ABC, it's easy as one, two, Seven

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 the line. And then Hal Crawford joins the show for this week's heated debate, to argue for the affirmative. The question? When the execution takes place, is it a legitimate act of journalism to air it live? Easy debates are for cowards. Happy listening. Get the latest episodes here.  Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio. 

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 Audio. 

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.