Business of Media
Who killed the social media ad boom?
As the blame game began in Silicon Valley, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet chief executive Sundar Pichai used earnings calls last week to point to the unmistakable storm clouds gathering over the global economy, report The Financial Times’ Alex Barker, Alistair Gray, and Tim Bradshaw.
But the most striking signs of weakness have concentrated on social media platforms.
US advertisers are on track to spend $US65.3 billion ($101.8 billion) on networks such as Facebook, Snap and Twitter this year, a year-on-year increase of just 3.6 per cent. That is about 10 times slower than last year, according to estimates from market researcher eMarketer.
The social media slowdown is such that its forecast growth rate for this year is almost the same as traditional media such as television and radio, whose audiences have been shrinking for years.
New Zealand prepares law to crack down on tech giants as Canadian news outlets face Meta block
The Ardern government is preparing to introduce legislation that would force tech giants Meta and Google into commercial negotiations with New Zealand news outlets, as Australian authorities assess whether its laws aimed at supporting media companies have worked, reports Nine Publishing’s Zoe Samios.
Canadian news outlets that want to be paid by the tech giants were also told last week their content would be ripped from Meta’s online website Facebook if its government passes a law to force it and Google into any commercial agreements. The behaviour of the two major platforms in other jurisdictions is being closely watched by local media companies as they consider how they continue to receive funding via agreements with the tech giants.
Australia’s news media bargaining code was introduced last year in an effort to force Google and Facebook to pay eligible large and small news publishers to display articles in the search engine and “newsfeed”. It was introduced after the competition regulator found there was an imbalance of bargaining power between media companies and the digital platforms and is widely considered a solid attempt to clawback the advertising revenue lost from the rapid rise of technology giants Google and Meta.
But Google and Meta’s reluctance to cooperate in other markets has raised questions among local news providers about whether more needs to be done to ensure agreements will be renewed once they expire.
Twitter trolls bombard platform after Elon Musk takeover
Twitter has been hit by a coordinated trolling campaign in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover, with more than 50,000 tweets from 300 accounts bombarding the platform with hateful content, reports The Guardian’s Dan Milmo.
The social media platform said it has been targeted with an attempt to make users think Twitter has dropped or weakened its content policies after the world’s richest man bought the company for $44bn (£38bn) last week.
Twitter’s head of safety and integrity said those running the site had not changed content policies but had been subject to “an organised effort to make people think we have”.
In a Twitter thread posted on Sunday, Yoel Roth said the company had seen a “ton” of tweets posted by a small number of accounts featuring slurs and other derogatory terms. To illustrate the scale of the attack, he said more than 50,000 tweets that repeatedly used one unspecified slur came from just 300 accounts.
Roth said most of those accounts were “inauthentic” and the users involved had been banned.
News Brands
ABC given deadline to avoid strike action in wage negotiations
Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s executives are facing pressure to improve wages by up to 6 per cent per annum or risk strike action after the national broadcaster announced it had received an $84 million boost in funding at last week’s federal budget, reports Nine Publishing’s Zoe Samios.
Union members gave the ABC until last Friday to decide whether to improve its existing offer to employees, which includes a 3 per cent annual increase in wages. Multiple media sources familiar with the negotiations, who spoke anonymously because talks are confidential, said that date has been pushed to Wednesday, but employees are not anticipating an improvement from management and are already preparing to vote for industrial action.
Cassie Derrick, director of the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance’s Media section, said the current offer did not address the “systemic problems” and the ABC.
“Management must conduct a rigorous, transparent audit into gender and racial pay gaps and set a target for workplace diversity to match the diversity in the Australian public,” Derrick said. “Our members have told management that it must come back with an improved offer this week, or we will begin taking steps towards protected industrial action.”
Wil Anderson’s bold solution for the ABC’s youth problem
Wil Anderson has a proposition he’d like to make to the ABC: Let him come in and oversee five nights a week of late-night TV hosted by young comedians, reports Nine Publishing’s Louise Rugendyke.
“Let’s make something,” he says. “Let’s get all these young people and give them more shows and do something in a slot – I don’t care where it is, it could be 10.30 on a Friday night, or we find a channel and we do it every night — let’s just invest in people.”
Anderson made the comment in light of the ongoing discussion about whether the ABC is doing enough to foster young talent. The debate was sparked after the broadcaster named long-time radio host Fran Kelly as host of the channel’s new Friday night chat show, Frankly. Critics said the appointment was another example of the ABC not promoting younger talent. The ABC then hit back, calling the criticism of 64-year-old Kelly “ageist”.
Anderson said his show could be hosted by a different comedian every night, such as Aaron Chen, Nina Oyama or Jordan Raskopolous – and could live on iview.
“Part of the problem is absolutely the discrepancy between the audience who watch ABC and the audience they try to attract,” he says. “It’s chicken or egg: are young people not watching ABC because the ABC doesn’t have good programs for young people or are young people just not watching free to air TV?”
Digital age heralds ‘golden era’ for journalism, says News Corp Australia boss Michael Miller
News Corp Australasia boss Michael Miller has heralded a new golden era of journalism, as media companies and reporters continue to adapt to the evolving needs of a more “agile” audience in the digital age, reports The Australian’s James Madden.
Launching NCA’s future series BEYOND ’23, which this year will comprise a book of essays by senior company figures on global issues and trends, as well as a conference in Sydney next week to be attended by leaders from a cross-section of industries, Miller said it was critical that media companies engage in thoughtful discussions on the nation’s “next horizons”.
“Media is normally a good lead indicator of how society and consumers and audiences are changing,” he said.
“Our audiences are becoming more agile. We are no longer routinely reading a daily newspaper and watching the evening news – we as a society are consuming news constantly through multiple devices in multiple ways with multiple views throughout the day.
“Technology has made us far more connected to current affairs, and made us far more likely to engage with it.
“We are, in many ways, entering a current affairs golden era. And it’s a great time to be a journalist.”
Radio
Langbroek, Stynes, Dimond to lose KIIS radio show the 3PM PickUp
The axe has fallen on Kate Langbroek, Monty Dimond and Yumi Stynes’s KIIS radio show with the 3PM Pick Up wrapping at the end of the year, reports News Corp’s Fiona Byrne.
While no replacement has been confirmed, there is considerable speculation in the radio industry that the Life Uncut podcast hosts Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne will launch a show in the timeslot vacated by 3PM Pick Up in 2023.
The show, which Langbroek joined last year, has been around since 2011 with various different hosting combinations.
Chrissie Swan and Stynes were the original hosts. Over the years the show saw the likes of Bec Judd, Meshel Laurie and Jane Hall come and go from the team.
The show’s cancellation was confirmed by ARN on Friday.
Television
Seven takes on the streamers with 40+ channels of its own
Seven will continue to add live TV channels to its free streaming service 7plus in the belief that viewers are “sick of searching” through multiple streaming apps for shows and films to watch, reports Nine Publishing’s Edmund Tadros.
The network will make use of its new deal with NBCUniversal to add even more specialist live channels to its line-up of about 40 TV channels on 7plus, along with creating female-focused channel 7Bravo with the NBCU content to add to the existing four broadcast channels.
Those specialist ad-supported channels (known as FAST, for Free Ad-Supported TV) include one offering reality show Big Brother non-stop, another dedicated to classic Australian drama Blue Heelers and one that screens My Kitchen Rules 24/7. There is also, of course, a channel dedicated to A Country Practice.
These dedicated online-only live streaming channels compete for viewing time with the almost 20 free channels offered by SBS, ABC, Nine and Ten. Seven’s service is also competing against subscription streaming providers such as Netflix and Disney+ and other entertainment options such as YouTube.
Ryan Murphy says he reached out to “20 of the victims’ family and friends” for ‘Dahmer’ series: “Not a single person responded to us”
Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story creator Ryan Murphy said he and his team reached out to 20 victims’ families and friends during the three and a half years it took to research and prepare for the Netflix series about the serial killer, reports The Hollywood Reporter’s Beatrice Verhoeven.
“It’s something that we researched for a very long time,” Murphy said at an event for the show at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles. “And we — over the course of the three, three and a half years when we were really writing it, working on it — we reached out to 20, around 20, of the victims’ families and friends trying to get input, trying to talk to people. And not a single person responded to us in that process. So we relied very, very heavily on our incredible group of researchers who … I don’t even know how they found a lot of this stuff. But it was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people.”
Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer gruesomely murdered 17 men. According to the show’s description, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a series that exposes these unconscionable crimes, centered around the underserved victims and their communities impacted by the systemic racism and institutional failures of the police that allowed one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.” Despite the stated goal, the show has been criticized for the heavy focus on Dahmer’s horrifying behavior and framing of the victims’ stories.