Mumbrellacast: Media apocalypse right now
Four years ago, Tim Burrowes came up with the idea of the Unmade Index, which tracks daily the fortunes of 14 Australian publicly listed companies, ranging from once-mighty media companies like Seven through to tiny (read: $40m) businesses like Gumtree.
Unfortunately, since its January 6, 2022 insurrection inception, the index has tracked the massive decline of the local media industry, with the total value dropping by more than 60%. If maths isn’t your strong suit, that’s a big fall for stocks — which investors generally prefer to increase in value.
As discussed in the podcast, the past four years have been absolutely transformative, just not in a good way.
The biggest media story of the year is also set to be the biggest legal story of the year, as more details emerge from the Kyle and Jackie O soap opera.
In case you’re not all caught up, last Friday Jackie Henderson issued a statement saying she was blindsided when ARN terminated her contract, despite the wording of the company’s ASX statement suggesting she asked to leave. This was followed by an open letter from Kyle Sandilands on Tuesday claiming that “despite what ARN says, I am not in breach” of his $100m, ten-year contract.
Hal Crawford contacted an employment law expert to get answers to a few questions that Sandilands’ statement raised. For those playing at home, that’s three lawyers we’ve consulted in the past week regarding the Kyle and Jackie O situation, which would seem to be three more than ARN did before making their decision.
Finally, this month saw the collapse of British craft beer brand BrewDog, which prompted Four Pillars co-founder Matt Jones to write a juicy column for Mumbrella about what marketers can learn from the mess. He joins the Mumbrellacast this week to offer some further thoughts.
Happy listening!
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