Mumbrella live blog: Thursday, May 15
Welcome to Mumbrella’s live blog, a rolling diary on the happenings in the media and marketing world. Refresh the page for more updates.
Top stories:
- Ten offered to pay John Stephens ‘hundreds of thousands of dollars’ to work for no-one
- Myer chief marketer departs after six month stint
- New Matilda pulled back from brink of closure for second time
- TV ratings: Offspring debut up on last year for Ten
- Dr Mumbo: Packer clacker hack Dyer’s Hong Kong flier
4:03pm – It didn’t take the ALP long to jump on the fact Joe Hockey was spotted dancing to the song Best Day of My Life in his office before he delivered his first budget, releasing this ad based on the Laurie Oakes interview:
3:20pm – Bad news for fans of a certain type of US comedy, as Two and a Half Men has been canned and plans for How I Met Your Father have also been ditched. The Sydney Morning Herald has more.
2:35pm – Australia is about to lose one of its great wordsmiths when NT News deputy editor Paul Dyer goes to pursue his destiny in Hong Kong. Dr Mumbo has taken the opportunity to pay tribute to him, and revisit some of his greatest moments in front-page headline writing.
1:47pm – Earlier we said we’d feature some of the crowd sourced what-if-corporates-were-Game-of-Thrones-houses banners, so here for you delectation is House McDonald’s:
1.06pm – Retailer Myer is again without a chief marketer following the departure of executive general manager of marketing John Joyce after just six months in the role. Full story here.
1.02pm – Former JWT general manager Richard Carr has teamed up with former Arnold Furnace MD Tony Singleton to launch new a creative agency. Read about it here.
McLennan
12.42pm – Fascinating to see the goings on at court today with Ten boss Hamish McLennan revealing it offered to pay programmer John Stephens hundreds of thousands of dollar to work for no one at all. Also interesting testimony from a Ten human resources executive about how current programming boss Beverley McGarvey was kept in the dark. Read all the coverage from court here.
12.30pm – In Mumbrella360 news some of the region’s biggest agency and media brand bosses in Asia are confirmed for the lineup of next month’s Mumbrella360. Check out who is on stage here.
11:36am – Good news for fans of New Matilda, with investigative journalist Chris Graham stepping up to take on the independent subscription supported website, saving it from the brink of closure for the second time.
11:05am – Corona pulled together a bunch of creative types for a bus trip around Mexico for a week to experience the “common threads of creativity” in a short film. What does it all mean? Find out here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65boP_47x4A#t=206
10:30am – It was really only a matter of time before a brand jumped on Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘consciously uncoupling’ quote. Here US steak sauce brand A.1 says it’s ready to meet other foods:
9:53am – The full TV ratings story is now up, and it’s good news for Ten which pulled a better audience share for its primary and digital channels. Are there signs of some green shoots here? They’ll be hoping so.
9:31am – Early TV ratings are coming in and it looks like Offspring might have given ten the boost it has been looking for, with 931,000 tuning into it last night. Ratings up soon.
8:47am – In the design world those folk over at DesignCrowd have been busy cooking up some logos for big corporates, based on banners from the houses in Game of Thrones. Her’s what the Google standard might look like:
8:26am – And so to the Australian Financial Review, where Rear Window columnist Joe Aston suggests Fairfax’s metro papers have been put “in the freezer” by Tony Abbott’s press secretary, who it is alleged told her colleagues on budget day not to go out of their way to help their journos. Apparently they’re upset with the “Treasurer for sale” articles recently. See it here (paywall)
8:07am – Morning all and welcome along. It’s day two of what is turning into a very interesting hearing over exactly what transpired between Ten, Seven and veteran programmer John Stephens.
Yesterday we heard Ten stridently accuse Seven of inducing Stephens to break the contract he had signed with them, with CEO Hamish McLennan admitting he was the “only person who could turn the network around.
Today he’ll take to the stand again at the NSW Supreme Court first thing, and we’ll be in court again bringing you all the latest. Catch up on what happened yesterday morning and afternoon.
