Mumbrella live blog: Monday, March 3
This is Mumbrella’s live blog, a rolling diary of all you need to know in marketing and media. Refresh the page for latest posts.
Top stories:
- Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull denies ‘demented plutocrat’ jibe aimed at Rupert Murdoch.
- The Australian editor Chris Mitchell fires back: ‘Malcolm cannot resist seeking approval from his party’s enemies’
- CumminsRoss does first work or new client Betfair
- Telstra launches new ‘glam rock’ promo for NRL digital pass
- FreeviewPlus HbbTV service set to launch in May
- TV ratings: Schapelle Corby report sees audience halve for Sunday Night on Seven
- Box Office: Non-stop top money charts on first weekend
5:56pm – Kylie Minogue features on the cover of the 15th birthday edition of GQ, which is also the mag’s first digital edition featuring interactive ads. See more here (of the GQ release).
5:48pm – In case you missed it earlier we put the call out for sessions for Mumbrella360 sessions for this year. Check out this link to find out how you can get involved.
4:59pm – It’s Oscars day so it’s apt to see how the various films are faring at the box office in Australia, with Liam Neeson thriller Non-stop winning the weekend.
4:03pm – The marathon that is the Oscars has finally wrapped up with good news for Australia with Cate Blanchett winning the Best Actress gong for Blue Jasmine. Best Actor was Matthew McConaughey for Dallas Buyers Club.
In other news the Best Picture gong went to 12 Years a Slave, meaning the reputation of Big Data has been left firmly intact after Bryan Melmed’s prediction on Friday.
3.04pm – The Ellen tweet is now the most retweeted tweet in the world with more than a million retweets in just an hour even breaking the Twitter counter which can’t display more than one million retweets.
Back home Mumbrella gives points to the Twitter Australia office who came up with this clever tweet back at Ellen (see above).
2.28pm – Social media platform Twitter appears to be struggling at the moment. We think it might have something to do with this selfie that Ellen tweeted 20 minutes ago. At 2.28.pm it is had more than 400,000 retweets in less than half an hour.
2.15pm – The SMH’s Saturday noted an interesting error in The Australian’s media section on the same page as the new ABC corrections column… Meanwhile you can read Dr Mumbo’s thoughts on the new column here.
2:08pm – Here’s an interesting bit of audio, an interview between TripleM’s Grill Team in Sydney and Mark Llewellyn, the Executive Producer of Seven’s Sunday Night show which had the Schapelle Corby interview which did not rate spectacularly last night.
Llewellyn admits the network paid for Schapelle Corby’s hotel and security when she was released from prison in Bali, and viewers can expect to see an interview with Schapelle “I just can’t give you an exact date”.
1:54pm – Look out later this afternoon for the first word on this year’s Mumbrella360, and how you can get involved in Australia’s biggest and best media and marketing conference.
1:44pm – And the award for most random press release pitch of the day goes to this little number:
I don’t know whether you are looking for copy at this time, but the subject is a radical new approach in toilet tissue dispenser design for public washrooms that finally beats the vandals. It is ready to go into production.
The rights to the design and the patent are for sale, which may well interest your readers.”
1:02pm – Catherine Martin has picked up the first Aussie-related gong at the Oscars for Costume Design in Baz Luhrmann’s epic The Great Gatsby. She tips a wink to her costumer makers who are in Sydney at the moment working on Baz’s musical version of Strictly Ballroom. Jared Leto has already picked up the Best Supporting Actor gong for Dallas Buyer’s Club.
12:56pm – Godzilla, it seems, is a nice chap until he gets hungry. We get Alf Stewart, the US does Godzilla for the latest Snickers ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bpwmiuwjLo
12:16pm – The Australian editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell has fired back at Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull telling Mumbrella “Malcolm cannot resist seeking approval from his party’s enemies” after Turnbull had made News Corp jibes in a speech.
11:59am – In more Oscar-related news VFX creators have been protesting, wearing green, outside the venue for the awards complaining about tax incentives and subsidies used to lure film production away from Hollywood. Australia offers a number of tax breaks and incentive schemes to lure US producers to the country.
11:45am – There’s definitely a theme emerging for promos for sports broadcasts this year, with Telstra releasing a new musical homage for its NRL digital pass coverage. Foxtel of course released Simply Obsessed last month.
11:32am – Can history repeat itself for Jennifer Lawrence, last year’s Best Actress Oscar winner? Well, she’s off to a good start, falling over on the red carpet again, repeating the trick this year.
11:20am – Saturday was a (slightly soggy) Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade in Sydney, which helped SBS2 to its biggest audience of the year with a combined audience of 205,000 viewers, according to the broadcaster.
11:08am – Here’s the latest ad from Oporto via Publicis Mojo, a play on South American drug cartels, as it launches its new steak roll product.
10:55am – There’s some love coming in for the new V Energy campaign, with some zombie integration courtesy of the new series of The Walking Dead. And here we were thinking zombies were so 2013. Check them out here.
10:23am – In yet more TV related news Network Ten has picked up the Destination NSW branded content series Plonk for broadcast on Eleven from next week.
10:15am – Schapelle Corby appears not to be the ratings honeytrap the networks had thought, with Seven now dropping nearly half of its audience from last week. The full TV ratings story can be found here.
9:48am – Another one of those badly-kept secrets has been confirmed, with Freeview announcing a new HbbTV push involving all the free-to-air networks will launch in May, called FreeviewPlus.
9:22am – It’s also Oscars (sorry, Academy Awards) day today in Hollywood with Cate Blachett the biggest Aussie hopeful in the mix. We’ll be keeping an eye on the ceremony and any shenanigans going on when it all kicks off in earnest this afternoon.
9:08am – The morning ratings are in, and Nine’s 60 Minutes did better than Seven’s fly-on-the-wall Shcapelle Corby release video on Sunday Night. The ratings report will be up soon.
8:35am – It seems you just can’t keep John Singleton out of the papers at the moment. After his rants about Fairfax last week, he’s now said he’s interested in taking a chunk of Prime Media after chair Paul Ramsay sold his stake last week, while in The Australian he has a spray at female board members, Clive Palmer and how he disagrees with Ray Hadley and Alan Jones on immigration.
8:23am – Around the papers and there’s plenty of fighting talk out there today. One highlight in the Australian Financial Review is media-buying legend and now chair of Free TV Harold Mitchell having a crack at his pay-TV counterpart Tony Shepherd and demanding he step down because he also heads up the government’s commission of audit.
8:17am – On Saturday Network Ten confirmed long-held rumours it will air just six races of the V8 season live from next year, with Fox Sports showing every race live, to the annoyance of some fans.
Turnbull delivering his speech on Friday
8:06am – We’ll start with an intersting speech given by Malcolm Turnbull the Communications Minister on Friday night, where he jibed at News Corp repeatedly, then took a pot at an unnamed “demented plutocrat pouring more and more money into a loss making venture that is just going to peddle your opinions.” He later said it was not aimed at Rupert Murdoch, but a reference to William Randolph Hearst.
8:03am – Morning folks, welcome to another busy looking week. It’s been preceeded by another busy weekend with some very interesting revelations.
