Frustrations mount at Washington Post as its business struggles
In the years after Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post in 2013, business boomed. Droves of readers bought digital subscriptions, and the newsroom roughly doubled in size, adding hundreds more journalists, report The New York Times’ Benjamin Mullin and Katie Robertson.
But The Post’s business has stalled in the past year. As the breakneck news pace of the Trump administration faded away, readers have turned elsewhere, and the paper’s push to expand beyond Beltway coverage hasn’t compensated for the loss.
The organization is on track to lose money in 2022, after years of profitability, according to two people with knowledge of the company’s finances. The Post now has fewer than the three million paying digital subscribers it had hailed internally near the end of 2020, according to several people at the organization. Digital ad revenue generated by The Post fell to roughly $70 million during the first half of the year, about 15 percent lower than in the first half of 2021, according to an internal financial document reviewed by The New York Times.
Netflix poaches Snapchat execs Jeremi Gorman and Peter Naylor to lead advertising business
Netflix has found the executives who will lead its advertising business. The streaming giant has poached a pair of Snapchat executives: Snap Chief business officer Jeremi Gorman and VP of sales Peter Naylor, to lead its new ad venture, a spokesperson confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Weprin.
Gorman will be president of worldwide advertising for Netflix, with Naylor serving as VP of ad sales. They both start at Netflix next month.
In hiring Gorman and Naylor, Netflix has secured two executives with bona fides in both technology and entertainment. Gorman, who has been Snap’s CBO since 2018, previously worked as a senior ad sales executive at Amazon, and before that at Yahoo.
Agencies
Dentsu Creative Australia names its joint chief creative officers
Dentsu Creative Australia has appointed internationally recognised creative team, Avish Gordhan and Mandie van der Merwe, as the business’ first joint chief creative officers.
Gordhan and van der Merwe bring over two decades of global experience. They will report into Dentsu Creative Australia and New Zealand CEO Kirsty Muddle.
The team, currently executive creative directors at M&C Saatchi Sydney, have worked on iconic campaigns such as Tourism Australia’s ‘MateSong’ and Go Gentle Australia’s ‘Stop the Horror’.
Their work has been recognised more than 200 times at the biggest award shows, including D&AD, Cannes Lions, The One Show, Clios and Spikes and are one of the few creative teams in Australia to win a WEBBY Award.
They have also played key roles benefiting the broader industry, with van Der Merwe serving two terms as national head of AWARD School helping to guide the next wave of creative talent in Australia and a slew of awards from media trades.
Podcasts
Teacher’s Pet podcast the ‘game-changer’ in Chris Dawson case, says Hedley Thomas
Five years ago, Gold Walkley Award-winning journalist Hedley Thomas decided to revisit the story of Lynette Dawson’s probable murder – a mystery that first captured his attention around the turn of the century, reports News Corp’s James Madden.
It was a case that had been the subject of two coronial inquests in the early 2000s, both of which found the mother of two had been murdered.
But her killer had never been charged.
Thomas had always retained a strong interest in the Dawson case, and in 2017 he felt compelled to refocus the media spotlight on the matter, via a podcast.
At the time, the concept of journalism podcasts was still a relatively untested phenomenon, but Thomas believed it would be a powerful platform from which to revisit, and hopefully solve, the murder of Lyn, most likely at the hands of her husband, Chris Dawson.
Television
Bali bombing top cop confident new TV drama will get it right
The man who led the international contingent of the police investigation into the Bali bombing won’t be passing judgment on the actor who plays him when drama series Bali 2002 drops on Stan on September 25. Well, not immediately at least, reports Nine Publishing’s Karl Quinn.
“My wife and I are going overseas on holiday, so I’ll be away when it’s on,” says Graham Ashton, the former AFP officer and, later, chief commissioner of Victoria Police. “But my family are going to watch it, and I’ll no doubt get a look at it when I come back.”
Ashton insists he isn’t too concerned about what Richard Roxburgh might do with the role. “He’s not doing an impersonation of me, it’s an interpretation,” he says. “It’s not me so much – it’s a dramatised version. Obviously, it’s not a documentary. I won’t be looking at it thinking, ‘this is real, this is not’.”
The investigation into the terrorist attack of October 12, 2002, which left 202 people, including 88 Australians, dead, was a team effort, Ashton is at pains to point out. And though it is a major chapter in his life, when his family watch the series they will largely be seeing his part in it for the first time.
New cheating scandal rocks The Block
You can bet the producers of The Block are rubbing their hands together with glee: After the cheating scandal that dominated the last season of the show (to great ratings success), Tuesday’s episode suggested there could be some unfair gameplay going on again this year, reports News Corp’s Nick Bond.
Married couple Sharon and Ankur are already this season’s most controversial contestants, clashing with their fellow players and even their own builder, in a fiery text exchange aired on Monday’s episode.
In scenes aired the following night, all five teams headed off-site to Levantine Hill winery to take part in a potentially lucrative challenge.
The teams were tasked with trying to replicate the taste of a premium wine blend – a 2015 Samantha’s Paddock Mélange Traditionnel, to be exact – by tasting and mixing several wines together to make their own bottle.
The closest attempt – as judged by a chief wine maker – would win $50,000 of wine to take back to The Block and increase the value of their home.
Claremont drama pushed to 2023
Upcoming Seven drama Claremont, based on WA murders, will now screen in 2023 instead of 2022, reports TV Tonight.
A Seven spokesperson told TV Tonight filming delays due to WA’s COVID restrictions has pushed production by Screentime back.
The series, announced at 2022 Upfronts, surrounds the disappearance of young women and a 25-year investigation by the police and one tenacious journalist, all in dogged determination to seek justice.
This leaves Seven with no new local drama on its primary channel in 2022.