ABC to relaunch opinion site Unleashed
In a move that will put the ABC directly up against News Ltd and Fairfax’s online comment sites, the broadcaster is relaunching ABC Unleashed to form part of a new commentary and analysis site that will for the first time aggregate the public broadcaster’s commentry content as well as feature original material.
The move will see the public broadcaster provide a direct challenge to newly launched opinion and aggregation sites from commercial media like News Limited’s The Punch and Fairfax’s National Times, both of which launched earlier this year, and Crikey which refocused its website onto aggregated opinion this year too.
As part of the changes, Unleashed editor Catherine Taylor will report to the new editor of the still-to-be-named opinion site, Jonathan Green, the outgoing Crikey editor. The Sydney Morning Herald’s Annabel Crabb will also join Green’s team. There are currently three commissioning staff – including Taylor – on Unleased, which primarily features content from external contributors.
ABC.net.au editor Bruce Belsham told Mumbrella the launch of the new site is part of its efforts to provide analysis and commentary that its broadcast equivalent has long offered, with programmes such as Four Corners and Background Briefing.
However, the comment is likely to be less free-ranging than its rivals as ABC staff views will still be subject to the organisation’s editorial policies.
The site, which will be launched early next month, will also aggregate all the analysis and commentary currently found across the ABC.net.au website, while featuring original analysis pieces from Green and Crab.
Asked if the site would be a competitor to the Punch, National Times and Crikey, he said: “Unleashed already sits in that space and with the exception of Crikey, it predates those sites. Clearly it’s an area a number of people have invested in. But we’re not beginners in this area, we’ve simply stepped up our efforts.”
Belsham said Unleashed, which launched in 2007, currently attracts 175,000 unique browsers a month and it is hoping to grow this figure, with its beefed up new site.
By comparison, according to latest Nielsen figures The Punch had 209,201 unique browsers during October, Crikey attracted 192,902. Despite Fairfax previously saying it would offer an audited figure for the National Times, it is still not listed on Nielsen.
Alexa figures (which tend to be cruder than Nielsen’s) suggest that the National Times has struggled to find a direct audience, although it will also get traffic via Fairfax’s masthead sites such as theage.com.au and smh.com.au.
Meanwhile, Crikey’s co-owner Eric Beecher told Mumbrella that a successor for Green is yet to be decided.
While some observers believe that Green’s deputy Sophie Black is a strong candidate, it is understood that a number of external candidates have already signalled their interests to Beecher.
“Jonathan’s still here, it only happened last Friday, so were looking at how were going to approach this,” Beecher said.
The merger of Smartcompany and Crikey’s owner Private Media Partners, is also underway. The new entity will be headed by Smartcompany CEO Amanda Gome.
Beecher maintained that there would be no major changes to Crikey as a result, which will continue to “evolve”.
Prior to joining Crikey in 2007, Green worked as senior editor and columnist at The Age.
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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Has the ABC gone stark, raving bonkers? I don’t know Jonathan Green, but I do read Crikey!’s daily compilation of undergraduate, inner-suburban smugness. If that content is his qualification to suckle on the taxpayer tit at the ABC, then they must be serving something proufoundly intoxicating from Auntie’s office tea trolley.
Another bunch of Balmain/Fitzroy wankers having a nice game of soggy biscuits with the public purse picking up the tab for the Sao crackers.
The only good thing about this decision is that Andrew Bolt is likely to be gripped by such a fit of fulminating rage he may well have a stroke.
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Finally – some info on what this beast is!
Thanks Tim. I much prefer when you’re hitting the phones and pumping out the gossip rather than getting dressed up and interviewing celebs for YouTube. :-p
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Alexa? Tim? Let’s just confuse the market even more shall we?
Fairfax Digital’s National Times is in fact more than just one URL. Just like we did with Business Day, we created National Times not as a stand-alone site, but as a network of sites, embedded in our mastheads reflecting the location of our consumers across Australia. To count just one single URL is not reflective of its true traffic.
Our National Times figure is therefore made up of Nationaltimes.com.au, smh.com.au/nationaltimes, theage.com.au/nationaltimes, brisbanetimes.com.au/nationaltimes and watoday.com.au/nationaltimes.
Fairfax Digital is currently working with Nielsen to get National Times up in MI. In the meantime, to give you an idea of our traffic, the numbers through Nielsen’s Site Census confirm that we are reaching:
30,401 UBs – Nationaltimescom.au
750,298 UBs – smh.com.au/nationaltimes
575,902 UBs – theage.com.au/nationaltimes
65,438UBs – brisbanetimes.com.au/nationaltimes
60,151UBS – watoday.com.au/nationaltimes
Combined estimate is about 1.25 million UBs per month – about 4 times the size of our competitors..
While using this method, we’re not able to role these up into a single figure, but the MI data will soon confirm National Times as Australia’s leading online opinion site.
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Well, I’m glad to see my tax dollars being spent by the State in a far, far wiser way than I could ever spend them, by “redistributing” them to yet another Leftist who would seemingly be unemployable in the real world.
Go, ABC! It’s about time you stopped pretending, anyway.
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Re: Amanda Gome as CEO of Crikey. Must admit a perverse fascination to see what this former romance novel writer will do to an erstwhile serious media outlet such as Crikey.
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Not quite the same order of magnitude, but for a couple of months SBS has had a destination for aggregation of their journo’s opinion/blogs too..
http://www.sbs.com.au/blogindex
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Re Crikey new CEO. Yeah I had heard that. A friend at BRW reckons Smartcompany editor thought it such joke he got a sample Mills & Boon novel off eBay. Wrote under name Amanda Carpenter I think, not sure. Real serious credentials to bring to Crikey! I don’t think……
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Great to see Ms Black in charge of Crikey, and nothing wrong with getting the ledger “in the black” as well. Hope not to see a romance blog in future however…. the worrying comment above re new Crikey CEO Amanda Gome. Quite a joke, given these romance titles as “credentials”: A Deeper Dimension, 1983; Flashback, 1983; The Great Escape, ‘84; The Wall, ‘84; Rage, ‘84; A Damaged Trust, ‘84; Waking Up, ‘86; Reckless, ‘86; Caprice, ‘86; The Gift of Happiness, ‘86; Rose-Coloured Love, ‘86; Passage of the Night, ‘90; Cry Wolf, ‘92; A Solitary Heart, ‘93; The Winter King, ‘94; Perfect Chance, ‘96.
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