a mere drop in the network’s vast programming budget when compared to the $642m a year it will pay jointly with Foxtel for the AFL rights and the $70m it negotiated for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Micallef explains Release the Kraken, zany Character Names, EPG Synopsis & those Goldfish.
On Wednesday Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell reaches its last ever episode, reports TV Tonight.
10 years ago, the sketch show would begin looking at the news cycle through sketch -avoiding any cross-over with Media Watch or a Chaser 2012 vehicle, The Hamster Wheel.
Julia Gillard was Prime Minister at the time. The show has continued under the reign of PMs Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull, Morrison and now, Albanese.
“We’ve come from Labor to Labor. The circle is complete, like Star Wars,” Shaun Micallef tells TV Tonight.
Micallef has graciously taken the time to comment on some of the show’s unique hallmarks and why they exist.
Sports Media
Buzz Rothfield: Challenging TV times for Nine’s key sports NRL and tennis
The Broncos’ slide out of the NRL finals in recent years is seriously hurting Channel Nine’s TV ratings in the Brisbane market, reports Phil Rothfield in The Sunday Telegraph.
Since 2017, the Broncos’ average audience in Brisbane on free-to-air television has fallen 39.4 per cent from 156,450 viewers to 94,862.
Even when adding Nine’s streaming viewers this year (7640) it’s a decrease of 34.4 per cent.
These appear to be people who have been lost to rugby league because Fox Sports has had no increase in Brisbane over the same period, although the numbers do not include their streaming service, Kayo.
Rothfield also reported on the value of Nine’s tennis rights.
The value of the Australian Open TV broadcast rights has nosedived since the retirement of Ash Barty and now Roger Federer. They were without doubt the most popular male and female players on the tour. Federer, 41, pulled the pin last week after undergoing three knee operations in the past two years. He won 20 grand slam titles. In January this year 3.6 million viewers nationally tuned in on Channel 9 to watch Barty become the first Australian to win the tournament in 44 years.
AFL to juice revenue with more digital token sales
Despite offloading its broadcast rights to Channel Seven and Foxtel for the better part of a decade, the AFL appears not to be done in its search for more revenue, reports Nine Publishing’s Mark Di Stefano and Patrick Durkin.
The AFL has told The Australian Financial Review it intends to release a new batch of NFTs this week, hoping the game can cash-in on collectors who are looking to buy the equivalent of modern day-trading cards.
NFTs stand for non-fungible tokens and allow online users to acquire and trade digital products such as images and videos. The tokenised clips and images sit in online wallets and gained traction recently, particularly among US-sport obsessed fans and collectors.
The AFL will “drop” its second batch of NFTs during the middle of Grand Final week as the game counts down to Saturday’s match-up between Geelong and Sydney at the MCG.
This week’s drop, titled “The Decider”, will feature 61 clips from last year’s AFL men’s grand final between the Melbourne Demons and Western Bulldogs, and the 2021 AFLW final won by the Adelaide Crows.