How to “triple play” a news story
Dr Mumbo congratulates The Australian’s Darren Davidson on the lead story in today’s Media Section, which explains how Foxtel will announce it will offer consumers a “triple play” option of bundled options across subscription-TV, broadband and telephone services.
If the whole Foxtel “triple play” thing seems a bit familiar… it should.
As Davidson explains this move was, to use an expression favoured by The Oz’s business media writer, “foreshadowed” back on November 26 in a article entitled “Foxtel set to launch ‘triple play’.”
But a quick Google search reveals this is not the only “foreshadowing” The Australian has done of this “triple play” move, by the 50 per cent owned News Corp subsidiary.
Keen readers of The Australian will note telco writer Mitchell Bingemann wrote about Telstra’s comments on the move on October 31, with “Telstra boss Thodey backs Foxtel ‘triple play’ strategy”.
Bingemann was preceded by Davidson who days before had noted that Richard Freudenstein was “actively explor(ing) a triple-play and IPTV strategy.”
He would know as five days before he had reported that ex-Yahoo!7 boss and former Seven COO Rohan Lund was joining Foxtel to “lead fresh efforts to launch a ‘triple play’ option of pay TV, broadband and telephone services.”
And in case there was any confusion about the “triple play” move one could also have referred to Media editor Nick Tabakoff’s October 12 piece explaining how News Corp, Foxtel and Telstra all stand to gain from ‘triple-play’.
No kidding. At this point “triple play” is proving a boon if only in News Corp Australia column inches…
But wait there was more foreshadowing by The Oz going on with stories on September 26, September 25 and August 9.
Dr Mumbo would also like to acknowledge Michael Bodey who got Foxtel boss Richard Freudentstein to “confirm Foxtel’s move into the ‘triple-play’ of broadband and telephony services to “complement its pay-TV service” back on March 14.
While the move was first touted by Richard Gluyas in June 23 2012 and by one Darren Davidson way back in on August 10 2012.
As Dr Mumbo wrote recently about how The Australian loves comprehensive coverage but eleven stories is quite a lot of foreshadowing even for the national broadsheet.
Which raises the question: if you get a “triple play” combining subscription-TV, broadband and telephone services what do you call eleven stories from one announcement?
How about an “XI news play”?
Surely at a certain point it’s just easier to use Roman numerals…
This is an excellent piece of news gathering, however it is actually incredibly sad what has happened to The Aus Media.
Fair enough to talk up your own products, but not at the expense of any real news. The truth is it actually used to be very difficult to get News Corp stories in, as they had this idea of ‘editorial integrity’. Now it’s just the house rag, which surely is a policy of diminishing returns?
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The OZ, your breakfast radio of news.
In your best radio announcer voice….
“Next up a triple play of Foxtel followed by your chance to win icy cold cans of coke”
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