Welcome to SWOT by Sound Story, your inside track on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats looming for the creative industries.
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Welcome to SWOT by Sound Story, your weekly inside track on the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats looming for the creative industries.
⚡ Trending: “Sad to Announce I Did Not Make the Cut for Paris 2024,” is the hilarious trend making its rounds on the social media platform. Over 30 million posts use the phrase while highlighting a wonky spectacle of various athletic attempts. Words by Alex Portée. Source: TODAY.
🎵 Music: Australians will get more local music in their diet through a new, weekly TV and online spotlight. ARIA AMPLIFIED is a two-and-a-half-minute music news update, which will premiere Tuesday, Aug. 13 on ARIA’s social media channels, and feature the same day on Nine’s TODAY. Words by Lars Brandle. Source: The Music Network.
📰 Media: Three months after they exploded onto Melbourne’s airwaves, Kyle & Jackie O – widely described as Australia‘s king and queen of radio – have copped a right royal roasting on the ABC’s Media Watch. Words by Sarah Patterson. Source: Radio Today.
💰 Advertising: ABC’s advertising spend skyrockets as audience numbers fall. Words by Nathan Jolly. Source: Mumbrella.
📲 Tech: Tech behemoths could be slapped with big new taxes after publishers warned the federal government against pushing Facebook owner Meta into abandoning news content altogether, creating a news desert on local social media. Words by Paul Sakkal. Source: The SMH.
📜 Government: Labor has taken a year to come up with regulation of gambling ads that pleases no-one. It's a sure sign media companies remain powerful. Words by Bernard Keane. Source: Crikey.
🌶️ Spicy: Online searches for ‘sex Olympics’ have hit the roof. I’m not surprised. Words by Michelle Cazzulino. Source: The SMH.
Strength: Olympics Delivers Gold…
The mainstream media finally has some good news stories to tell, thanks to the strength, power and enduring appeal of the Olympics.
👉 Local media company Nine has featured in SWOT heavily in recent months – with cultural issues, staff strikes, a lack of confidence in the CEO all dominating headlines.
👉 Now that the headlines have moved beyond the image issues of CEO Mike Sneesby carrying the Olympic torch when his company back home was on fire, there are some more positive milestones to talk about.
👉 Nine has had pageview bumps for its publishing assets, TV ratings spikes and positive stories to tell advertisers thanks to Australians’ love of watching the Olympics.
👉 Its streaming video on demand service, Stan, has also been boasting about Stan Sport’s best-ever results, breaking its highest-ever daily minutes record.
👉 Stan CEO, Martin Kugeler, said: “Our ambition was with the Olympics to really break new grounds. We wanted to deliver an experience that Australia had never seen before. Australians are a very passionate sporting nation, and our focus from the start was how do we deliver a reimagined offering and proposition? It went beyond any viewing experience that was previously delivered in Australia.”
Weakness: … But Also Some Serious False Starts
For all the good news stories though, there have also been some serious strategic and communications missteps around the Paris Games.
👉 It’s hard to go past the absolute media shitstorm/ communications disaster around women’s boxing, and the very real consequences than not telling the story better has had.
👉 Dan Wolken in USA TODAY summarised the debacle as such: “The IOC’s management of the Paris Olympics boxing tournament has proven to be a failure. It’s a failure of anticipation, communication and clarity, and the consequences have allowed the Russians to run a psyop on the world that will turn every subsequent competition into a witch hunt for genitals and chromosomes.”
👉 And it wouldn’t be an international sporting event, without commentators being absolute pelicans.
👉 It seems that no matter how often these people who are paid to talk say ridiculous things, they still can’t nail the apology.
👉 Lesson: If you say something ridiculous, don’t just apologise for “some offence” you may have caused. And your apology’s most common word should not be “if”.
Opportunity: Time for the Live Music Industry to Move Forward
And speaking of negative news stories, the live music sector has had more than its fair share – but now there’s a huge opportunity to fix what’s broken and move forward.
👉 The ‘Inquiry into the challenges and opportunities within the Australian live music industry’ public hearings have been rolling on.
👉 Media attention on the hearings, and what people are saying, has been gathering momentum.
👉 Now that so many of the problems have been identified, Sound Story believes it's a great opportunity for the industry to come together and solve the key issue of: How do we get more Aussies listening to Australian music?
👉 The tide may be turning, however, with Lime Cordiale breaking the ARIA Chart drought for local acts. The Music Network’s Lars Brandle said the “secret sauce” in this instance was “pure, unfiltered hard work from the brothers and their support network”.
👉 Sosefina Fuamoli has also written a stirring piece for The Music Network ahead of the inaugural Regional and Remote Music Summit in Darwin, arguing: “Artists and industry across our vast remote and regional areas aren’t looking for the quick fix of success; but what they do need, is to be taken as seriously as their major capital cousins.”
Threat: The Axe Swings on More Jobs
Restructures, robots and harsh realities have taken their toll in recent weeks.
👉 Another Australian airline, Rex, has been grounded. This piece from Travel Weekly explores whether it was a market duopoly, or internal politics, which led to its demise.
👉 Disney has also layed off 140 employees from its television division, just the latest round as the entertainment giant looks to cut US$7.5 billion in costs.
👉 Closer to home, Capgemini is closing local agency The Works, with various leaders and numerous staff leaving as a result.
👉 The tough times at Seven Network also look set to continue, with a looming ABC investigation into its allegedly “soul-crushing” culture.
👉 And, finally, Coles is promising fewer empty shelves, thanks to mega warehouses and robots. It does, however, come at the expense of 350 human jobs.
The Fun Stuff
Quote of the Week: “Somewhere in the world, we’re throwing a party. It’s on Saturday, the 17th of August. It’s in a physical location, and everyone’s invited. The only catch is you have to find where we are, and you can come and have a beer and we’ll hang out… It’s your job to figure out the clues, figure out where the party is, and come on down and let’s have a good time,” Toni and Ryan co-host Ryan Jon on the podcast’s looming third birthday celebrations.
🎙️ Podcast of the Week: The Toni and Ryan podcast is turning three, moving to Acast and throwing a birthday party to which all TARPers (Toni and Ryan Podcasters) are invited. What a time to tune in and find out why this popular podcast gets over 3 million monthly downloads. You can listen here.
🏆 Win of the Week: Sound Story client The Brag Media has been nominated for four Mumbrella Publish Awards: Magazine Cover of the Year (for the current June-August issue of Rolling Stone AU/NZ featuring Crowded House), Sales Team of the Year, Branded Content Studio of the Year and Publishing Company of the Year.
