The sleek shall inherit the earth: Mumbrella at the Tiktok Awards
Karl Stefanovic and Sarah Abo watch the future, in the form of Leah Halton, take the stage (Mumbrella)
Tiktok proved just how incompatible the worlds of new and old media are at its annual awards event in Sydney last night, with big broadcast names failing to make an impression on the crowd of young creators.
Mumbrella attended the event at the ICC with a vague idea this might be the very last connection to the upfronts season, but that was wrongheaded. There was nothing of the upfront here: no agencies, no sell, no schedule, and not much, really, for an observer to take away but an impression of TV and radio culture sitting like oil on the watery ocean of online shortform video.
To see Karl Stefanovic and Kent “Smallzy” Small attempting to find connection with an audience of a few thousand well-disposed but puzzled 20-somethings was to viscerally understand the time of old media is gone.
That we had collectively passed through some kind of portal had been flagged in advance: the venue, previously known as ICC Entertainment Centre Theatre, has been renamed the Tiktok Entertainment Centre a few days before. Apparently the contract is for several years.
