In today’s column: champagne comedy about Adelaide, women as a media target, Netflix launches and more.
More Lols from the Fin Review
We’ve noted before the contempt shown for Adelaide by Fairfax’s national business paper, The Australian Financial Review.
We’ll explain, because it’s highly unlikely that you – dear reader – also delve into the Fin, which (how shall we put this?), isn’t exactly a ripping read.
Joe Aston, the paper’s daily gossip columnist and one attempt at light and shade, noted on Wednesday that Andrew McEvoy, an events honcho at Fairfax and chair of Adelaide’s Riverbank Authority, has been appointed chairman of SeaLink Travel Group.
McEvoy, Aston noted, “did a solid stint at the Adelaide Advertiser so he knows its unique delights – including all the folk from Elizabeth tipping body bags off the starboard side”.
Laugh, I nearly.
A woman’s place
It’s been an odd week for media products focused on Australian women.
On Sunday, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp announced its new women’s site – named RendezView – which brings together opinion from the company’s women columnists.
The way the company announced the new site was cringeworthy. It brought together the columnists for a slightly glam photo shoot, published in the Sunday Mail, and then asked them three questions.
They were: “Describe Tony Abbott”; “Feminism: the f-word or a mantle to wear with pride?”; and “Kim Kardashian – love her or hate her?”. (Just imagine, for a moment, News Corp’s male columnists – such as Andrew Bolt, Laurie Oakes or Terry McCrann – being asked these sorts of questions. It wouldn’t happen.)
To the final inane question, one of the columnists, Susie O’Brien, answered: “Someone with so little talent who has become so successful so quickly really has to be admired.”
It looks like an Adelaide censor has been at work, because in the online Sunday Telegraph version of the questionnaire, O’Brien added: “Good tits too.”
Women of Australia rejoice.
No more Hoopla
The very next day, Wendy Harmer’s intelligent and well-regarded opinion site – The Hoopla – announced it was closing due to proliferating competition from the big guns.
Coincidence?
A little obvious?
On Tuesday, American web-streaming service Netflix had its long-awaited launch in Australia.
The service, which costs under $10 a month, gives viewers access to a range of content including the acclaimed US political series House of Cards.
It’s seen as a significant competitor to other streaming services such as Presto and Stan. It also threatens to steal business from the giant and expensive pay-TV service Foxtel, 50 per cent owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, the publishers of The Advertiser.
The heading on Tuesday’s Advertiser story on the Netflix launch was this: “US giant Netflix shunning Aussie productions”.
There was no disclaimer.
More on anti-siphoning
Last week we noted the pay-TV lobby’s push to have Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull trim the anti-siphoning list – that is, the collection of sports that can’t be spirited away from free TV.
He appeared on Radio National breakfast this week to talk about this and more, and added a compelling new argument – the Senate simply wouldn’t pass such an unpopular measure.
Read the transcript here.
Meerkat sticks up its head
Digital news is moving at lightspeed – and many organisations are rushing to catch up with the latest potential game-changer, Meerkat.
It’s a simple idea: the Meerkat app allows the user to livestream video to their Twitter account.
The app has been around for only a matter of weeks, but it’s already creating enormous buzz over its possibilities. It provides a new way for journalists – or anyone – to quickly and simply “broadcast” breaking events.
Like many other tech developments, it’s also posing privacy issues.
Whether you see it is another nail in the coffin of mainstream news channels, or another tech-driven opportunity for proliferating media diversity, depends on your perspective.
On the other hand, it could just be used for mundane social media posing … or porn.
What’s in a name?
As the Aaron A Aaronsons of this world can attest, sometimes there is a distinct advantage to having a name that is not alphabetically challenged.
Last week, this column banished its own publication to the infamous Naughty Corner, and it seems we may have set something of a precedent.
Yesterday, our InDaily reporter Tom Richardson noticed a link on social media to a Sunday Times feature that placed Adelaide top of a list of its “Best Places to Live Overseas”.
Hidden as it was behind a paywall, we inquired of the Government’s SA-spruiking boffins whether they had the full article. They duly sent a screen-capture of the UK paper’s “Top 10”, and sure enough, Adelaide was perched atop the list, ahead of the esteemed likes of France’s Aix-en-Provence and Amsterdam in The Netherlands. It was some time later that it was pointed out that not only do those lower-ranked destinations also start with the letter ‘A’, they all feature below Adelaide on the alphabet. And, indeed, were all ranked in descending alphabetical order. Context, eh?
So while it remains the case that Adelaide has topped a list of the Best Places to Live, it might be argued that it did so less by dint of its elegant tree-lined boulevards and low house prices than by the fact it was named after the queen consort to King William IV, Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen.
We’re still calling it the pick of the bunch though.
And who said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet? (Hint: it was Shakespeare.)
Media Week is published on Fridays.
