Best of the Week: A disastrous FY22; Biggest CMO move of the year; Letters: What’s the point of DAB+?
Welcome to Best of the Week, written while you were sleeping.
Happy World UFO Day.
There’s been lots going on this week. Sir Martin Sorrell has been sending signals about a change of strategy for S4 Capital. The end of financial year closed the door on some woeful financial performances by our largest media and marketing companies. And the biggest CMO appointment of the year was revealed.
Thinking smart
Let’s start with the last of those three.
Topics
What a great read Tim!
Being in regional Victoria, DAB+ is not even in the consciousness. By the sounds of it DAB+ has been around for a fair while so why no regional expansion? I haven’t had the benefits of DAB+ described to me so I probably wouldn’t care if it did launch in regional Victoria anyway.
And the reason for that is I’m perfectly happy with podcasts. Country roads are great for podcast listening. I’ve got an older car so use a Bluteooth FM transmitter plugged into my cigarette lighter port. I find Pocket Casts the best podcast catcher app for Android on my Google Pixel 6 Pro. Occasionally use Spotify for exclusives.
I also listen to 3AW using the 3AW app while I’m driving which is a never ending battle of drop outs while streaming on spotty Telstra mobile coverage on country roads. TuneIn Radio contended with it better but Nine’s Radio stations pulled out of TuneIn Radio a year or two ago inconveniently. I’m guessing they wanted more control of the data on their listeners. But as a consequence the only two apps I can find 3AW on for my Sonos smart speaker is RadioApp (the official Australian radio industry app as far as I’m aware) and the obscure myTuner Radio (their Apple TV app hasn’t been updated in years).
And having a Sonos One (which I love) I have found that one thing lacking is Sonos-AFL integration. So if I want to listen to an AFL match streaming in bed (where my Sonos speaker is) I have to listen through my phone’s speaker. The AFL insists on making fans listen to radio stations that are broadcasting AFL matches through the official AFL app. So I can’t listen to AFL matches on the regular radio stations stream on either their official app or third party streaming radio aggregator apps like TuneIn Radio or RadioApp. Which means no listening to AFL matches and even the pre game and post game coverage on my Sonos’s great sounding speaker.
Anyway that’s enough from me. I’m looking forward to reading about Nine’s and News Corp Australia’s financials. Especially the newspapers and Foxtel, Stan and Streamotion numbers.