Welcome to the latest edition of the Unmade podcast. Today’s edition features another free extract from the audio edition of my book, Media Unmade, which is published by Hardie Grant and available online and in book stores.
Today’s chapter showcases the best and worst of Lachlan Murdoch’s media achievements over the last decade.
In radio, he found a great deal of success, buying DMG Radio and turning it into Nova Entertainment. Radio programmer Paul Jackson was recruited from the UK to launch Smooth FM (and kill off Classic Rock).
In television, it was a catastrophe, with the hasty firing of Grant Blackley leading to Murdoch having to spend a year as CEO at Ten after bungling the poaching of Seven’s James Warburton who was forced to sit out a lengthy gardening leave.
Murdoch lost Ten’s AFL rights and failed to get any of the NRL rights, the new show Breakfast was a ratings disaster, and Wake Up did even worse.
But there was a masterplan - to take control of the company, and fold it into the News Corp empire. Then the Ten board called in the administrators…
Today’s chapter is free to all subscribers. Some future chapters will only be available only to paying subscribers to Unmade. The paid tier is available from $65 per month.
Audio production on Media Unmade comes courtesy of Abe’s Audio, the people to talk to about voiceovers and sound design for corporate videos, digital content, commercials and podcasts.
As ever, I welcome your thoughts to letters@unmade.media, or via the ugly brown comment button below.
Happy New Year.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Proprietor - Unmade
Media Unmade - Chapter ten: Elephant in the Room