The Australian TV industry needs to ditch the Logies ASAP

Spot on with this article….but where will the white male dinosaurs then graze?

In another life I would have attended 30 Logies minimum 70s 80s and 90s and into the 2000s.

I worked for 2 commercial networks thru that time and Logies was a true celebration of a fabulous era in television. The best local dramas where produced, comedy was brilliant with mother and son, fast forward, kingswood country, comedy company with hilarious sketches you get the drift. They where the back bone of tv along with 60 minutes and news and current affairs offerings.

Now with the greatest respect to the gold Logie nominees they where not a candle to actors/ actress of days gone by.

People did buy tv week, viewers did have an opinion both thru diaries and people meter measurement and expressed that by a tick or a click.

What I saw Sunday night was a joke and ratings showed that 850k???? Days I dwell on 2m bank on it. Someone needs to seriously consider if the current rubbish is worth the $ they cost. Also the egos are matched by salaries that will cripple the industry.

Please respond Kim Portrate, Michael Stevenson, Kurt Burnette and Rod Prosser. So many flaws in this…

I couldn’t agree more, well said.

Perhaps if the main networks did more than just rehash cheesy reality formats, things might be different.

Look at what is winning, quality, programs given time to find a niche, programs built with a real audience, not just ‘as mass as possible’. If anything, this should be a wake up call to 7, 9 and 10, that even with constant budget attacks, the ABC is producing the best TV in the country.

Could u pick a softer target.

Also see: https://www.aacta.org/aacta-awards/

I don’t get the relevance. It’s odd you say everyone was there – yet the surrounding streets of the ICC was not busier than normal.

BTW, what channel was the Adobe Symposium on? I’m guessing it was pay per view!

This article is an obvious trojan horse, and Mumbrella fell for it. This subtle paragraph gave it away . . .

“Three days earlier, Adobe hired out the ICC and put on the Adobe Symposium. Every marketer with any influence was there. As were the teams. And their agencies. Every consultancy was there. Every technology company was there. Everyone was there”

Yeah, right. This is awful, 101 marketing.

CHE Proximity is an Adobe Partner, and love to enter the Adobe Summit awards. Plus, and this is where it gets more worrisome, they appear to be gunning for more from Adobe . . .
https://adobe.cheproximity.com.au/

Note the redirect to /client.

At the very least, this should have been disclosed. At worst, this article found the softest of targets and was completely disingenuous. Not what we would expect from CHE, or Mumbrella.

Who the hell would compare the Logies to Adobe Symposium? It’s not a trade event designed to attract business…its not for marketers.

Is the Logies a bit naff, yes. But it’s always been that way – it’s free tv for goodness sake.

As to your point around no major commercial network – Didn’t 10 get like 6?

His point about the Logies about being awful is spot on, but to compare it to the Adobe sales event is wrong. Every TV station Upfront gets more C-level executives than Adobe does…

Some interesting point in this interesting article.

And Ben, just checking in – how long have you been working in the Australian television industry, what is your network experience, how many shows have you worked on, how long have you been covering it as a journalist and what are your credentials for making a raft of claims like this?

Mumbrella, if you are going to get someone to comment on the state of the Logies, please use an informed source and someone who actually knows something about the topic they’re writing about. But well done to Ben to achieve his spin and get a plug in for the Adobe Symposium. Nice touch.

YOU SPEAK THE TRUTH!!!

I am a 31 yo female, (semi)-typical Millennial who values entertainment in all forms (TV, film, music, etc.) and I have never and would NEVER watch the logies. It is such a far cry from what “young people” find appealing or interesting… it’s old, dated, not cool.

I never really resonated with Aussie (free to air) TV or the hosts who star in them anyway, mostly because I never saw enough brown skinned people on there that I could relate to as an Australian… even though we’re one of the culturally diverse countries in the world. Anyway, another can of worms that has been opened and heard many, many times before.

Couldn’t agree with this article more.

Failing to disclose that CHE Proximity are an Adobe partner in this article absolutely reeks. This is appalling and way below Mumbrella’s standards. Do better – add a disclaimer and apologise.

Mumbrella and Ben are merely highlighting the joke that passes off as industry awards.
I have worked in the industry at the highest levels and watched the award’s night degenerate into nothing more than a fashion parade and pissup.
Tim Worner and Hugh Marks, the heads of the two leading networks, must shoulder the blame for letting this debacle to continue.
My free advice to both you learned men is boycott the night until substantial changes are made to the voting system.
How can you both sit by and accept programs like the Project, which takes the piss out of the news, wins the award for best Current Affairs program. Have you not watched ACA, 60mins, Sunday Night, Australian Story, 730 report?
It’s in your best interests to take a stand and stop the farce that is the Logies.

I thought this article was a load of BS. The viewing figures for the Logies were actually up on last year and while I think there is a massive issue with the voting process that doesn’t mean the awards should be ditched. A good marketer would look for solutions rather than throwing away an event that’s been going for 61 years.

And where was the detail on why the Adobe even was better? To my knowledge just about everyone in television wants to go to the logies, so even that claim seems ridiculous. But you know, people are gunna keep bashing tv… it’s low hanging fruit (although still one of the biggest games in town)

– Three days earlier, Adobe hired out the ICC and put on the Adobe Symposium.

Sounds like a real laugh riot.

BTW, most of the audience were _paid_ to be there….

Hmmm, I bet if you ask 1,000 people which event they’d rather attend: The Logies or The Adobe Symposium, there’d be a lot of empty seats at the latter. In fact I bet if you asked everyone at The Adobe Symposium to stand up if they’d rather be at The Logies, you’d have a lot of bums off seats. It’s a hoot. And this year’s event was the biggest hoot of all. But it also made a great many serious and salient points about disability, diversity, sustainability and press freedom. Best of all, Costa turned up in a suit he bought from Lifeline. Hoping the Logies becomes even more relevant next year with a special category for Op Shop Couture.

I’m a senior and my daughter is a millennial and we both thought the Logies were crass. It was a bit like watching the Oscars but at a much lower level, award wise and talent.

… or at least introduce a series of industry vote categories , so it gains credibility.

Say whatever you want about the Logies and you’d probably be right, but at least people have heard of it. Your mum cares about Cannes Lions about as much as she cares about the Australian Dental Industry Awards.

How hard is it to buy a 100 Tarps a week these days?

One could deduce that a bloke who has demanded from pubs in the past to be taken on international junkets (like Cannes) probably [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]

And to disguise this farce of an article as a “Media State Of Play” is an insult to your industry peers. As noted above, there was plenty of interest in the Symposium, but nobody went there for free – they were all paid to do so.

Next time you attempt to build a Trojan Horse, bring more wood.

Was there something on commercial TV we missed?

Good call by anyone who called out CHEP on their appalling efforts at transparency. If this demonstrates their skills at Content Marketing, then buyer beware.

If Mumbrella did indeed ask to republish this from LinkedIn, then clickbait and commentbait spring to mind. If not – why bother giving them a channel and endorsing this “advertorial”.

For those dismissing the value of the older audiences that the Logies attracted – yet again the youth bubble of the industry is neglecting the value of a large and valuable customer segment that is still very valuable to advertisers and brands trying to reach them. Whether they will want to watch after this year’s Gold Logie debacle – who knows?

Bluey winning a logie was probably the most worthwhile and deserving logie winner of all time though, so they got one thing right….

https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/celebrity/tom-gleeson-was-the-best-thing-to-happen-to-the-logies-in-years-20190703-p523lm.html

Good to see some spirited debate on this – in answer to some of the comments made.

1/ my main point was the tv industry deserves a better advertisement for itself and it’s audience engagement than the Logies. Some may disagree but I don’t think it represents the industry and where it’s at – TV deserves better

2/ sure it rated 885k and was marginally up – but nine could have gotten that audience number for less cost and resource.

3/ the comparison to adobe wasn’t as blunt as comparing an awards ceremony and a conference – it was comparing two competitors and their public facing marketing endeavours that week. Software platforms are the greatest competitor that fta has and we need to consider why these platforms are growing at such high rates compared to traditional media.

4/ I am not aware of any CHE Proximity conflicts with Adobe or even the FTA networks but will check. These did not influence any of the article – please remember as an agency we work with all media vendors including the FTA networks closely. If there are associations that need to be disclosed they will be.

5/ re claims of ageist tone – the viewers are who they are, I was pointing it out. All I was saying was FTA represents itself as a channel with a wide demographic consuming it but the Logies didn’t demonstrate it – it played to stereotypes around TV viewers.

Thanks for reading.

“TV’s night of nights” is the most cringe over-used phrase in media.