Welcome to Unmade’s Monday newsfeed, wrapping up international media and marketing news from the weekend, along with this morning’s local media and marketing headlines.

Happy National Gazpacho Day. And happy Microwave Oven Day too. Somebody didn’t think that through.

Junkee, going cheap?

Out of home company Ooh Media is struggling to get a decent price for its youth publishing division Junkee Media, The Sydney Morning Herald reports this morning.

The sale process has fallen behind schedule, with the deadline of October 29, already missed says the report from Zoe Samios. The Guardian is among the potential bidders remaining, but the $20m that Ooh Media reportedly wants for Junkee looks unlikely.

2022 outlook brightens

Advertising agency executives are predicting that next year will see a significant recovery in marketing spend, locally and globally, reports today’s Australian Financial Review. Among the most bullish was DDB president and regional CEO Andrew Little who told the newspaper that the recovery is “already well and truly under way”.

Pre-election government spend and sporting events including the Commonwealth Games and Winter Olympics will help drive revenue.

The sentiments echo those expressed by media agency bosses in AdNews on Friday, who said the current quarter is the strongest since 2017.

And MI3’s Paul McIntyre reports that TV networks are attempting to push ratecards up by 10 per cent. McIntyre also asks whether media brands’ environmental and social governance stances will be key to negotiations, before concluding that actually they won’t.

TV industry asks for yet more government help

Fresh from receiving half a billion dollars of taxpayers assistance during the Covid crisis, the industry is asking the government for even more help.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the industry is leaning on communications minister Paul Fletcher to cut yet again the $41m per year the industry pays to access broadcast spectrum. The newspaper says that the industry also wants him to legislate to force smart TV manufacturers to give priority to local ad-supported streaming services in their navigation, ahead of the international subscription streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus.

And the shopping list also appears in The Australian, where broadcasters are urging the government to dump blackout laws banning political advertising on traditional media during the final three days of an election campaign.

Fletcher has also penned a column for The Oz today, giving Facebook one of its regular bashings, and signalling an appetite to legislate. He writes:

“Every day there are people bullied on Facebook. Every day there are people choosing not to get vaccinated because they have been misled by misinformation on Facebook.

“Every day there are people defrauded by financial scammers advertising on Facebook. Every day there are teenagers driven to despair by a flood of unrealistic images of bodily perfection on Instagram.

“Take just one example of Facebook’s colossal failure of responsibility: the 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand mosque attack when the murder of more than 50 people was livestreamed on Facebook.

”For a traditional television station to have done this would have been an egregious breach of the rules set by broadcasting regulators in most countries. Yet Facebook carried out this horrendous act with virtually no sanction.”

CNN anchor sacked over conflict of interest breach

One of the US’s best known news anchors, CNN’s Chris Cuomo, was sacked over the weekend. His dismissal followed an internal investigation into conflict of interest in how he helped his brother, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with communications strategy when he was accused of sexual harassment.

Credlin says sorry to South Sudanese

Sky News Australia presenter Peta Credlin issued an extraordinary, lengthy on air apology to Melbourne’s South Sudanese community on Saturday.

Credlin, once prime minister Tony Abbot’s chief of staff, accepted that she had got many of the details wrong in her claims about the community’s role during the spread of Covid.

Hitchener dials back

Veteran Nine News presenter Peter Hitchener is beginning to dial back his commitments, The Australian reveals today. According to Media Diary columnist Nick Tabakoff, the 75-year-old Hitchener will drop to four days a week, Monday to Thursday, with weekend newsreader Alicia Loxley adding Fridays to her duties.

Nine wins first ratings week of summer

Thanks to Lego Masters: Bricksmas Special, Nine easily won the first week outside of 2021’s main 40-week ratings period. The network was well ahead of both Seven and Ten for both primary channel and network share. Lego Masters was top entertainment show for the week with 767,000 total metro overnight viewers, according to the OzTam data.

Manu’s return

Former My Kitchen Rules judge Manu Feildel is returning to Seven’s cooking show My Kitchen Rules after the series was dropped from the schedule for 2021, says TV Blackbox. However, there appears to be no place for former co-host Pete Evans who has fallen into a Covid conspiracy rabbit hole.

That’s it for today’s newsfeed wrap. If you missed my note on Saturday, I’m experimenting with a new format for Unmade:

• Mondays: Wrap of the weekend and breaking media and marketing news

• Tuesdays: Interview podcast. Tomorrow will be Ten’s Rod Prosser.

• Wednesdays: In-depth analysis at the week’s half way point

• Fridays: Podcast extracts from the audio edition of Media Unmade

• Saturdays: End of week analysis

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Have a great Monday.

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Proprietor - Unmade