Just a week after telling the Australian media to be kinder and to stop attacking each other (to howls of laughter), News Corp’s Australian boss Michael Miller joined a chorus of media chiefs who accused the public broadcasters of stealing audiences with their free content, distorting the market for commercial players and aggressively competing for TV shows and online news audiences.



The Australian used its front page to launch an unedifying attack on the ABC and SBS (“Calls to rein in ABC and SBS”) which continued for a couple of days. “Corporate chiefs at News Corp, Fairfax Media, Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment are among a group of industry leaders throwing new weight behind criticisms the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and the Special Broadcasting Service are overstepping their public service remit,” the report said.

While attacks on the ABC are commonplace at the Oz, SBS was now in Murdoch’s sights. Why? Because The Handmaid’s Tale was a hit. While News Corp hates Netflix as its competition for Foxtel, what they hate even more than the US giant is “free Netflix” or SBS on Demand, which has built an excellent library of quality TV shows, documentaries and classic movies. SBS also bought the online rights to The Handmaid’s Tale, the show of 2017, and the commercial media are jealous.

“It’s rank hypocrisy really,” the SBS managing director, Michael Ebeid, said of the attack in the Australian. “News Corp, who is running the agenda against us, has received $30m for women’s sport on Foxtel and millions of dollars through Screen Australia to produce drama for Foxtel and Screen Australia money for a crime vodcast on the Australian. But all this content is locked up to 30% of homes who have Foxtel and 70% of Australians can’t watch it. For them to be crying foul when they’re taking money from the public purse is just crazy.”

Despite many requests neither Foxtel nor the government has explained what the $30m is for.

Ebeid said: “Surely anyone can see that our budget is 10% of Seven and Nine. We spend $130m on TV, Seven spends $1.4bn and Nine $1.3bn. So at 10% how does the little guy outbid them? I think they just enjoy throwing hand grenades over the fence and running. We’re giving audiences content they’re not getting elsewhere and they’re doing the same thing they’ve been doing for 10 years.”

In the same week Handmaid’s Tale dominated the catch-up rankings as viewers binge-watched the show, Seven’s top show was the universally panned reality show Yummy Mummies.

And no SBS did not outbid anyone to get The Handmaid’s Tale. They picked it up as part of a broader content deal with the distributor MGM which gave them an additional 100 hours of television on top of the groundbreaking show. “There was no bidding war,” Ebeid said. “Channel Nine would not have wanted any of that content. We had no idea it would be a hit. We take these risks every day. I think they’re just being a bunch of sookie boys to be honest.”

All about the metrics

The editor of the Rupert Murdoch’s Townsville Bulletin, Ben English, has raised the stakes in his newsroom by telling reporters “a key measure” of performance “will be how many subscriptions your stories generated”.

With legacy media companies like News Corp and Fairfax struggling to survive, digital subscriptions have become a lifeline and if reporters’ stories are so strong they motivate readers to subscribe it makes editors really happy.

“This will be the most important objective of our newsroom from now on,” English said in a memo obtained by Weekly Beast. English congratulated reporter Andrew Backhouse who has “more than doubled his nearest rival with more than 46k page views”.

“In the coming days and weeks I will sit down with each of our reporters to outline new, more focused measures of performance,” English said.

“These will zero in on specific objectives including page views and time spent on articles.”

When English says “time spent on articles” by the way, he means time spent reading them online not researching and writing them. For the record, $7 a week will give you unrestricted digital access to the Townsville Bulletin and a home delivered paper six days a week.



Moir scribbles on

Sadly the Courier Mail newsroom suffered more major losses on Thursday and Friday this week. Sources say about a dozen people were made forcibly redundant while a smaller group left voluntarily. The 20-odd departures were mainly subeditors, page designers and backbench editors.

The multi-award winning Sydney Morning Herald cartoonist Alan Moir was a victim of Fairfax’s recent brutal staff cuts. After more than 30 years on the paper he lost his gig as a daily cartoonist but continues as a Saturday-only contributor. But Moir is not giving up his day job that easily. He is still drawing daily cartoons and publishing them on a subscription website. For just $4 a month fans can still get his scribblings in their inbox daily. Pretty innovative we thought.

Oakes calls time

‘It’s time’: Political reporter Laurie Oakes is set to retire after a career spanning more than 50 years. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Arguably the greatest Canberra press gallery reporter of all time, Laurie Oakes, has announced his retirement after almost 50 years covering national affairs. The Channel Nine political editor, who is about to turn 74, began his role at Nine in 1984 and has been an institution ever since. His hard-hitting political interviews on the Sunday program, his exclusive reports on the Nine News bulletin and his written analysis in the Bulletin and the Daily Telegraph have made him one of the most respected journalists in the nation’s capital and one of the most recognisable faces on TV.

“To pinch an election slogan – it’s time,” Oakes said.

The place won't be the same without Laurie, who has the capacity to terrify politicians in a way no one else can — Michelle Grattan (@michellegrattan) August 3, 2017

According to Oakes his best exclusives were: the Kirribilli leadership pact between Bob Hawke and Paul Keating; staring down Julia Gillard at the Press Club over the Kevin Rudd coup; the leak of the entire 1980 federal budget; the travel rorts scandal of 1997 which cost three ministers their jobs; and the Gair Affair, where Gough Whitlam tried to use a diplomatic appointment to shore up his numbers in parliament.

Dead men don’t write letters

Last October Port Stephens resident Scott Broadhead was shocked to see a letter from his father in the Fairfax Media local paper under the headline “Bike path an asset”. His dad Bill Broadhead had written to congratulate Port Stephens Council for building and maintaining a local cycling and walking track.

Scott was shocked because his father had died two years earlier – and because the letter was written by him seven years ago. It was also the second printing of said letter, which led him to wonder if the paper was recycling letters. Scott complained to the Australian Press Council that it was “totally insensitive and misled the public that its message was current” and the council ruled it breached standards of accuracy.

“The council considers that the publication of the letter suggested the author of the letter was alive, had recently offered his congratulations on the pathways to Port Stephens Council rather than just the mayor, was recently impressed by the maintenance of the paths, and that this was the first time this letter had been published,” the adjudication said.

“The publication could have avoided these misleading impressions by observing the date on the email or contacting the author.”