Sneesby’s honeymoon at Nine is over
Welcome to the second edition of Unmade, mostly written on a chilly Wednesday night at Sisters Beach, Tasmania. The cats are judgmental about my failure to light the fire for them at their preferred time.
Today’s writing soundtrack: Tame Impala, The Slow Rush. Walking on the beach on Tuesday, I discovered the Song Exploder podcast episode in which Kevin Parker deconstructs how he put together It Might Be Time. As usual, I’m more than a year behind Triple J.
Four days into the kickoff of this newsletter, and I’m starting to blow off the cobwebs. Admittedly I’m also missing the time my holiday gave me to work on the important project of watching the 21 year Survivor archive, from start to finish, on the new Paramount Plus service. I won’t share a spoiler, even of a two decade old series, but the thing that happened to contestant Mike during Survivor: The Australian Outback? Zoinks.
There are 764 of you signed up now. Thank you. The behind the scenes work on Unmade continues. Since the last newsletter dropped, I figured out how to apply for a trademark (it’s easier than you’d think), and dived into the arcane world of DNS servers (it’s exactly as hard as you’d think). It stands for Domain Name System apparently.
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Awesome analysis Tim. There was one thing that stood out above all else for me – your use of the word soccer to describe football. Is there a link with your recent receiving of Australian Citizenship? Seriously, loving your work.
Thank you for the kind words Alan! I fear that I’ve given up the fight to call footy, footy. Perhaps soccer should rebrand itself as Real Football…
Excellent analysis (even if I’m reading it a couple of months after the fact).
I am a digital subscriber to The Age and The AFR (among a lot of other newspapers both Australian and International). But in my country town of 10,000 people in country Victoria The Herald Sun dominates both in terms of how many copies are put out for sale at the local newsagent as well as the petrol stations and supermarkets. The Age seems to be an afterthought. The AFR and The Oz are only available at the newsagent in pretty small numbers.
My parents had been getting The Herald Sun home delivered 7 days a week for as long as it’s been The Herald Sun. About 5 years ago I switched that up by transferring it from the local newsagent managing the account to The Herald Sun/News Corp Australia directly. That gave me digital access to The Herald Sun website and apps. And it’s been that way ever since. I also subscribe to the digital version of The Oz (mainly for Newspoll, the Media (within that Nick Tabakoff’s Media Diary) and Technology sections. I don’t read physical newspapers anymore.
I’ve subscribed to Stan ever since it launched in Australia. At first a bit off and on with my subscription but after it proved itself it’s been a part of my streaming service subscriptions ever since. It has a great selection of content – mainly Australian, US and British content with some foreign content apart from those. I just recently completed the excellent The Loudest Voice about Roger Ailes and Fox News on Stan.
My main worry with Stan is as more US studios bring their own streaming services to Australia their content output deals with Stan will expire and Stan will be left with the cupboards of content empty. That’s why I think Mike Sneesby’s plan to go into sports and originals is so wise. Netflix did it with originals to great success. Maybe he can make Australian drama and comedy content great again.
My local cinema is screening the Stan Original Film, Nitram. I plan to go see it. It’s not coming out on Stan till late November. Also there have been some excellent quality Stan Originals. I really enjoyed Romper Stomper, Matt Okine’s The Other Guy and Wolf Creek. My Mum loves Bump.
Keep up the great work. You keep writing, I’ll keep reading.