Every week the team at Mumbrella cover the latest news in the Australian media, marketing and advertising industries along with interviews with key people in the industry. Featuring a rotating panel of hosts from the Mumbrella team, this podcast is essential listening for anyone working under Australia's media and marketing umbrella.
As ARN's CEO Michael Stephenson says early in the latest Mumbrellacast, "a lot happens in media in 12 months."
Stephenson also cops to being "optimistic by design" which is why he is sounding cheerful after a challenging year as the new boss of an evolving media company trying to stay afloat as the industry remains in flux.
According to Stephenson, 2027 is looking bright.
"The business is alive, there's an excitement in the place, and a belief that everything is possible."
Stephenson and host Tim Burrowes unpack ARN's upfront announcements, and look back at a hard 2026, while Stepho denies he ever dubbed the MFWitches the company's "brand safety consultants".
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, 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 Transformation of the ABC'.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
As ARN's CEO Michael Stephenson says early in the latest Mumbrellacast, "a lot happens in media in 12 months."
Stephenson also cops to being "optimistic by design" which is why he is sounding cheerful after a challenging year as the new boss of an evolving media company trying to stay afloat as the industry remains in flux.
According to Stephenson, 2027 is looking bright.
"The business is alive, there's an excitement in the place, and a belief that everything is possible."
Stephenson and host Tim Burrowes unpack ARN's upfront announcements, and look back at a hard 2026, while Stepho denies he ever dubbed the MFWitches the company's "brand safety consultants".
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, 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 Transformation of the ABC'.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
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 Harvey recognises that Seven and the wider TV industry need to become easier to buy advertising from, and an Upfronts season where none of the media companies have taken big swings.
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.
Get the latest episodes here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
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.
The Marketing Association of Australia asked Deloitte to examine whether marketers are actually getting access to the company board, and this week they were kind enough to share the results exclusively with Mumbrella.
It turns out most chief marketing officers don't feel as if they are considered among the upper echelon of executives in/by the businesses they work in/for. "Many remain one step removed from the executive team and the board," the report states. "This is ultimately an influence problem."
We unpack the results, and what this means for the future of marketing -- or if it's actually been that way since at least the late 80s, as one Mumbrella reader commented under our story.
This week also gifted us the disturbing news that the US is bringing back the firing squad for the execution of a military psychiatrist who murdered a number of soldiers at an army base. It's the first time they've used a firing squad since WWII, and we haven't even gotten to the (most) disturbing part yet. There are plans to live stream the content online, which gives Australian media organisations the unenviable task of deciding if they will, in turn, be streaming or broadcasting the execution.
Zac Nikolovski asked the local media companies if they will be broadcasting the shooting, then spoke to Sacha Molitorisz, who teaches ethics, law, and media at UTS (and spent 20 years at the Herald) about where to draw t...
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, but about being "incredibly discerning".
Is Drumbeat hoping to replace public relations agencies? According to Chunn, he is helping to fill a middle ground between a full-service PR agency that charges around $10,000 a month to cover one region, and those who attempt to do it themselves and trip at the first hurdle.
"We think that there are some incredible PR pros out there ... not everyone can afford their human talent at the rate that those people charge out at.
"There's absolutely room for tools and people to cohabitate cohesively in this."
Enjoy the conversation.
Get the latest episodes here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
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 every potential employment lead the scrutiny they perhaps would otherwise. If you work in this industry, you've probably been approached.
We discuss the nefarious practice, and what the end game might be.
But before that, we look at the radio ratings which dropped mere hours before recording. Tapt Radio (formerly Nine's suite of talkback stations) saw its two biggest players, Sydney's 2GB and Melbourne 3AW, lose listeners across most timeslots.
That's nothing compared to ABC Radio National breakfast, which reached its second-lowest average audience on record.
Was there any good news in radioland? Well, the amount of loyal Kiis listeners that Kyle Sandilands Live has managed to pull away might be slowing to a stop.
Certainly KSL doesn't have the marketing budget Sandilands is used to, especially if this is a sign of the scale of the operation.
Later in the show we hear from Four Pillars cofounder Matt Jones, who will be creative director of next year's Mumbrella 360 extravaganza. He explains why he took on the role after Tim floated it by him, and Tim in turn explains why he was convinced Matt was up for the task.
And to round out the show, we discuss the new campaigns from KFC, Vodafone, and One Nation.
They are hyperlinked in the name of each, in case you want to play along at home. Who said podcasts weren't interactive?
Happy trails!
Get the latest episodes here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Aud...
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 claims, ultimately giving the party greater control over its message and audiences less information on which to form their own views. As usual, things get pretty heated.
Also this week: the team digs into the case of Australian niche publisher Digital Drummer, whose founder Allan Leibowitz discovered an Israeli AI news startup was allegedly republishing his journalism on an industrial scale.
Is there a silver lining to publishing’s AI reckoning? Maybe. Ask ChatGPT again later.
The team also unpacks proposed changes to Australia’s privacy laws that have marketers bracing for a new era of consent pop-up hell, before picking apart OpenAI’s apology to us, the Australian people, to decide whether the tech giant's sorry letter is actually worthy of our nation's forgiveness.
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 the matter.
This news dropped the morning after AFR's editor-in-chief James Chessell quit to join his former charge Joe Aston's Rampart publication, seemingly without invoking a non-compete, a notice period, or the ghost of Graham Kennedy.
What's going on at Nine? We ask and attempt to answer this question.
Also, we hear from comedian and rabble-rouser Dan Illic, who was this week appointed CEO of activist group Get Up.
If the name of that organisation sounds a faint bell in the recesses of your memory, it may be because they were recently responsible for a fun stunt, where they unfurled a banner (via remote control) behind Pauline Hanson that said “I opposed a pay rise for workers”.
With Illic at the helm, can we expect more shenanigans from the Get Up organisation?
During a keynote at the Meta Connect conference hosted in San Francisco (just hours before the podcast recording, 'cos we keep things fresh) Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the Meta Muse Charm, a new gadget that looks like a Tamagotchi but stings like an AI agent. It's basically a way to use Meta's smart-glasses without having to wear what have widely been dubbed "pervert glasses" (or other, more offensive variations on the theme).
We also attended the Media Federation of Australia's conference in Sydney -- also a few hours before the podcast record -- which saw industry leader...
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 think was really in preparation for something worse that was coming and trying to regroup resources back to Australia," she said.
"I was shocked and stunned. I can't actually remember much of what I said in that phone call, but I know that I got off the phone and I just felt this sense of just huge rage, frustration, anger at this whole thing."
The interview was recorded live at Mumbrella's Publish conference, at the NSW State Library in Sydney.
For more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.
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 eye on raising billions from the telcos, who'd quite like some of those airwaves for their future 6G mobile networks.
Karl Stefanovic is planning to buy out his podcast business partner Keshnee Kemp, after close to six weeks of radio silence. A third-party has been appointed by the court to evaluate how much Kemp's 45% is worth. The problem is, how does one put a dollar figure on a company that is more about potential than actual results? We speculate wildly.
And finally, we went to four upfronts in three days, and discuss the various pros and cons of Nine, Youtube, Amazon, and Snap's presentations to the market. Enjoy!
Get the latest episodes here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
And for more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.
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.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
For more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.
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 end with the siren, with post-game analysis, podcasts, online discussions, panel shows, and more being part of the overall sports media landscape.
And will Albanese's proposed Digital Duty of Care laws end up with the local platform bosses all sharing a prison-cell?
We'll admit it's unlikely, but thanks to the fine wording in the draft legislation, it's now at least possible. Eek!
Get the latest episodes here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
For more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.
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 of new in-stadium advertising opportunities, and declared its interest in sports above all else.
We also discuss the latest run of dramas at M&C Saatchi, including the sport and entertainment head Jack Playfair resigning six months into the role, and the agency having to re-pitch for one of its big accounts.
And because you demanded it politely, the Heated Quiz returns, to cap off the episode in chaotic style.
See you at the upfronts! We'll be the ones staking out the canapé trays.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
For more about how News Australia is thinking about the future of mobile news in Australia, click here.
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 F*****g 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 assessment that is still being undertaken by those four companies, and that they are yet to determine how they want to proceed, and I understand that. But equally, the government or the legislation is that, deals need to be done by 31 of December or a charge will be made."
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 colleague Michael Bade. Truescope launched in Singapore, NZ and the US, and already has revenues of $15m. But it did not initially target Australia because of the relatively high cost of accessing copyrighted content.
In this podcast, Croll said that client demand had let to the choice to open the doors in Australia today. He said: “I love this industry. I’ve been in it all my life.”
Whereas Isentia had 1,200 staff, Croll said that advances in AI has allowed him to build similar capabilities with just 65 people. Truescope covers broadcast, print, digital and social media.
Croll said: “We’re swimming in our own lane. We’re back. We know the industry very well. We know how to build fantastic media intelligence platforms.”
Along with Isentia, the other key local media monitoring competitors are the locally founded Streem, which was sold to Cision in 2022 and Meltwater which is owned by private equity.
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 Video Futures Collective, which launched a new (well, forthcoming) TV ratings system that will measure advertiser reach across different platforms. As we explain, under the new system, if I see a Gatorade ad on Disney+, then on Netflix, then on my mobile while watching Kayo Sports, I would be counted as one human, rather than three separate humans (albeit one human with a large entertainment bill). They aren't doing public-facing TV ratings initially, nor are they measuring free-to-air TV, but interim CEO Toby Dewar hinted to Mumbrella that both might be coming soon.
And to round out the episode, Tim talks to one of Australia’s most interesting tabloid exports, Breaker Media founder Lachlan Cartwright, ahead of his keynote at Mumbrella Publish next week.
Get the latest episodes here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
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 become underfunded due to brand reticence? Will this have a knock-on effect where it jeopardises sponsorship for underfunded Olympians? Brands and ambassadors usually have drum-tight contracts that allow the sponsor to pull out if the talent brings them into disrepute, but by then, the damage is often done.
And while we are perusing iron-clad deals, Eleanor has been digging into the fine print of T&Cs, and what you actually own when you work with an agency. It turns out, it might not be a lot.
Checking out the terms and conditions of working with a number of Australian digital agencies -- some of which have page counts that technically make them novellas -- shows that buried in the fine print are often provisions about who actually owns the assets brands pay good money to develop with the agency: landing pages, backlinks, creative assets, data, and even access to advertising accounts could all be owned by your agency.
While we are taking on dodgy practices, media agencies are increasingly promising clients incredibly cheap advertising rates in order to win pitches, and the media owners are then left to make those rates work. Is this a race to the bottom, or a practice that has been going on since Triple M was only half-an-M?
Finally, we listen to the new sonic logo created by audio branding firm Smith and Western, who were tasked with capturing the spirit of Australia in a three-second sound blast. It's a tall order, and we d...
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 Press is dangerously close to needing to add a "powered by Google and Meta" tagline to its name, after it was guaranteed funding from the "incentive".
As Tim notes during the podcast, the Albanese government seems to announce its policies first, waits to hear the cries of dissent and/or support, and then simply gives the loudest voice what they want. I guess that's what comes with living in a functioning shout-ocracy.
While everyone is talking about ARN losing Kyle and Jackie, and SCA losing advertising dollars by buying a free-to-air TV network in a year that doesn't start with '19', the Sports Entertainment Group is quietly (at least for a bunch of sports commentators) becoming one of the most powerful radio companies in the country. This week they bought New Zealand's Mediaworks, which is the main player in the NZ radio world, and a company that Hal knows intimately, given he worked there for a number of years. This purchase is a big deal for the Australian media landscape, and we chat about why this is.
Ikea Australia has gone viral this week, and it's not even because a dog ate an allen key and some sticks and then vomited out a Billy bookcase. No, it's due to a savvy Instagram post that played off the internet's obsession with Wicker man, known in certain online circles as the sexiest wood-based creature since those Lord Of The Rings trees. Ikea has a history of n...
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 from Quiip agency's Larah Kennedy where she made the very good point that not every brand belongs on Reddit. (The same thing could be said for any social media platform; often the first time you become aware that a company even has a profile is when they get into hot water because a 19-year-old intern tweeted an offensive meme.)
Kennedy writes that Reddit requires "heavy, active moderation and skilled community management".
"If you venture into these spaces without investing in proper community governance, you open the floodgates to brand risk. Negative comments and controversy left to fester over a weekend can decimate years of painstaking brand building by Monday morning."
Larah joins the podcast to explore this topic further.
Also this week: the Albanese government announced it has finalised the News Bargaining Incentive legislation, and the changes it has made to the original draft have managed to upset both the major media companies -- who argue they were promised a larger slice of a larger pie -- and the smaller publishers, who argue the pie isn't being shared widely enough. Maybe Albo needs to wear his Joy Division shirt into parliament to distract the media...
And we end the podcast with another heated quiz, in which nine audio stings (sound logos, jingles, whatever you wish to call them) are played, and we attempt to access long dormant recesses of our memory banks to recall which brands th...
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.
An unnamed ARN executive adds to the tension further, telling O'Connell: "This really needs to go well."
O'Connell, presenter of the Gold FM breakfast show, now networked across Melbourne and Sydney, has published his latest book, Unscript: The Radical Act of Being Yourself, which is the reason for today's interview.
He discusses the progress of his push into Sydney, which began with the crucible of introducing himself to his new audience the morning after the Bondi Beach terror attack.
When the UK-born broadcaster first introduced himself to his Melbourne audience in 2017, he needed to win over the sceptics. He says: "The backlash at the time felt like it would never end. Professional underdog - I want to get it on my business card. I've always felt an outside on commercial radio. I get a lot of power from that."
O'Connell is going through the same process again, with his ratings so far down in Sydney, compared to his predecessors Jonesy and Amanda.
He says: "I look back and there were early signs that it was working. I can feel it again. I can see it, I can sense it. You can feel [the listeners] coming over one by one - that's how you build it."
He also discusses his evolving team, including Pete Deppeler, a refugee from The Kyle and Jackie O show on sister station Kiis, where he aptly played the role of show clown.
O'Connell wasn't interested in what he dubs "the cartoon character".
"His next evolution is as an a...
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 companies; and Mumbrella managed to help a creative get his Instagram account back after a dispute with Meta and FIFA, 'cos we're handy like that.
Delivered piping hot, just like you ordered.
Get the latest episodes here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
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 should not be selling AI platforms as a point of difference; and the heated debate is back -- and has very little to do with AI.
We start the episode with Vinne's very solid argument that agencies are investing millions in AI platforms and marketing them as a competitive advantage … but there's a major hitch. She speaks with Hal Crawford about an issue that goes to the heart of agency strategy.
And we remain on the absolute cutting-edge with news that '80s pop star Madonna has released her latest album, and she's back on the top of the Australian charts!
But instead of one of her new tunes making waves, it's been a heavily AI-assisted dance cover of her 1989 hit Like A Prayer, released into the world by Brisbane DJ Josh Fawaz, that has captured the attention of Australian commercial radio. The belated 2026 answer to Madonna's prayer was blasted close to 2,000 times within a fortnight, and played more in that period than any other song released by human, robot, or animal.
The song's success, and its embrace by Australian radio, has caused quite the furor, with many angry torch-bearers calling for AI-created content to either be disclosed, completely banned, or something in-between
Lauren Joyce, who was previously the content boss at ARN, ignores all the controversy, and looks ahead to a future where AI-created songs will simp...
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 syllables than his entire name.
"Don't spin a story that you think will make us feel happy.”
That's Roy Morgan CEO Michele Levine's advice for Telstra's marketing folk, who failed to communicate promptly or properly after this week's catastrophic network outage.
For a few dystopic hours on Wednesday morning, phone and internet access was unavailable to 25 million Telstra-connected devices around the country, which meant that many small businesses couldn't process card payments, trains ground to a halt, cars were locked in garages that were locked behind gates, traffic lights failed, people couldn't Uber, Milkrun, or make prank triple-zero calls, and Duolingo streaks were absolutely decimated.
As Donald Trump sagely/stupidly pointed out a few weeks back, in the modern age "everything is computer". We all bemoan the control that Meta and Google wield in the information age, but Telstra are our real overlords, and they have been brainwashing us with catchy whistled Bee Gees tunes.
After all, you can't google Google without internet access ...
Speaking of internet access, Australia's TV ratings system has long been criticised for using outdated methodology in an increasingly data-rich world.
How is it that overseas tech giants know our blood types, religious beliefs, and what Spice Girl we prefer (Geri) from our search histories, yet Oztam (a joint venture between Ten, Seven, and Nine) can't get a realis...
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 exchange, and cruelly bundles them into judgmental groups based solely on their performance over the year. Despicable! Anyway, we chat about that.
Tim Duggan co-founded pop culture website Junkee way back when Tiktok was still a Kesha song. This week, he fronted the National Press Club and took a club to the national press, arguing that the entire Australian media ecosystem needs to be protected with tax offsets, social media payments, AI royalties, and government ad money if it is ever going to move off the endangered list and onto the undangered list (not a direct quote).
And this week, former Kyle and Jackie O boss Duncan Campbell did a media tour to promote his new single "It Wasn't Me ft. Shaggy", appearing on the Game Changers Radio and the Quarter Hour podcasts where he spoke freely about his time as a professional Kyle-wrangler -- and distanced himself from the 10-year contract and the decision to network the show into Melbourne. Lauren was Duncan's successor and adds more insider-baseball context to some of his comments -- before putting on a pair of debating gloves and duking it out with a remote Hal Crawford in this week's heated debate (cue sting)!!!
Based on some of Duncan's comments about ARN management's tendency to handle Kyle with baby mitts, Hal and Lauren debate whether or not "on-air talent should be managed with a firm hand". Hal takes the affirmative, Lauren...
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.
What's next for Karl's career? Can he make his millions without falling into bed with a major media company? Who will replace Karl on Today? Will Karl's new ARN radio show with controversy-free pundit Eddie McGuire go live at 1pm tomorrow afternoon, as scheduled? Will it still be uploaded to 9now if it does? Has Karl pushed his public persona too far to be a safe bet for a Nine competitor looking to snap up a heavyweight free agent? Will advertisers go near him after this? Will the witches stop waving their wands at Nine? Will Karl have to pay for his own table at the Logies?
These aren't rhetorical questions. We ask and answer them all.
A decent portion of our listeners may be tuning in from Cannes Lions in France, as they take a break from the relentless champagne, sunshine, and trophies to check back in with what's happening back home. Matt Jones, founder of Four Pillars Gin, Mumbrella columnist, and intrepid traveller, reports back from his very first Cannes Lions and tries to make sense of it all.
And finally, we look at the current race for the NRL broadcast rights, the most drawn out negotiations since Waco. It seems to be down to Foxtel and Nine, who are both trying to take the entire rights package, and box the other out, after 28 years of peacefully co-hosting the NRL. During the week, we asked whether Foxtel's bid for the prize is even legal, with the anti-siphonin...
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 emissions impact their campaigns have on the environment.
"Climate change and biodiversity loss isn't a future problem, it's right here, right now," Greet tells Burrowes.
"It's a problem for businesses right here. All businesses are seeing a massive impact because of the impact of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss on their supply chains. That's happening now. Australians are feeling the impact of that through cost of living and increase in pricing on food and insurance and so forth. Which has to mean, if it's affecting consumers and all businesses now, it's got to be a problem for marketers.
"The challenge we have here is that I still don't think many marketers understand that or see the connection yet, let alone actually understand what's the relevant way in which they can get involved."
Greet said he was compelled to make a difference after realising he had spent the best part of four decades religiously following briefs for clients without thinking about the wider impact.
"You suddenly realise the better I am at my job, the worse I'm making the stuff I really care about, which is nature and environment."
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 f*****g 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 Mad F*****g Witches. But, with Sandilands and ARN still in business through a revenue share agreement, will this public separation be enough to see the MFW back off ARN?
Southern Cross Austereo is the latest media company forced into "rightsizing" as business-types call the sacking of humans. The newly merged media company has cancelled three of its regional radio shows as it looks to cut 250-300 jobs across the entire company, and save $150m.
It's a big mission, but isn't regional breakfast radio the wrong area to look for savings, especially as the gulf between the monolithic tech giants, and local DJs discussing the weather between No Doubt tunes continues to grow wider? What has SCA lost by getting rid of its local talent?
This week Google flew marketing legend Les Binet to Sydney where he revealed the secret to marketing. His take? The more you spend, the better your results. Not surprisingly, such a simplistic take received a little push back from the Mumbrella team.
And finally, following Pauline Hanson's declaration that she would axe the SBS and use that money to invade Greenland or something, Hal Crawford and Tim Burrowes take opposing sides and debate whether the multicultural broadcaster should exist at all.
Oh, and did we mentioned -- we've got an exclusive snippet of Kyle Sandilands talking about-- well, you'll just have to listen in.
Happy listening!
Get the lat...
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 Nova's new breakfast duo Ricki-Lee Coulter and Tim Blackwell managing to net the station's best breakfast ratings in 17 years, and Christian O'Connell starting to build an audience in his newest market. Tim also shares some interesting info about the most-listened-to shows nationally, and finds that all that glitters may well be Gold.
This week, Vinyl Group took over Pedestrian Group from Nine, and the licence for Time Out Australia and, according to CEO Josh Simons, did both deals for the price of a latte. It's the latest land rush for the aggressively minded media company, but does buying and bundling a bunch of once-hip, loss-making, youth-targeted media titles add up to a profitable business or are you just left with a stack of once-hip, loss-making, youth-targeted media titles? I guess we shall see.
And finally, marketing effectiveness company Mutinex has released data that shows how Aussies brands are crowding into marketing channels that are already saturated, while cutting spend in those that build long-term memories, such as television, talkies, and the wireless.
Mutinex head of marketing science Nicky Barton joins the Mumbrellacast to discuss the findings and to be peppered with a barrage of questions from Hal and Tim.
Happy listening!
Get the latest episode every Thursday.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
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 few years, which we discuss.
We also look at the continuing downturn in advertising spend in Australia through the lens of the new Guideline SMI figures, and try very hard to find a bright spot amongst all the diving lines on dot graphs.
This week, a friend of Mumbrella passed along an email from Elizabeth McIntyre -- the CEO of the Outdoor Media Association, a peak body that does exactly what its name suggests -- to her own board, blasting the country's largest outdoor media operator, Ooh Media, for making some dubious claims using OMA's Move measurement data. We love a good internal fight between stakeholders, so we unpack all the drama here.
And speaking of drama, this week was meant to signal the deadline for networks to make their first bids for the National Rugby League broadcasting rights, and it could go one of several different ways.
Will the league's chairman Peter V'landys get the record deal he has been bleating about for several years? (Spoiler: He probably won't).
Will Seven swoop in and take the two biggest footy codes? Will Nine box out Foxtel? Will Foxtel box out Nine? Will an American streaming service take a punt on a sport that calls 'punts' 'kicks'? Why are there so many songs about rainbows? We attempt to answer some of these questions.
And finally, there is seemingly a lack of basic training in the marketing industry, as Mark Ritson revealed at Mumbrella360 last week. He gave markete...
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 will bid for the NRL, the predictable perils of having Gina Rinehart as a new financial backer, and how he plans to build his executive team.
“I don’t think the media is ready for these horizontal views," he said. "I think TV, radio, and publishing are very different businesses. They have different customer strategies and different cultures today."
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
This week's Mumbrellacast was recorded live at Mumbrella 360 at Carriageworks in Sydney, with a six-person panel featuring our host Abe Udy, special guest Vinne Schifferstein Vidal, and regulars Eleanor Dickinson, Nathan Jolly, Hal Crawford, and Tim Burrowes.
We open with a selection of quotes from day one of the conference, with luminaries such as marketing leadership guru Thomas Barta, Ebiquity CEO Ruben Schreurs, Henry Innis and Nicky Barton from Mutinex, and Maura Touhy di Muro of Roblox speaking on redundant terminology, marketing mix modelling, artificial intelligence, leadership, and what Barta calls "the evil twins of marketing stupidity".
Tim spoke with SCA's newly minted CEO Rohan Lund, who was very honest about the "duplication" and "inefficiency" in merged companies such as the one he has been running for the past 28 days. He unpacks what he learned from that conversation.
Abe also runs a live demonstration of his new AI-built sales-enablement tool that turns a few quick prompts into a fully-produced radio advert, with music, and real voice-over talent from the Abe's Audio stable. It's quite remarkable, even if the live demo went slightly askew...
And we drag down the celebratory mood of the conference by discussing the bleak economic conditions, and how they are impacting marketers. Sorry!
Get the latest episode every Thursday.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
BYD Australia CMO Kate Hornstein joins the Mumbrellacast to discuss the brand’s rapid rise from new EV entrant to one of the country’s top-selling automotive players, and the marketing strategy behind it.
Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, where Abe Udy, Hal Crawford, and Nathan Jolly -- who some are calling the best power trio since Nirvana -- discuss the Federal Budget's impact on the media world, the new SBS managing director, and the job losses and bidding wars at Ooh Media.
We open with the Federal Budget, easily the best 990-page document to be released so far this month. AAP is being given a cool $15m to keep the newswire ticking along, while the ABC and SBS both got their budgets increased. But it's the capital gains tax changes that have start-ups in the media and marketing space worried. Is it just post-budget panic, or will the new rules make it less attractive to start -- or continue -- a small business in Australia?
Also this week, Jane Palfreyman has been named the managing director of the SBS, a job she's been doing for around nine months already, taking over from James Taylor, who is now at Ooh Media (more on him, shortly). As we discuss, the SBS has a reputation for promoting from within their ranks -- and for largely avoiding the "our tax money pays for this garbage" garbage that the ABC seems to cop every time they report something slightly impartial or show a boring re-run of The Bill. Is it time to apply more scrutiny to the SBS?
As we were going into record this podcast, Ooh Media was just wrapping its annual general meeting, during which CEO James Taylor announced 82 job cuts -- around 9% of staff -- and $12m in annual savings. The shareholders seemed quite impressed with the way the company is being ran -- possibly because two recent takeover bids have seen share prices soar in the past few weeks. Taylor and co. also seem largely unconcerned about Nine's recent acquisition of outdoor media rival QMS, which seems to have appeased the shareholders somewhat.
And finally, Eleanor spoke to Gavin McLeod, chief creative officer at Emotive, about the new campaign they created for Four Seasons Condoms entirely with AI. It's worth watching the ad...
"Once a marketer, always a marketer," declares Thomas Barta. "Marketing is about creating change and desire, and I'm still in it."
Later this month, Barta is flying to Sydney from Cologne to present a keynote at Mumbrella 360 around the "catalyst" theme of the conference. He aims to provide a framework to close the gap between knowing what needs to change, and actually making change.
His overriding premise is that “companies don’t create the future — people do”, and that individuals inside organisations are the ones who propel change.
"If you wanna be a catalyst ... it's not about some skills you were born with and then you suddenly are that.
"It's that you need to very simply learn how to do two things very well. The first thing is ignite ideas that lead to growth ... second, you also need to learn to rally an organisation.
"We have a lot of people who have lots of good ideas that go nowhere. We have a lot of people who execute like hell and maybe are hitting a wall because they're in the wrong direction, and they have lots of people who do none of the above because they just tick along.
"But then there are these few people who lead the company and that is the role you can take, even if you are 21-years-old, and you are starting out in this profession.
"That's what we need to learn: How do you ignite and how do you rally? And if you take these two themes and you work on them a little ... your career will clearly take a positive turn."
Listen to the entire podcast to learn why Barta thinks the terms 'performance marketing' and 'brand marketing' are "complete b******t"; how marketers can treat the infux of AI in marketing as akin to choosing the red pill or the blue pill; and why Donald Trump is the best marketer he's ever seen.
Mumbrella360 runs from May 26-28 at Carriageworks in Sydney. Get tickets here.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
Welcome to this week's Mumbrellacast, where Tim Burrowes joins us live from the Qantas lounge but swears he isn't compromised.
The reason we mention this is because this week, it was revealed that ABC managing director Hugh Marks has accepted a membership to the Qantas Chairman's Lounge, one of the most exclusive clubs in the country -- and one where memberships are dealt out -- and rescinded -- by one of the biggest corporations in the country, one which has had a horror PR run since the pandemic.
We discuss why this is potentially a huge problem when it comes to the perception of the national broadcaster as an independently minded news outlet, and why other media outlets aren't slamming Marks for this decision, when lesser ABC scandals seem to be beaten up.
Dentsu Australia has ditched its Carat and iProspect brands and reduced its Australian operation to one brand. Why did this happen, and what does it mean in a wider sense? These aren't just rhetorical questions: we attempt to provide answers.
Now onto radio (or the 'wireless' for our older listeners; don't the kids dress weird these days?). This week, Heith Mackay-Cruise stepped down as chair of Southern Cross Media. He will be replaced by Teresa Dyson, a long-time Seven West Media board member, and a portent of the shifting power dynamics in this newly merged media company. A week or two ago, Seven’s former chief operating officer Rohan Lund was named CEO and managing director, and it seems that SCA's John Kelly -- who seemed to be the frontrunner for the top job -- will remain as audio boss.
Stay tuned to this end of the dial, as we turn to Kyle Sandilands' defence against ARN defence against Kyle's defence against his sacking -- we've gotten hold of Kyle's Federal Court filings this week, and it might be the only legal document in the history of the courts to feature the word "arse-licker".
Kyle is somewhat throwing Jackie under the bright-pink Kiis bus, claiming she was just as offensive on-air as he...
On May 1, Australia's biggest talk-radio network Nine Radio shut down and in its place sprung up Tapt Media, as hoteliers the Laundy family officially took over Sydney's 2GB, Melbourne's 3AW, Brisbane's 4BC, and Perth's 6PR.
Former Nine Radio -- and now Tapt Media -- CEO Tom Malone and chief commercial officer Brian Gallagher both speak with Tim Burrowes in the latest episode of Mumbrella’s Unmaker Series podcast, about what the new ownership means for the future of its talkback radio empire.
"This is a hundred-year-old startup", Malone notes, "and there's a huge opportunity ahead of us."
Coming from Nine, Malone says that the network "understood that the best way to run this business would be as a standalone entity", and it's clear both he and Gallagher agree with this sentiment.
"Having your own bespoke sales team commercialising with a singular focus on audio — linear, streaming, podcasting — is gonna drive a better result for the business," Malone notes.
He lists off short and long form video and audio, on and off-platform plays, third-party reseller agreements, and even a subscription offering as possibilities that are in the pipeline.
"There's lots of different avenues that we can explore. That's really exciting for us as a business, harnessing the power of our content, but also the power of our connection between our broadcasters and our listeners."
There's also a neater demographic fit between the Laundy's hotel empire and the stations' audience.
"We're not playing top 40," Gallagher notes. "We're getting to core issues and we're connecting community. We're connecting them beautifully with clients as well. So it's a real opportunity.
"Look, in all fairness to the power of Nine, which is the preeminent Australian media company, the ability for this business to actually maximise its revenue opportunities in that umbrella were very limited ... That's a business that trades very effectively in a 25-54 marketplace ... We deal with slightly different d...
Welcome to an early edition of the Mumbrellacast, hot off the audio presses, where we dissect the recent developments in the media and marketing space -- as we do.
Tim Burrowes, Hal Crawford, and Ben Willee from Spinach Advertising react to this morning's news that Pacific Equity Partners has made an offer to buy outdoor advertising company Ooh Media -- an offer worth around $750m according to the AFR.
The government released its draft version of the News Bargaining Incentive yesterday, which it is hoping will sail through parliament this winter. According to Anthony Albanese, the proposed legislation will encourage “deal making between the platforms and news organisations”. But who exactly is being incentivised to do what? We know some of the smaller publishers aren't happy.
In light of Henry Innis' piece on Mumbrella this week about how Australia’s coming housing crisis will impact marketers, there's also a rather downbeat conversation about the economic outlook, if bad news is your thing.
Happy listening!
Get the latest episode every Thursday.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
Two decades ago, James Donald was working on an oil rig in Norway. This month, Ideally -- the market research platform he co-founded -- raised over $13m in an investment round that will help the NZ-based startup push into the US, and launch a new product Ideally Canvas.
Donald speaks with Tim Burrowes in the latest episode of Mumbrella’s Unmaker Series podcast, about his journey from oil to artificial intelligence and consumer research, and how he helped build a company worth north of $90m in a few years.
He also discusses his company's new product, Ideally Canvas, which gives brands a real-time, continuously updated consumer profile rather than a static snapshot; the limitations of synthetic data; and how Ideally is able to offer a nimble consumer insights service that competitors will routinely charge ten times more for.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
This week on the Mumbrellacast, we parse the second book of the radio ratings, look at M+C Saatchi Australia's fall from grace, and speak to Spotify's global head of thought leadership, Jenny Haggard.
First off, we look at the first radio ratings survey since every single network decided to lay waste to their Sydney breakfast radio plans. Kyle and Jackie O are gone, Jonesy and Amanda are gone, Fitzy, Wippa, and Kate are gone, even 2Day's "the hits before they hit" format has gone out the window. We take a look at a survey where everything changed -- but mostly stayed the same.
Next, we look at M+C Saatchi's dive. The global agency delivered its worst ever yearly results this week, and the Australian operation has copped the blame for the fall. It was so bad that the company presented its full-year results, minus Australia. Gulp! What's the story?
And finally, we convinced Jenny Haggard, Spotify's global head of thought leadership, to take a three-month tall-ship from her Los Angeles office to our converted 1800s wool shed office in Sydney just to appear on the podcast, which is the type of commitment to cause we should all expect from our Swedish tech giants.
Jenny has been with Spotify for 12 years, which is much longer than Taylor Swift and Neil Young have been. She chats about how the company is letting users become more active in how their own algorithmic recommendations work, the delicate balance between being a company that is chasing both subscriptions and advertisers –- and the struggles they’ve had educating the market on its ad offering -- what sets Spotify apart from social media platforms, despite being on the same pocket-computer, and how Australia's under-16s social media ban may impact them in the future -- and what they'll do if it does.
Happy listening!
Get the latest episode every Thursday.
Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.
