Today’s topic features a panel debate on the relationship between TV and Twitter.

Among the topics discussed was how Twitter escalated last year’s Ben Elton Live from Planet Earth ratings disaster.

Featuring:

• Q&A producer, Amanda Collinge
• FrematleMedia’s Steven Murphy
• Ten Breakfast presenter (at the time of recording The Weather Channel), Magdalena Roze
• Crikey’s First Dog On The Moon cartoonist, Andrew Marlton

The session was curated by Kym Druitt of eckfactor PR.

Druitt will again be curating a session at this year’s Mumbrella360 which takes place on June 6 and 7.

As Mumbrella revealed yesterday, this year’s session will examine the relationship between journalism and Twitter. First Dog and Magdalena Roze will return for the session, along with Stephen Brook, editor of The Australian’s Media section, and the ABC’s chief political writer Annabel Crabb.

• Tickets for the event are now on sale on the Mumbrella360 website, with an early bird discount of $600 for those who book before the end of next month.

Highway Patrol: From left, Corbett, Watts and Schiller

Triple M’s new drivetime presenter Merrick Watts has promised that his show will not cause trouble for behind the scenes staff.

The comments came in an interview to promote next week’s launch of Merrick and the Highway Patrol on Triple M. Also on the team is Rachel Corbett and Julian Schiller.

In the interview with Mumbrella journalist Colin Delaney, Watts said: “I want the show to be a great show. Not to be the most famous show, not to be concerned or obsessed with ratings but to be a show that just wants to create great comedy.

“To be a really positive, fun work environment with no bullshit and no casualties. And when I say no casualties I mean nobody who is going to hurt staff, nobody who is going to make other people in the building’s jobs more difficult unnecessarily.”

Although he did not refer to anybody by name, Watts’ comments could be taken as a nod towards the upheavals for the staff at Southern Cross Austereo following Kyle Sandilands’ on air attack on News Limited journalist Alison Stephenson late last year.

A string of advertisers pulled out from the Today Network, and security at Southern Cross Austereo offices nationally had to be stepped up as the public backlash took place. SCA is the parent company of both the Today Network and Triple M.

From Monday – when Merrick and The Highway patrol goes to air – Watts and Sandilands will be broadcasting from the same building for the first time. Bad blood built up between the pair when Watts hosted Nova’s breakfast show putting him in direct opposition to the ratings-leading Kyle & Jackie O Show. Watts is joined by Corbett who previously hosted the drive slot with Paul Murray, and Schiller, formerly of Nova and the ABC.

Schiller added: “If you’re not consistent, if you do two great shows and three terrible shows because you’ve got other commitments, you’re going to photo shoots or you’re thinking about a television show you’re doing that night then they won’t come.”

Merrick and the Highway Patrol  launches on Monday. Going out nationally, the show will air from 4-6pm in Sydney and Brisbane, 6-8pm in Melbourne and Adelaide and the rest of the regional network, Localworks from 5-7pm.

• The new partnership;
• Why Rosso no longer feels isolated by breakfast radio;
• The great child giveaway;
• Why the best way to find out if you’ve gone too far is reading about it in The Daily Telegraph;
• 2CH’s Bob Rogers – living radio legend;
• The ABC’s Triple J: “repetitive and wanky”?
• Cooking on the radio
• How to orchestrate a massive ratings drop

The site is a place for users to share their views on businesses and services in their local area.

Yelp entered the market through a partnership with Sensis’ Yellow Pages, the advertising and directory arm of Telstra.

Jeremy Stoppelman, co-founder and CEO of Yelp, said Yelp teamed up with Sensis because: “They provided us with their local listings data, which allowed us to launch.”

“In the future we intend to sell our advertising products through their existing sales channel. They have hundreds of sales folks, as I understand it, and they’ll be able to sell local businesses ad products over time.”

Now in 12 countries, Yelp.com.au will begin its Australian expansion in Melbourne and Sydney with a city-by-city strategy that the company has deployed in the past.

The comments came from Mango’s newly appointed managing partner Claire Salvetti, who has joined from Zing, and MD Simone Drewry.

Asked about this year’s PRIA conference and Golden Targets awards Drewry said: “The big consumer agencies are not represented there. The PR industry needs to PR itself better and the PRIA is probably part of that. It might be time to for it to refresh its image if they wants to attract some of the consumer PR agencies.

“I can see from the awards that have been given out, it’s an important place for government comms, issues in crisis comms, that kind of thing. But I feel as an organisation if they are going to attract some of the consumer agencies… to enter those awards and see them as important then it probably needs a refresh.”

Asked whether it felt to her like the PRIA was relevant to her as an organisation, Drewry said: “No it doesn’t. I probably will look at what’s happening at the Communications Council before I look at what’s happening with the PRIA.”

The Communications Council is the umbrella body for the advertising industry.

Salvetti added: “It’s not so much about the PRIA or not, it’s about who do I want to work with.”

Salvetti has rejoined Mango after a stint helping run Zing. She will work across the agency’s entire client roster, with a focus on the Telstra and McDonald’s accounts. Mango is part of the DDB Group.

Drewry said: “Appointing a Managing Partner was necessary following Mango’s significant growth over the past year. Claire’s experience of working in an integrated capacity is perfectly suited to the client base we have and the new business targets to which we are working.”

Before Zing and a four year stint at Mango, Salvetti worked for London based PR giant Freud Communications for five years.

She said: “I am thrilled to be back at Mango.”

4.40pm update:

PRIA issued the following comment from Nicholas Turner, the organsiation’s national president:

“I reject the criticism.  PRIA membership reflects the diversity of public relations specialisations in Australia today.

“That said, the PRIA is an evolving organisation – looking to grow in a way that benefits members, and I would always welcome any direct feedback on how we can improve our offering to communication professionals.

“Speaking specifically about the Golden Target Awards (GTAs), while we annually review the GTAs and like to hear from our members about their relevancy and what attracts them to enter, the awards present an opportunity for members to showcase their outstanding work, and also provide invaluable case studies for others to learn from.

“Reflecting on the awards presented in Sydney recently at our national conference, I was impressed by the diversity of communication projects undertaken by consultancies, the corporate sector, government and community organisations across all categories.  I also think there is some excellent work being undertaken in the consumer PR space in Australia.  Some of this work was recognised in the Consumer Marketing and Social Marketing category – a category that attracted 40 entries and was reviewed by 10 judges.

“We always welcome new members, especially those who are interested in change and contributing.”

And PRIA also offered the following comment from Jackie Crossman, MD of Crossman Communications, who won in the Consumer Marketing and Social Marketing categoryof the Golden Targets:

“The Consumer Marketing & Social Marketing category of the PRIA Awards is the most fiercely contested year on year and we are proud to have been judged by our peers – including those from the whole gamut of the consultancy world, in-house practitioners and leading academics – as the Golden Target Award winner in 2011.

“Taking out this category is widely perceived as a massive achievement for consumer marketing consultancies. We have put up our best over many years for consideration, and while we may not have won every time, we will continue to do so and accept the decisions of the judging panel.”

NineMSN wants to talk to rival online offering Yahoo!7 about collaborating over its advertising exchange in Australia.

The comments from new CEO Mark Britt after Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo agree a tie up in the US.  

Advertising exchanges allow advertisers to bid in real time for each ad impression.

The Microsoft Ad Exchange launched in Australia last week.

The ambition was revealed by NineMSN’s new CEO Mark Britt. He told Mumbrella: “We are really excited to hopefully have the opportunity to talk  to Yahoo about whether opening the same sort of exchange might work in Australia as well.”

Britt also claimed that worries from publishers that ad exchanges would commoditise inventory puzzled him. He said: ‘We don’t get it.”

In Australia, NineMSN already has a tie-up with Yahoo!7 over search.

The event is the culmination of Magazine Week, which began today.

Publishers Australia had previously been made up of Australia’s smaller publishers, with the organisation’s annual Bell Awards (now rebadged as the Excellence Awards) the longest established magazine awards in Australia.

The MPA – whose members are ACP, Pacific Magazines, News Magazines, Lovatts and Reader’s Digest – has previously held its own seperate awards. But last year the MPA joined the board of Publishers Australia, opening the way for its members to enter The Excellence Awards for the first time.

Entries have come in from all the major magazine players, with key new categories up for grabs including consumer magazine of the year above 50,000 circulation and launch or relaunch of the year above 50,000 circulation. In total there are 27 awards categories.

The Magazine Week conference takes place on Thursday and Friday. It includes a Mumbrella Question Time featuring Publishers Australia chairman Geoff Hird, MPA chairman Nick Chan, who is also CEO of Pacific Magazines, Peter Russell, the GM of marketing at Fisher & Paykel and Simon Davies, head of print at media agency OMD.

In a further sign of the growing closeness between the two magazine organisations, former MPA CEO Helen Kingsmill has been working with Publishers Australia on the conference.

Mumbrella editor-in-chief Tim Burrowes discusses Magazine Week with Geoff Hird:

Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes chats to journalist and co-creator of The Power Index, Paul Barry, about:

• How The Power Index is exploring who really runs Australia;
• Media megaphones and angry broadcasters;
• What the former Media Watch host thinks of the Australian media’s ethics.

Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes chats to journalist and co-creator of The Power Index, Paul Barry, about:

• How The Power Index is exploring who really runs Australia;
• Media megaphones and angry broadcasters;
• What the former Media Watch host thinks of the Australian media’s ethics.

And to The Mumbo Report on iTunes.

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Mumbrella chats to co-chairman of Naked Communications Steve Gatfield about:

• Why he moved to Naked
• Being a ‘grown-up’ agency
• The buying out of Photon rumours
• Positioning an agency as ‘radical’ and ‘provocative’

Gatfield joined Naked in May this year. In his career to date, he has been executive vice-president of Interpublic Group, global CEO of Lowe and
global COO of Leo Burnett. More recently, he was director of digital-entertainment company Believe Entertainment and a founding investor in social targeting platform 33Across.

Set dressed by:

Despite a fanfare around The Chaser’s involvement in ad production house Will O’Rourke when it launched a year ago, the team has “done nothing” with the company so far, Craig Reucassel has revealed.

In an interview with Mumbrella to promote the Chaser’s new project The Hamster Wheel, Reucassel said the venture had not worked out as planned.

In the launch of Will O’Rourke, Reucassel and fellow Chaser team members Julian Morrow and Dominic Knight were announced as being responsible for writing and broadcast entertainment at the production house.

But in an interview with Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes, Reucassel said: “As it stands we’ve done nothing with Will O’Rourke. The concept is interesting about bringing together different people from different groups to work together but the reality still is yet to be seen because you do work in different areas.”

He added: “Generally speaking when an advertising idea comes up we tend to critique the advertising rather than do it so we haven’t really necessarily worked that way. As yet, we don’t have any influence on the world of advertising, thankfully.”

(4.40pm update: Will O’Rourke points out that although Craig Reucassel hasn’t been involved yet, the company has collaborated with Julian Morrow on TEDx Sydney and still has ambitions to work with the Chaser team on other projects.)

The team behind The Chaser’s War on Everything will launch new show The Hamster Wheel next week on ABC1 where the media will be the topic of critique.

When asked what shows he would cancel if he could, Reucassel said Today Tonight and A Current Affair would get the chop.

“Current Affair and Today Tonight have no value whatsoever. Twenty years ago they were news programs, they are not in any way now. So they’ve got rid of all the news on those shows and now those shows are taking over the news as well. Long term that’s bad because our news is going to be about how to get rid of germs in your kitchen, and that’s not good.”

Mumbrella chats to Inese Kingsmill, Telstra’s corporate marketing director, Mark Collis, Telstra’s director of creativity and brand content, and Marty O’Halloran, Chairman and CEO of DDB Australia about:

• The Telstra re-brand and the brief for agencies
• How the brand was ‘schizophrenic’
• How Mark Collis’ role and chief marketing officer Mark Buckman co-exist
• What ROI Telstra expects from the new campaign

Telstra unveiled its new-look logo and positioning at the beginning of this week.

In an interview with Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes, Prof Julian Disney, who chairs the Australian Press Council said that newspapers and digital publishers needed to boost their online standards.

He also called for reader comments to be pre rather than post-moderated.  

He said: “We’ve had a number of complaints about that. One of our earliest projects… will be looking at to what extent newspapers should be careful about what they allow from readers to go onto their websites.

“There’s an assumption that the rules of the game are the same as for putting it into a newspaper, but realistically I don’t think that’s quite true and certainly isn’t what happens in practice.

“More abusive comments, more incoherent comments, more off topic comments will be put into a comment stream on a website than would ever go into a letters to the editor.”

The APC is funded by Australia’s newspaper publishers, but Disney said he hoped that “serious bloggers” would also sign up.

He said: “We’ll certainly be encouraging the online only publishers to come with us.”

He warned that those who chose not to join might not have access to such journalistic privileges as the shield law around sources and access to press conferences. He said: “The only penalties as it were will be that some of the protections made available for traditional journalists… where we do need some criteria. There’s a risk that if we don’t provide an opportunity for serious bloggers to be recognised as serious journalists…they will be permanently discriminated against.”

Mumbrella’s Tim Burrowes chats to PHD strategy director Chris Stephenson about:

• The media agency’s new book, 2016: Beyond The Horizon
• Devices and how they will change behaviour
• How consumer sharing habits will change
• The socialisation of TV viewing and what it means for brands
• Implications for media agencies

Wilkins, entertainment editor on Today, found himself an international figure of fun in 2009 after making the live announcement – based on a website hoax spread via Twitter – on the same morning that Michael Jackson died. As a result of Jackson’s death, Today had dropped the ad breaks, leaving the presenters under pressure to make instant decisions.

Wilkins told Mumbrella editor Tim Burrowes: “In the middle of that suddenly there’s all this stuff about Jeff Goldblum coming up. There’s lots of internet action on Jeff. Cam who was working as our sports guy at the time handed me a piece of paper – I don’t suggest for a moment he was trying to set me up, he was trying to keep me in the loop, I think.”

Wilkins added: “You want to be the first, but more importantly you should want to be right. We didn’t have the luxury of commercial breaks, we’re just ploughing into it. I made the statement that yes New Zealand police had confirmed it.

“It was mildly embarrassing.”

But Wilkins said the fault lay with him. He said: “I should have checked it.”

It had previously been assumed that Wilkins found the wrong information about Goldblum himself. But in his newly published book Black Ties, Red Carpets, Green Rooms, Wilkins tells readers: “I was handed a piece of paper by our sports guy Cameron Williams, who was monitoring the internet throughout the morning, saying that Jeff had died after falling off a cliff in New Zealand.

“A few minutes later another piece of paper was given to me saying the news had been confirmed by the New Zealand police.

“I simply trusted the information that Cam had given me, the myriad emails and the information we’d seen online.”

In the video interview with Mumbrella  above, Wilkins also discusses:

• The Sunrise and Today battle
• How EP Tom Malone changed the fortunes of Today
• Being told “You hold the election in the palm of your hands”  in 2007 after witnessing a hotly contested exchange between politician Peter Garrett and Steve Price

Wilkins’ announcement of Goldblum’s death saw the actor react to news of his own death on The Colbert Show.