Opinion

• Was Vega a flop or just ahead of its time?

  It was a sad day for DMG Radio yesterday when it was forced to hammer the final nail in the coffin of its baby boomer Vega stations.

  I remember writing about the launch of Sydney and Melbourne stations back in August 2005. It has now become a sad irony that the radio network was named after the brightest star in the constellation Lyra.   Read more »

• Thinking caps and boxing gloves

  So how much is a new idea worth?

  I ask that because last night it came up in conversation with a member of the digerati when I asked him if he was going to next Wednesday’s Battle Of Big Thinking.   Read more »

• What sex on the beach has in common with foolish tweeting

  Remember the woman who was arrested for having sex on the beach in Dubai and nearly went to prison? I used to work with her.

  And I think the experience she went though has more in common with the pitfalls of social media than may be immediately obvious.   Read more »

• The ABC’s Australian Story – brought to you by Head & Shoulders

  The screengrab below may not look like much, but it shows the historic moment that a TVC first ran next to ABC content. Head & Shoulders had the honour of advertising next to the flagship Australian Story.   Read more »

• A “Visionary” in Press release Writing (with random Capital letters)

  Some days I get a couple of hundred emails, many of them press releases. Fair to say, not all are necessarily tailored for Mumbrella’s readers. This is one of them from today, with its own unique punctuation, language and grammar left as presented. Can anyone help me out with a translation?   Read more »

• 20:20 foresight

  “The cancer of television audience erosion cannot be cured by the morphine shot that digital television provides. The cure for media companies is an engaged and well-funded multiplatform digital strategy.”

  AIMIA president Guy Gadney on the digital shift

• PR fakes, doorstep interviews, smoking gun emails and current affairs shows

  Wednesday night saw an interesting PR story appear on both Nine’s A Current Affair and Seven’s Today Tonight.

  PR man Jothy Hughes was caught hiring actresses to pretend to be angry divorcees  selling their jewellery, for an item about a cash-for-gold company.   Read more »

• In case you haven’t noticed, CommBank is starting to nail its digital marketing

  I’ve been impressed with Commonwealth Bank’s gradual efforts over the last year or more to ramp up its digital marketing.   Read more »

• Kmart’s Anzac Day backflip was good PR in action

  While I’ve no idea what went on behind the scenes, it looks to me like Kmart’s rapid backflip regarding opening on Anzac Day is a classic of good crisis PR.   Read more »

• The ABC is not for sale

  “The vigorous pursuit of commercial agendas by some of our media rivals is allowing the facts to be sidelined in pursuit of a good story.  There is a concerted attempt to portray the ABC’s role in the media as solely that of a niche provider – participating only in sections of the market not served by the commercial sector.”

  ABC boss Mark Scott

• What’s the point of papers printing corrections if they don’t own up to the mistake?

  There is a dark journalistic art known as the correction.

  It may appear to readers as an example of transparency on the part of the newspaper when those short paragraphs pop up clarifying some apparently minor matter. It’s not.   Read more »

• Merrick’s time may be up

  Last week’s ratings saw a slump for Nova’s new breakfast show featuring Merrick Watts with Scott Dooley and Ricki-Lee Coulter compared to the previous Merrick & Rosso and Kate Ritchie version. In this guest posting, Simon Corbett argues that it’s time for Merrick to call it a day.

  There is a wonderful line spoken by Morgan Freeman in the movie ‘Million Dollar Baby’ when he talks of the end of his boxing career “Everybody’s got a particular number of fights in them – nobody tells you what that number is.”   Read more »

• Google’s next move: free sites and domains for businesses

  Most weeks, Google makes an incremental move that seems, in retrospect, obvious.   Read more »

• Spending the minister’s money

  “Four staff members managed to book into the same four-day public relations event and, reportedly, a great time was had by all.”

  Ever wondered who has the time to go to conferences? Ministerial staff

• Outdoor makes an impact (beware of the drop)

  It’s not every morning you start the day by handing over your mobile phone, taking off your watch, strapping on a hard hat and striding out into the wind on a narrow gantry above a terrifying drop.

  So it made something of a change to be on top of Glebe Island Silos in Sydney in the name of outdoor advertising.   Read more »