Mumbrellacast

On May 1, Australia's biggest talk-radio network Nine Radio shut down and in its place sprung up Tapt Media, as hoteliers the Laundy family officially took over Sydney's 2GB, Melbourne's 3AW, Brisbane's 4BC, and Perth's 6PR. Former Nine Radio -- and now Tapt Media -- CEO Tom Malone and chief commercial officer Brian Gallagher both speak with Tim Burrowes in the latest episode of Mumbrella’s Unmaker Series podcast, about what the new ownership means for the future of its talkback radio empire. "This is a hundred-year-old startup", Malone notes, "and there's a huge opportunity ahead of us." Coming from Nine, Malone says that the network "understood that the best way to run this business would be as a standalone entity", and it's clear both he and Gallagher agree with this sentiment. "Having your own bespoke sales team commercialising with a singular focus on audio — linear, streaming, podcasting — is gonna drive a better result for the business," Malone notes. He lists off short and long form video and audio, on and off-platform plays, third-party reseller agreements, and even a subscription offering as possibilities that are in the pipeline. "There's lots of different avenues that we can explore. That's really exciting for us as a business, harnessing the power of our content, but also the power of our connection between our broadcasters and our listeners." There's also a neater demographic fit between the Laundy's hotel empire and the stations' audience. "We're not playing top 40," Gallagher notes. "We're getting to core issues and we're connecting community. We're connecting them beautifully with clients as well. So it's a real opportunity. "Look, in all fairness to the power of Nine, which is the preeminent Australian media company, the ability for this business to actually maximise its revenue opportunities in that umbrella were very limited ... That's a business that trades very effectively in a 25-54 marketplace ... We deal with slightly different demos that don't make the CPM (cost per mille) cut in the analysis from time to time. "So it's a really hard thing to be competitive and achieve the right kind of market share." Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.

Two decades ago, James Donald was working on an oil rig in Norway. This month, Ideally -- the market research platform he co-founded -- raised over $13m in an investment round that will help the NZ-based startup push into the US, and launch a new product Ideally Canvas. Donald speaks with Tim Burrowes in the latest episode of Mumbrella’s Unmaker Series podcast, about his journey from oil to artificial intelligence and consumer research, and how he helped build a company worth north of $90m in a few years. He also discusses his company's new product, Ideally Canvas, which gives brands a real-time, continuously updated consumer profile rather than a static snapshot; the limitations of synthetic data; and how Ideally is able to offer a nimble consumer insights service that competitors will routinely charge ten times more for. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.

Welcome to a special relationship issue of the Mumbrellacast, where we look at the delicate dance between creative agencies and clients, and the harried, hurried waltz between media agencies and media salespeople. BMF and Westpac announced their divorce this week after just one year. Both are claiming they initiated the breakup, due in no small part to Mumbrella's own investigations into the matter. BMF fired the first shot, as far as we can tell, but isn't it rather unusual for an agency to fire a client? We discuss. A nicely timed study from marketing consultancy We Grow came out this week, examining the fragile relationships between those who buy the ads and those who sell the ads. Small talk is out of fashion these days, it seems, with each meeting needing to have a clear, concise point -- and hopefully nouns used as verbs and vice versa. There is increasingly no tolerance for salespeople reaching out just to reach out, meetings with no clear agenda, and God help the media seller who tries to book a boozy lunch without any concrete pitch. It's a pressure cooker situation, the agencies say, and salespeople who fail to understand this are doomed to annoy agencies into eternity. But aren't relationships built mostly on pointless chit-chat? There's a massive disconnect here, and we delve into it. Within 24 hours this week, Snap, BBC, and Disney announced around 4,000 job losses between them, with AI being blamed for a lot of the redundancies. But is that just an easy excuse to get rid of staff, and save some money during a period of declining traditional media, soft advertising spend, and mass uncertainty around what technology will bring next? And we wrap up this week's podcast by asking the question: Why in the world is News Corp launching an 87-year-old fashion title into the Australian marketplace? The mobile-first, social-first play seems at odds with a classic glossy magazine brand, but there may be method in the madness -- especially given the Myer partnership and the e-commerce side of things. And just for the hell of it, we close with an impromptu magazine-based pop quiz. Happy listening! Get the latest episode every Thursday. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.

Welcome to a special Easter edition of the Mumbrellacast, where you don't have to search high and low to find the treats. We start with the news that Telstra's chief marketing officer Brent Smart has left the company, after launching one of the most memorable campaigns seen on Australian television in years. We couldn't confirm news that he left the offices leaning back and whistling a Bee Gees tune, but we do look at what's next for the country's biggest telco. And while we're on the subject of telcos, Vodafone has managed to upset a lot of Australians with its newest campaign by suggesting that regional and rural areas are devoid of life, culture, and phone service. Plenty of emus though, apparently. American Ali Wong stars in the commercial, and her claim that "nothing's out here" has made national news. Is the ad elitist, funny, or a bit of both? (Or neither?) This week, Mumbrella broke the news that Virgin Australia is quietly building its own retail media network, hiring the former McKinsey and VML digital leader Scott Moore to drive its development. Retail media is becoming a major money spinner for brick-and-mortar stores, neatly wrapping together their physical and digital locations to sell you cat food and Zooper Doopers, but how exactly will it work for an airline? And will Qantas board the retail media plane next? The eSafety Commissioner’s first report on the under-16s social media ban is rather damning. It has found that, close to four months since the implementation of the ban, Tiktok, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Youtube still have “major gaps” in their compliance, and that more than two-thirds of children under 16 who already had a Facebook account in December when they bans came into play, still do, despite two-thirds of kids also believing Facebook is "totally lame, Mum, gross!" (okay, that final stat isn't from eSafety). We unpack the report. Finally, Jackie Henderson has filed suit against her former employee ARN, claiming that the termination of her contract “constituted adverse action". Henderson is arguing that her initial complaint letter, where she said she can no longer work with Kyle Sandilands was simply her exercising her workplace rights, and that the contract was terminated because of this, in contravention of the Fair Work Act. Happy listening!

We've crossed the picket line to present this week's episode of the Mumbrellacast. Around the time of recording this episode, ABC employees were returning to work from their 24-hour strike -- the first in 20 years -- which means the skeleton staffers won't have to dust off those old Seachange episodes just yet. But nothing has been resolved, so it remains to be seen if another strike is on the cards. We break down what the workers want, why they haven't gotten it -- and why managing director Hugh Marks is acting as if working for Aunty is akin to doing national service, with lines like: "I understand that in the current climate higher pay would help many individuals, but we must also remain focused on the long-term sustainability of the ABC and its relevance to all Australians." Kyle Sandilands filed suit against ARN last Friday, and we got hold of the "concise statement" lodged in Federal Court on his behalf, which we've published in full on the website, and which we unpack on the podcast. The document also reveals, for the first time, the exact amount that Kyle is earning, and under which financial column each of those "services" falls under. There's a curious "consultancy fee" for ARN's hip hop-based digital station CADA, which caught our collective eye. Our guess is Kyle isn't instructing them on which ASAP Rocky album tracks to playlist. We also talk press releases, following Medianet's Amrita Sidhu's declaration at CommsCon on Wednesday that 73% of journalists told them they "often or occasionally" receive what they suspect to be AI-generated pitches. "Make no mistake about it though," she said. "Our thematic analysis shows the majority will lose trust in the pitch ... For them, an AI generated pitch is a lazy pitch. It's a non-researched pitch. It's a potentially false pitch. There goes the trust." We debate whether journalists can detect an AI-generated pitch, and the rising use of press releases in journalism. Finally, we hear from Tumbleturn Marketing Advisory’s Jen Davidson, who feels we are ready for what she dubbed "Naked Communications 2.0", referring to the storied agency that pioneered unbundling strategy from execution. Happy listening! Get the latest episode every Thursday. Podcast edit by Abe’s Audio.

Chris Howatson has called out the mass consolidation of advertising agencies sweeping the global holding company sector, describing it as a confusing strategy that could hamper long-term growth. Speaking to the Mumbrellacast, the founder of Howatson and Co said the approach focuses on merging creative brands that don’t scale, while media operations, where scale actually delivers efficiency, are the parts that make financial sense. He added that holding companies may continue to make extreme margins on media through principal trading, but this will mask the declining value of their creative businesses as more top talent leaves for independent agencies. Howatson’s comments come as the agency marks its five-year anniversary, with the founder outlining his long-term commitment to remaining independent, keeping headcount under 200 even at the cost of taking on new clients, and explaining why he believes the industry is entering a creative renaissance despite consolidation and AI disruption.

Good things come to those who wait, and the out-of-home advertising industry, and the media buyers who book the campaigns that grace billboards and bus shelters across the country, have certainly been waiting for the next iteration of Move for quite some time. Originally called Move 2.0, then reverting to simply Move, the long-awaited and much-touted out-of-home audience measurement tool is finally live, having been in development since 2021, and teased numerous times along the way. Elizabeth McIntyre, CEO of the Outdoor Media Association, appears on the Mumbrellacast, where Tim Burrowes quizzes her on the future of out-of-home advertising, the granular new Move system, and what's happening within the OMA. Burrowes also asks McIntyre about her own plans, now the big project has been completed and delivered. For the uninitiated, Move tracks audience data from around 180,000 outdoor advertising sites around the country, by modelling a synthetic audience of 2.2 million Australians and their daily movements. This system was built after tracking the movements of 5,000 people over a fortnight across more than 280,000 different routes. It then predicts the likely audience of each out-of-home advertising point. This information is calibrated against independent data sources for further accuracy, and is available in hourly increments. Listen to the whole conversation on the Mumbrellacast, by subscribing on your favourite podcast app, or clicking on the player above.

"What I uncovered as I tried to get my team set up time sheeting ... was that not only are they incredibly frustrating for the people doing them, and the people chasing them, but the data that comes back from them is not very accurate." That's Freddie Mckenzie, co-founder of Manifest, a startup using AI to automatically construct timesheets at agencies. Mckenzie, speaking with Tim Burrowes in the latest episode of Mumbrella's Unmaker Series podcast, says he's well aware that many in the industry think billable hours is a broken model: but that doesn't mean it's irrelevant. "The agency model and the whole industry runs on time: time's a really important component at the moment. It's becoming less important as we go into the future, but ultimately it's a service-based industry ... [and time remains important for] understanding your costs, understanding your resourcing, understanding your team, and understanding your business." Manifest began as an internal tool ("Shutterspeed") built inside Mackenzie's Auckland production company Vivid Creative (now Chameleon). The system uses machine learning to automate time sheet tracking, and Mckenzie says that pricing model will initially be based on standard per-seat SaaS models. McKenzie told Burrowes that while some people may have privacy concerns about the software, it was probably worth it even on an individual basis because for many agency people, timesheeting is the worst part of their job. Manifest is not a simple timesheeting stand-in: it's designed to give managers a better understanding of their own operations. "Charging based on time is definitely becoming obsolete really fast -- it de-incentivizes agencies to use AI tooling because it's supposed to make us faster." "What Manifest is designed to do is help you understand how outputs are created and how value is created inside the agency," he says.

It’s results season, and this week Nine, SCA, and ARN all reported the various fortunes of their companies. The night before they announced their financial results -- and the very next business day after the retirement of chair Kerry Stokes -- SCA's board decided to dump boss Jeff Howard, who used to run Seven, and was very briefly CEO and managing director of the newly merged Seven/SCA. The timing of this decision sent quite a message to the market. Former SCA boss John Kelly (back when they were "all about audio") is now interim CEO of the company's TV and audio divisions, and decided to use the SCA investor call as a gentle audition to shareholders for the top role. He looks in with a good shot. After all, it was very clear which of the two companies involved in the Seven/SCA merger is doing the heavy lifting in financial terms, and it's not the one that screens three hours of Home and Away each week ...

Apple has shaken the world of podcasting again this week (let's not forget the "pod" part of the word comes from the iPod) with the announcement that it is adding videos to its podcasting platform, with an option for listeners to toggle between video and audio-only. Youtube is the top platform for podcasts in the world, and Spotify has been focusing on video-led podcasts of late. Yet, CRA's Podcast Ranker -- the"only official measurement system" for podcasts -- doesn't count video plays in its count, meaning it's leaving a lot of the audience out of the equation. Eleanor Dickinson wrote about this topic, speaking to Karl Stefanovic's podcast producer Keshnee Kemp and Spotify ANZ head of podcast Prithi Dey. We discuss the topic further on the show. Also discussed is Joe Aston's investigative commentary publication Rampart which, he disclosed to Tim, is making “multiples” of $500,000 in revenue after its first year, and was profitable by month two. It's an example of a thriving media company in a market that has seen so many others fail of late. (You can listen to that full interview here.) Is it good business sense for a business publication to sue its own subscribers? That's what Todd Scott, the owner and publisher of New Zealand premium finance masthead NBR is doing, taking some of its biggest customers to court if they don't ensure their employees all have their own logins. Scott reckons he's make “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from publicly shaming these companies -- so it appears to be good business sense, indeed. And finally, Tim chats to newly minted Ooh Media CEO James Taylor about whether his out-of-home business is being undervalued by the market.

12 February 2026 In this week's Mumbrellacast, our hosts discuss the spray ACMA chair Nerida O'Loughlin copped from Sarah Hanson-Young over the media watchdog's lack of regulation regarding the Kyle and Jackie O show's continued infringes; the merging of WPP's creative agencies; NZ retailer The Warehouse's eight-week advertising blackout; and Hal's conversation with The Guardian Australia's Liz Wynn on the publication's move to require its most dedicated users to log-in to the site to access its news. Join Hal Crawford, Nathan Jolly, Eleanor Dickinson, Tim Burrowes and Abe Udy for a look at everything under Australia's media and marketing umbrella.

30 January 2026 We are interrupting our normal schedule to bring you an emergency Mumbrellacast, after both Nine and Nova delivered major news to end the working week. Join Nathan Jolly, Tim Burrowes, Hal Crawford and Abe Udy for a look at everything under Australia's media and marketing umbrella.

21 January 2026 In this week's Mumbrellacast, we head to Adelaide for the Compass event, where four of the city's leading lights in the marketing and media world talk about recent changes in government policy, the struggles of running an agency, and how Adelaide is a bellwether for the rest of the industry. From the surrounds of the wonderfully named Elephant British Pub, Tim Burrowes moderates an all-star panel that features Sean O’Brien, managing director at Nine Adelaide, Katheryn Korczak, co-owner of Nation Creative, Michael Healy, CMO of the Royal Automobile Association, and Adele Gibb, managing director at Carat.