Mumbrella live blog: Monday, April 14
This is Mumbrella’s live blog, your rolling diary of everything happening in media and marketing. Refresh the page for latest updates.
Top stories:
- Luke Waldren quits as CEO of Grey Australia
- Woolworths media pitch down to ‘big three’
- Ikon Perth closes
- Generate head Kylie Rogers quits Ten
- Keith Hernandez Buzzfeed’s international commercial chief is to open Mumbrella360
- ABC’s Mark Scott apologises to commentator Chris Kenny
6:19pm – Some big breaking news from the creative world as Luke Waldren has parted company with Grey Australia after two years as CEO. Melbourne ECD Michael Knox and Sydney MD Paul Worboys will take over running the national operation.
5:20pm – Box office figures have come in and The Lego Movie has built a solid audience (sorry) taking more than $5m for the second successive weekend, as Captain America: The Winter Soldier slipped down the box office chart.
4:25pm – Bad news for fans of My Kitchen Rules, it’s not on at all this week. the show returns Easter Monday. Nine and Ten will probably be relieved though.
2.45pm – Today’s AFR Rear Window column has an interesting item about the bean counters from News Corp’s head office in New York “crawling all over” the Fox Sports new Artarmon HQ. According to the report there are suggestions of a budget shortfall of as much as $50m.
2.20pm – It would appear that some of the Chaser team did not agreed with Mark Scott’s decision to apologise to The Australian’s Chris Kenny.
1.30pm – Big news about Mumbrella360 today with Buzzfeed international commercial chief Keith Hernandez to open the conference. Full story here.
1.21pm – In media agency news Ikon Perth closed last month. While we have the final three big players on the Woolworths media pitch.
1.15pm – Lots of breaking news this hour. The ABC has apologised to The Australian’s Chris Kenny. Read the apology and Kenny’s comments here.
12:22pm – Here’s one of the more hard-hitting campaigns you will see this year courtesy of The Brand Agency and St John Ambulance in WA. Every parent’s worst nightmare.
11:31am – More news from Network Ten as Kylie Rogers has announced she is leaving after 16 years, including stints as national sales boss and most recently leading Generate, to initially spend more time with her young family. More here.
10:47am – Last week Dr Mumbo noted how Kyle and Jackie O had started a new campaign to get the Today Network to ‘give back’ their old Facebook page. It’s certainly getting some support on Twitter:
10:32am – An interesting new campaign for breast cancer awareness has launched today, with a plethora of Aussie female singing stars taking to the screen to sing I Touch Myself to encourage women to check themselves for the disease. Full story is here.
9:51am – TV ratings are in and The Biggest Loser saw a very good lift for its final episode of the season, almost tripling its regular audience for the Winner Announced segment, which got 949,000. The lift saw the network pick up a 13 per cent audience share for its main channel, but still finish fourth on the night.
9:24am – The Australian’s Media Diary reports today Fairfax reporter Natalie O’Brien has won her first round of a legal fight with ABC Media Watch over its report on her reporting of chemicals being found near a children’s park last year, which she says is defamatory.
9:14am – This morning Mi9‘s CEO Mark Britt has told Mumbrella he cannot forsee a time when there will be one overarching catch-up TV platform in Australia, and claimed Jump-In is catching rival Seven’s Fango app fast.
8:28am – The Australian Financial Review has a yarn on Ten, and in particular how it is looking to rugby union and Super Rugby in particular on free-to-air, with CEO Hamish McLennan saying they need to cut costs to save money for the rights before they’re able to do so. However, The Oz says Seven is eyeing Super Rugby as well for a slot on its digital channel Seven Mate. Note – both of these articles are behind a paywall.
8:06am – Morning all, it’s a short week but still plenty to look forward to. We’ll start with APN ruling out selling their last remaining outdoor asset, Adshel, which today also unveils its digital signage in Sydney’s train stations officially. CEO Michael Miller has described it as the company’s “primary investment”.
