BotW: The media inquiry that isn't; Tough love for TV; and finding MediaLand
Welcome to Best of the Week, written in Evandale, Tasmania, after a big week wrapping up the Compass roadshow with stops in Perth, Adelaide, and Melbourne. Was I really only in Perth on Monday? It feels longer.
Today: Time for the TV industry to listen to its customers, Canberra’s slapdash media policy process, and a new gig.
Happy Fibonacci Day
If you’ve been thinking about upgrading to an Unmade membership, this is the perfect time. Your membership includes:
A complimentary ticket to all of Unmade’s events, including HumAIn, REmade, Unlock, and Compass;
Member-only content and our paywalled archives;
Your own copy of Media Unmade.
When a marketer warns that you are becoming hard to buy, it’s time to listen
So what will it take for the TV networks to listen to their customers? One of their biggest fans (and spenders) has given them the sort of specific warning that they’d be idiots to ignore.
On Thursday we uploaded the podcast of our Compass Brisbane conversation which took place on stage the week before.
Jonathan Kerr, chief growth officer at Budget Direct, is as qualified as any marketer to express a view on the TV industry. He’s used television to build the brand, including via Captain Risky and now Insurance Solved. And his brand buys its own media directly. He uses the free to air networks and Foxtel too.
That means using OzTAM to buy free to air, and the new Kantar-driven data to buy Foxtel. That was created because Foxtel Media CEO Mark Frain concluded he was unable to get an equal seat at the table with OzTAM, jointly owned by Seven, Nine and Ten.
Kerr has been as specific as it’s possible to be that he expects his suppliers to stop squabbling and come together for the common good of their medium.
“I am annoyed with TV,” JK told us at Compass. “It’s really sad to see the way they can’t come together.
“I always say ‘never be hard to buy’. We’re at the point where it’s worth coming together to make it so that it’s a much more tradeable, understood medium.
“TV is such a wonderful medium if you want to deliver a brand narrative and a story so I think it would be truly wonderful if they said ‘Let’s save this together’.”
That cannot be any clearer. It comes from one of TV’s greatest supporters, and was said with love. If the networks cannot put ego to one side after a message like that, then they have little hope of standing up to the onslaught that is already under way.
Welcome to Medialand
Back in 1987, I made a decision that took me off course.
As a 16-year-old in the UK, I needed to choose the A-level subjects which would be my two-year entry route into a degree (or not).
In making that decision, you need to say aloud what you want. What fascinated me was media, and particularly radio. I would go to sleep listening to Bob Harris presenting Nightline on talk radio station LBC. I used to call in for the phone competitions on my local station Radio 210. I even interned there for a few days.
But despite that fascination with broadcasting, the idea of saying that I wanted to be on the radio was something I couldn’t quite admit, even to myself. I just didn’t feel entitled.
So I told everyone, and even myself, that I wanted to be a sound engineer. That seemed a little less egotistical than wanting to be behind the mic. It meant choosing two A-level subjects I would end up hating: physics, and maths with mechanics. To this day, I have no idea how to solve a quadratic equation, which was the central point of the course.
Luckily for me, alongside those A-Levels, my college also offered a vocational course in journalism for one afternoon a week. The first feature interview I did was with Bob Harris, taking the train into London and the LBC studios.
That thin portfolio of the Bob Harris interview was enough to get a job interview on my first local newspaper. They were short staffed as the job market was booming. I started as a cub reporter before my A-level results came in, and fortunately they never thought to ask later about how I had done (I failed spectacularly).
It meant that by late 1989, I was on my way in journalism. Three years later, when my friends came out of university, many struggled when Black Wednesday crashed the UK economy in 1992.
Things work out.
Which brings me on to this week. If you scroll all the way down to the 17th paragraph of Thursday’s media release about ABC Radio National’s 2025 lineup, you’ll find a piece of news relevant for me. Next year, my former Mumbrella colleague Vivienne Kelly and I will present a half hour weekly show about the media. Broadcast on Friday afternoons, it’s going to be called MediaLand.
It’s been in the works for nearly three months now, and we recorded a couple of pilot episodes along the way. We signed the contract just over a week ago, and I had my first aircheck yesterday (gulp).
I know it’s cooler to play it cool. But I can’t on this occasion. Doing the show, which starts in late January, is the culmination of a career ambition 35 years in the making.
Being on the radio and on the ABC carries a disproportionate cultural heft, and with it a daunting sense of responsibility to do it well.
To be clear, by the way, Unmade still remains a full time role for me. And there are no limits in how I talk about the ABC here. (They stuffed up the announcement of the exit of Sarah Macdonald from ABC Sydney this week, didn’t they?)
I’ll obviously have to be particularly specific in declaring conflicts of interest when I write about ABC Radio National’s ratings (which have been awful recently), but I’ll still be covering them whenever they warrant it.
I won’t go on about it between now and January. But yeah, it’s been a big week.
Canberra time
In Canberra, the Parliamentary sitting week revealed the government’s media policy agenda to be as short term as expected.
On Thursday, communications minister Michelle Rowland said she had changed her mind about including YouTube in the plan to ban under-16s from using social media. Not that YouTube necessarily should have been included in the first place, but it demonstrated how little thought had gone in ahead of time.
According to Rowland in her second reading speech for the bill on Thursday: “This will, at a minimum, include TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), among others.”
There will be no proper examination of the practicalities. The Environment and Communications Legislation Committee is conducting and unusually lightweight inquiry. It was announced on Thursday, with a deadline to make submissions “limited to 1-2 pages” of yesterday. The committee will report back on the findings of its inquiry on Tuesday.
As Freelancer CEO Matt Barrie asked on X: “How on earth is it legal to ram things through parliament like this?”
The reason for the timing is of course the election early next year. The timing seems to have come as a shock to the government. Now it’s racing to pass some legislation while it can.
Inevitably, the law will be full of holes. But it will take until after the election for them to show up.
The Google breakup begins
Speaking of governments, in the US, the Department of Justice showed its hand this week in its long-running anti-trust case on Google’s search monopoly. It wants the judge to force Google to sell its Chrome browser. That will be a good first step.
SCA’s wild week on the index
Southern Cross Austereo’s week of rapid share movements stretched into Friday.
After rising by 12.6% on Tuesday, falling by 5.2% on Wednesday, and rising by 5.5% on Thursday, SCA’s price fell by 6% yesterday.
The movement was against an otherwise good day for the broadcasters with ARN Media up 4.2%; Seven West Media up 3.1% and Nine up 0.8%.
The Unmade Index made it a sixth straight day of gains, up by 0.4% to 452.5 points.
CotW: Find your pace
In each edition of BotW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their Campaign of the Week
LBB’s APAC reporter Casey Martin writes:
Heckler produced a star-studded tourism campaign to spruik the highlights of Abu Dhabi. The action-packed spot stars Chris Hemsworth and his real life partner, Elsa Pataky, as they finish a stunt for an action movie. The couple hang in peril as they dream up an exciting yet relaxing holiday.
Time to leave you to your Saturday.
Abe Udy and I will be back on Monday with Start the Week.
Have a great weekend.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher - Unmade
tim@unmade.media
Well done on achieving the unspoken childhood dream. I’m not sure I ever used quadratic equations during my career on the technical side of the business, but I too eventually achieved the real goal of being on-air. And all of it was fun whilst it lasted. Will be listening to you on t’wireless for sure.
Well done Tim many congratulations on fulfilling a dream ! Wish you huge success!