Mumbrellacast

Welcome to this week's Mumbrella, although we left the studio hours ago, so you'll have to help yourself to tap water and snacks.

This week: Seven Media Group is born again at the AGM; we hear from marketers and media in the field as the Compass roadshow hits Sydney and Brisbane; and the government has just doled out $31m dollars to news organisations in the name of News Innovation – who got the money?

Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

Welcome to the Mumbrellacast, which opens today with a rousing speech given by Mamamia co-founder Mia Freedman at the company's upfront yesterday morning.

Mia implored advertisers to stop pumping three-quarters of their ad buying budgets into the social media networks, which are playing havoc with our mental health, damaging our children, and destroying our local media industry to boot. It's quite the call to arms.

Elsewhere on the podcast, we discuss Paramount Australia's upfront, run a ruler over the annual reports issued by ABC and SBS, and interview Margaret Simons, author of 'Going Digital: The...

Beverley McGarvey, the president of Network 10 and head of streaming at Paramount ANZ speaks to Tim Burrowes ahead of the company's upfront presentation in Melbourne.

Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

Fresh from a well-received Upfront presentation, Seven Media Group CEO Rohan Lund and chief revenue officer Natalie Harvey talked to Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes for a wide ranging conversation about their plans for 2027, the new brand and resetting the company culture with no tolerance for bad behaviour.

They also addressed the question of further industry consolidation, whether the TV companies could come together to jointly own a single premium content exchange, and how the media ownership laws may need to change again.

The interview explores why Lund has returned to the brand Seven Media Group, how...

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, where Seven and ABC announce the latest intellectual property for Meta to steal.

In this episode, we discuss Meta's insane terms and conditions that were seemingly written by Dr. Evil; ABC invites the media to the old Q&A studio to announce how much drama they have commissioned this year (still no Recovery reboot); and Seven decides on a new/old name for the company and leans into some classic/fresh formats. You know we belong together.

Happy listening.

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Podcast edit b...

Welcome to the latest Mumbrellacast, live streamed from the Pentagon to your pocket.

The Mumbrella team has been on a bit of a conference crawl this week, our necks weighed down with lanyards, clothing covered in ID badges, coffee cups disposed of thoughtfully.

Eleanor Dickinson reports back from the WPP Media Futures Event and the HumAIn conference, where she was schooled on how agentic AI is changing marketing as we know it. Meanwhile, Tim Burrowes went to the Samsung Ads Newfront event, where he was confronted with a future that involves a 24/7 Mamamia FAST channel.<...

In today's episode of The Unmakers, Tim Burrowes speaks to Barney Chunn, the co-founder of a new PR tech start-up, Drumbeat, which uses AI to better target and pitch stories to journalists.

"Drumbeat is a PR and comms platform for high-growth businesses," Chunn explains.

It helps organisations "find and define your stories, connect them with the most appropriate, journalists and media partners, and then help you with your outreach in a way that maximises the chance of getting consistent coverage."

He stresses that Drumbeat is not a volume content play...

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, now sent to you from a dodgy Gmail address.

This week's hot topic is scam job recruiters, who are reaching out to members of the marketing and media world with employment opportunities too good to be true.

The scammers do this through AI-assisted emails that scrape your biographical details and work history and pepper these throughout a personally addressed introduction letter. Or maybe they'll get you via a plethora of fake job ads posted on Linkedin and Meta, designed to trick and trap vulnerable job seekers who might not give...

This week, the Heated Debate returns with a question for the newshounds: should Australian media stand with the ABC and other banned outlets by boycotting One Nation press events? Reporter Zac Nikolovski and good friend of the Mumbrellacast Lauren Joyce enter a two-party contest of their own.

Zac argues the affirmative, warning that allowing politicians to exclude journalists over critical coverage creates a dangerous incentive by making access conditional on favourable reporting.

Lauren takes an audience-first view, arguing that a boycott would leave fewer journalists in the room to question and contextualise One Nation’s cl...

More than six months after KIIS lost its Melbourne breakfast show with the Kyle and Jackie O implosion, ARN has announced the full-time replacement:  Ash London, Isaac Smith and Elliot Garnaut.

Tim Burrowes and Irene Hulme ponder whether the trio have what it takes to get out of the hole Kyle and Jackie O left behind.

Welcome to the Mumbrellacast, the only podcast to win the Pulitzer, the Nobel Peace Prize, and a bronze Logie.

This week, Nine has lost two of its biggest decision-makers in the space of 12-or-so hours. On Thursday morning, Nine's TV boss Amanda Laing, who headed up Nine's recently integrated television, streaming television, and streaming subscription television division (TV boss, in other words) was made redundant, with CEO Matt Stanton choosing not to fill the role and instead moonlight as the division's kinda-maybe-boss-for-now-yeah?, helping out and maintaining "business as usual" at Nine, to quote his official statement on...

Sinead Boucher is the owner of Stuff, one of New Zealand's biggest media companies, and in this interview with Mumbrella editorial director Hal Crawford she recounts her journey from the newsdesk to the boardroom.

Revelations in the discussion include details of the 2020 phone call from then-Nine CEO Hugh Marks that informed Boucher he was going to shut down her company. At that time, Nine owned Stuff as a kind of hangover from its merger with Fairfax in Australia, and Boucher was the CEO.

"I just couldn't believe this decision to wind us up, which I...

This morning, Ive Group has made an offer to buy publicly-listed out-of-home company Motio. The deal values Motio at around $20 million — 15% over their closing market cap — and finds Ive Group expanding from the world of printing and marketing into the ever-growing out-of-home market.In a release to the ASX, Ive Group said the acquisition would allow it to build out its retail marketing and media offering.Irene and Tim discuss what the deal means for Australian media and marketing.

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, recorded one syllable at a time and then painstakingly stitched together.

Australian publishers and creators may have to actively block AI companies from scraping, stealing, and modifying their content, under two rather ill-conceived government proposals regarding AI and copyright.

Do we really value data centres over copyright protection? With these ideas currently up for debate, we will find out public and political sentiment around this soon enough.

The Albanese government is also mulling up selling off some of the broadcast spectrum currently used in free-to-air TV, with an...

Today's Mumbrellacast has a slightly different format to usual.

It features a conversation between Tim Burrowes and Josh Simons, the CEO of Vinyl Group.

It's fair to say the two have had differences of opinion and have both written about them publicly.

Simons suggested the pair try to find some common ground and this discussion unfolded in Mumbrella's office on Wednesday.

This conversation was uploaded simultaneously to the podcast feeds for both Vinyl Group's Media Week and the Mumbrellacast.

As you'll hear, a lot of ground is covered.

This week on the Mumbrellacast, the MFW point their brooms at Dave Hughes, and we struggle to find a legitimate reason for the protesting - at least, not one that has anything to do with Hughesy.

M&C Saatchi's local management takeover, announced just six weeks ago, has collapsed, and it seems that the entire Australian business may be done. This is a rapidly evolving story - read the latest on Mumbrella here.

Elsewhere, News Corp held five upfronts in the last two weeks, and one of the main messages was that sports fandom doesn’t...

Irene Hulme and Tim Burrowes cover the news and the first questions that come to mind. Specifically, was this the plan all along, and now that Seven is firmly in control, what are the implications for the radio side of the business?

The sunshine returned to Sydney just in time for the start of upfronts season, with SBS, Foxtel, and News Corp all proudly displaying their various wares to media buyers during the week.

The biggest news from SBS was confirmation that it had secured the FIFA World Cup for 2030, and locked down the Tour de France until that year as well. We also discuss its partnership with Ooh Media, and speculate wildly about former SBS boss/current Ooh Media boss James Taylor's involvement in the deal.

Foxtel, meanwhile announced a few major name changes, a host...

Tim Burrowes and Irene Hulme take a deep dive into the legal morass of the ARN/Jackie Henderson lawsuit with lawyer Michael Byrnes.

Byrnes, a partner at Swaab, explains ARN's newly revealed requirement to disclose any records of meetings between themselves and the activist group Mad Fucking Witches.

Matters in the case are progressing rapidly - Kyle Sandilands was served a subpoena on air on Wednesday morning - and the hosts cover off key angles in this breaking news podcast.

In this interview edition of the Mumbrellacast, timed for release with News Corp's upfronts events, executive chair Michael Miller sits down with Mumbrella editorial director Hal Crawford to discuss the News Bargaining Incentive, doing deals with AI labs, and whether News' Australian mastheads have hit a subscription plateau.

 "I'm not going to preempt negotiations that haven't even started," Miller told Crawford of the NBI and the deals that News could possibly do with Meta, Google, Tiktok and Microsoft.

"No one has said they are not going to play ball."

"I think there's some as...

The first breaking news episode for Mumbrella. Tim Burrowes, Nathan Jolly and Irene Hulme unpack Survey 5 including a history making result, and a genuine debate over whether ARN Sydney had a good day or a bad one.

More breaking news episodes are coming. Subscribe to Mumbrellacast and get each one in your feed the moment it drops.

A fourth major player has entered Australia’s competitive media monitoring industry with today’s arrival of John Croll’s Truescope.

Croll previously led the ASX giant Isentia, taking it through a 2010 sale to Quadrant Private Equity and 2014 ASX float.

Isentia – which rebranded from Media Monitors in in 2012 – peaked with a near-$1bn market capitalisation before the misfiring acquisition of King Content in 2015 saw investment sentiment turn against the company, which was then acquired by Access Intelligence in 2021.

Croll left Isentia in 2018. After a year off, he founded Truescope seven years ago, alongside former collea...

Welcome to the Mumbrellacast, where television assets might be written down, but they are never written off.

This week, Nine presented a set of truly baffling financial results that didn't include its former radio division, Pedestrian or Domain, and pretended it had owned outdoor company QMS since the start of FY25 instead of for three months at the end of FY26. It also wrote down its television assets by a staggering $404m, suggesting they are suddenly worth less than half of what they once did.

Also measuring the worth of television this week is the...

Welcome to the latest Mumbrellacast, scandal-free since 2023 (unless we missed something in the T&Cs).

The biggest non-war, non-AI news at the moment is the Sydney Swans player controversy.

We don't dwell on the details -- mainly because it is a developing story -- but instead look at what this scandal (and others like it) means for team and player sponsorships in sport in the future.

With millions in gambling money soon to go south, and brands increasingly wary of controversy, might we see a situation where professional sporting leagues...

Welcome to the latest episode of the Mumbrellacast, voted Australia's favourite sound.

This week, we open by dissecting the last-minute changes to the News Bargaining Incentive, which made its long-awaited parliamentary debut today.

It seems that former minister Peter Garrett unwittingly helped inform the bill, with his Midnight Oil lyric: "the rich get richer, the poor get the picture", as the big media giants look very likely to swallow up the majority of this tech-giant tax, while the smaller publishers will be force to fight it out for a few meta-scraps. Meanwhile, the Australian Association...

Welcome to the latest Mumbrellacast, not yet streaming live on Kick.

And while we're on the topic of smooth segues, Melbourne-born, globally loved video game streaming platform Kick announced this week it will wade into the lucrative world of advertising.

Given that Kick was built from the profits made from online casino Stake, which Kick's co-founders also launched, they seemingly understand the lure of easy money. Eleanor spoke to Kick head of growth and revenue Ryan Webb about the company's advertising play.

This week Mumbrella ran an interesting opinion piece...

A key moment in Christian O'Connell's new book Unscript happened backstage at last year's ARN Upfront event in Sydney.

As he explains in this podcast interview with Mumbrella's Tim Burrowes, it was a high pressure situation. O'Connell had decided to present to the audience without the safety net of the autocue.

To increase the pressure, he was about to welcome to the stage the two people whose time slot he was about to take over in Sydney -- Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones, who had been the regular breakfast voices on the station for 20 years.<...

Harvey Norman and Latitude Financial cop a $55m fine for misleading advertising

Mutinex co-founder Henry Innis raises the alarm about how advertising measurement is influenced by who funds it.

And we look  back on the Mumbrella Awards. Where did it all go right for Howatson+Company?

In this cross-post interview from the Spinoff's At Large podcast, Mumbrella's Hal Crawford speaks with Toby Manhire about the under-16s social media ban.

Manhire is the NZ culture and news site's editor-at-large, and he wants to know whether the law is working, who's under investigation, and whether New Zealand should follow Australia's lead on the legislation.

Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, now available as a novella.

This week has seen some major executive moves at the media companies.

Nat Harvey went from Mamamia to Seven, former Seven revenue chief Kurt Burnette popped up at Vinyl Group, and Mia gave her son the good office. 

Also, SCA presented its unique selling proposition to marketers at a mini-upfront delivered at breakfast-time with coffee and croissants; the bosses of News Corp, SBS, ABC, and Nine teamed up on stage at the Andrew Olle lecture to discuss the deals and battles with AI c...

When Mumbrella sat down with the outgoing and incoming bosses of women’s media network Mamamia — Nat Harvey and Luca Lavigne, respectively — we were relishing asking the obvious question: how is a 28-year-old qualified to run a business?

It turns out 28-year-olds, like all people, come in different configurations.

As he explained in the interview, Lavigne is living at an accelerated pace.

Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.

Welcome to the Mumbrellacast, now completely created with AI, auto-tune, monosodium glutamate, agent orange, and Styrofoam.

This week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (or a very convincing robotic replacement) visited Sydney University where he announced he will establish an official Office of AI, which will be tasked with AI-related legislation, drafting new copyright protections, and basically saving the nation from digital invaders.

Elsewhere on the podcast, we discuss how and why the most-played song on Australian radio over the past few weeks was (reportedly) created using AI; Vinne Schifferstein Vidal joins us to argue that agencies...

Welcome to the latest episode of the Mumbrellacast, where we quiz the PM on his predilection for Aussie popettes.

Actually, we discuss Telstra's biggest PR disaster since the hazy, lazy days of 2018; look at Oztam's decision to take the official TV ratings measurement system to tender after a quarter-century with Nielsen; debate whether the NRL deal is worth the $5.3 billion being paid; and take a look at new commercials from Square, Mazda, and Mutti.

This week, Ben Willee from Spinach joins us, and we resist the urge to delve into why his initials contain more...

Welcome to the latest Mumbrellacast, where unfortunately Karl Stefanovic won't be joining us this week.

Instead, we'll make do with the freshest five-piece since Jackson 5: Abe Udy, Tim Burrowes, Eleanor Dickinson, Nathan Jolly, and Lauren Joyce.

If you were wondering why you kept tripping over discarded calculators on your way to work this week, it's because Tuesday marked the end of the financial year -- which means Mumbrella can reveal the winners and losers on the Unmade Index, a Tim Burrowes invention which tracks all the publicly listed media and marketing companies on the stock...

Welcome to the latest episode of the Mumbrellacast. Today, we're joined by Tommy Robinson to discuss whether or not those bloody—oh wait, our lawyers have advised us to drop that segment, so we will instead start by discussing Karl Stefanovic's perfectly played-out cancellation from Nine.

Today, after 20 years behind the Today desk, Karl Stefanovic has finally been axed by Nine, after months of ramping up the right-wing content on his independent video podcast The Karl Stefanovic Show until he hit breaking point with far-right agitator Tommy Robinson, who Karl openly declared his love for.

Wh...

Six years ago, Rob McFaul launched UK-based non-profit Purpose Disruptors with an aim to help the advertising and marketing industry move towards sustainability. Purpose Disruptors has just launched in Australia, with former OMD and Mindshare boss James Greet as its local boss.

On this week's Mumbrellacast, Tim Burrowes speaks to McFaul and Greet about the non-profit's mission in Australia, and how changing the mindset around client briefs so they understand how climate change is impacting marketers, and how marketers are impacting climate change.

Greet and McFaul said that most advertising clients aren't aware of the e...

Welcome to a very radio-heavy Mumbrellacast, where we discuss Kyle Sandilands' big settlement with ARN, SCA's sacking of three regional breakfast show, and even attempt to take Pauline Hanson's side on an issue or two (actually, just one). Best of all, we are joined by Lauren Joyce, who spent some time inside ARN, dealing with some of Kyle's mad fucking detractors.

We begin with Kyle Sandilands' settlement with ARN, which will see him take home $12m plus change, millions in advertising, and Smallzy's collection of Reeboks. It's hard to see who won, ultimately, aside from activist group...

On this week's Mumbrellacast, we dive into today's radio ratings and look at who will fill the Kyle-sized hole in the Sydney breakfast market, debate Vinyl Group's masterplan, and chat to Nicky Barton from Mutinex about why brands are cutting marketing spend to long term channels.

We start with today's radio ratings, and the race to secure the Sydney breakfast radio crown now that Kyle and Jackie O are doing their broadcasts live from the Federal Court.

Triple M, ABC Breakfast, Smooth, Nova, and Gold all enjoyed increases in audience share for the timeslot, with...

On this week's Mumbrellacast, Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine joins the team to discuss a variety of topics, including her company's latest survey, which saw Optus pass Woolworths as Australia's most distrusted brand -- quite a dubious honour, indeed.

There's a Paul Kelly lyric: "To be good takes a long time, but to be bad no time at all." We saw that song play out when Qantas went from an untouchable Aussie icon to a national disgrace during the pandemic, and we've seen it happen to the once-sparkling reputations of Optus, Coles, and Woolworths over the past...

Rohan Lund, the newly minted CEO of SCA, joins Tim Burrowes on stage at the Mumbrella360 conference for his first major public interview since becoming boss of the media company.

Lund joined the board of SCA in March, was appointed CEO in April, and officially started in his new job on May 1.

Four weeks later, he jumped onto the M360 stage for a wide-ranging chat about a newly merged company in flux.

Lund speaks about his first month in the role, the biggest differences between the cultures at SCA and Seven, whether he w...