Welcome to the first Unmade podcast post sent via Substack since last week’s migration of our written content into the Mumbrella publishing stack. Fingers crossed the tech still works from our new domain, and this finds your feed.

Today’s conversation features the first podcast interview with ARN Media’s new CEO Michael Stephenson, along with chief audience and content officer Lauren Joyce.

Supercharging the ARN transformation strategy

The largest audience of Upfronts season gathered at Sydney’s Star Entertainment Centre last night to hear about ARN Media’s ambitious plans for 2026.

Ahead of the series of announcements (see Mumbrella’s coverage of the details via this link), new CEO Michael Stephenson and content boss Lauren Joyce talked to Tim Burrowes.

The wide-ranging conversation covered:

• The national rollout of Gold, spearheaded by the Christian O’Connell Show live into Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, and on delay into Perth and Adelaide;

• August’s rushed announcement of the switch of The Jonesy & Amanda Show, featuring Amanda Keller and Brendan Jones, from Sydney breakfast to national drive;

• Whether this is finally the moment when the industry starts properly marketing its DAB+ stations;

• Why there’s still been no move to expand The Kyle & Jackie O Show, from Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson, beyond Sydney and Melbourne. Are ongoing enforcement actions from Australian Communications and Media Authority a factor despite “continued confidence”?;

• The inheritance left by outgoing CEO Ciaran Davis

• An explanation for CADA’s controversial Thy AI voice experiment

• Reaching the inflection point where the audio industry returns to growth

• Where ARN fits into the media consolidation cycle - could it get back into the outdoor advertising business? And why we shouldn’t read too much into the Are Media tie-in

• Opportunities for the industry to come together to rethink how it does Upfronts season

• Domain expertise - does it matter that neither Stephenson or Joyce are radio natives? According to Joyce: “I may not have the hard programming skills of a radio programmer, but what I do know is how to motivate people and how to engage people, and I also understand audiences.”

Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio.

You’ll find lots more coverage of the ARN Upfronts on Mumbrella. And I’ll be offering my own analysis in our Best of the Week email on Saturday.

Have a great day.

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

tim@unmade.media

Read more

Read more

Welcome to an audio-led edition of Unmade, focused on yesterday’s Nine Upfronts. And further down, the investment market seems to like Vinyl Group’s plan to use AI to create ten times as much editorial content.

It’s your last chance to sign up to a paid membership of Unmade and lock in all of the current benefits. Next week, we’re going to stop accepting new paying members of Unmade. Instead we’ll be offering membership of an expanded Mumbrella Pro as we bring the two brands closer together.

All Unmade membership perks will be carried across, including complimentary tickets to Unlock and Compass for our annual paying members. These won’t be available to anyone else as part of the new Mumbrella Pro membership.

Your paid membership also includes exclusive analysis and access to our content archive, which goes behind the paywall six weeks after publication.

Upgrade today.

Subscribe now

Nine’s low risk Upfronts: ‘Fundamentally we are still a premium content long-form business’

It’s already been a long Upfronts season. Yet until yesterday afternoon’s Nine Upfront, none of the free to air TV players had set out their wares.

In the podcast accompanying this post, I talk to Nine’s new chief sales officer Matt James.

It was also Matt Stanton’s first Upfronts as CEO. And although he didn’t come on stage, it was the first for Peter Tonagh not just as a Nine board director but incoming chair.

So the event, ultimately, was a vibe check. After the sale of Domain, this was the first look at how Nine is facing the future in what has been a depressed advertising market.

On the new content side, this was the least ambitious Nine Upfront I’ve been to since 2008 (the year the best content they had to talk about was Gordon Ramsay and Two and a Half Men).

Not that this worried the audience - marketers and media agency people who prefer certainty when they book campaigns. The reliable shows are on the slate - The Block, Married At First Sight, Lego Masters et al. And sport - NRL, tennis and now the English Premier League - were prominent. Plus the winter Olympics.

But with the exception of Shark!, featuring Nine-aligned celebs like The Block’s Scot Cam meeting a shark. There was not a single big drama commission from Nine. That was a first, I think.

There were some interesting choices around the preso, which was all business. There was no on-air talent on stage. And no lighter moments - imagine a whole Nine Upfronts without Today presenter Karl Stefanovic poking fun at himself. In what must have been a deliberate tone, there wasn’t a single joke in the script. All the men wore suits (of course); all the women wore pantsuits.

In our conversation, Matt James reveals that Nine’s management have been working on their purpose for the business - and it’s as a content company: “Fundamentally we are still a premium content long-form business.” But not, it would seem, one that plans to take big risks with that content. Not in this market, anyway.

Most of the announcements were iterative - an upgraded self service Nine Ad Managers platform; lots of data and tech partnerships. (What would an Upfront be without a data partnership?)

Instead this was an interim Upfront before Nine’s future direction is settled. How to invest the money from the sale of Domain remains an open question. So too is the business-defining decision of what Nine does in the next NRL rights negotiation.

Stanton gave a couple of interviews this week to coincide with the Upfronts. He said remarkably little. Giving the benefit of the doubt, it could be that revealing the plan would drive up the price of whatever asset(s) Nine wants to purchase. But it leaves a gap where the vision belongs. After these Upfronts, I’m none the wiser on the vision.

The conversation with James does offer a couple of glimpses. As you’ll hear, he is fond of business jargon, but there was a little more than that.

Tellingly, was the fact that James was bullish on his ability to monetise NRL across free to air and streaming if Nine chases all rights in the next deal. “To have that control and flow of audience between your BVOD subscribers and your SVOD consumers… would be a phenomenal opportunity. So we already have an incredibly powerful and growing asset base, both in the BVOD and SVOD environment. I think we’d be very successful at it and would absolutely back myself 110%. If not, I’m shortly out of a job in six months.”

In other words, as well as free to air, Nine may chase the pay rights currently held by Foxtel.

Speaking of Foxtel, James also sent the strongest signal yet that Nine is going to become part of the Video Futures Collective. The VFC was created by Foxtel Media when Foxtel resigned from industry marketing body Think TV and later OzTAM.

Despite the fact that Nine unveiled new research designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of television - the sort of thing that might previously have been industry funded via the moribund Think TV - James says that there will be collaboration with competitors.

For more than a year, there have been ongoing promises from the TV players to imminently come back together to market their medium. Yet they never quite seem to happen. In our interview, James puts a timeline on it “I would like to think that certainly within the next two months, we can at least start to give clarity on how we would like to move forward as an industry. You know, it’s critical.”

More than once, James talked about the virtues of a private exchange. It sounds like the concept - effectively one place where premium video ads can be traded - is a few steps further than just being a concept.

In the conversation, we also explore the virtues of Nine buying an outdoor company. And then there’s the question of radio. With Nine Radio’s talk network on the block, it must have been a dilemma on how to present it.

The signal on the night was not entirely subtle - while publishing and TV presented side by side, Nine radio’s commercial boss Brian Gallagher did his bit solo. It was a pretty good shop window, and he made Nine Radio seem like an asset worth buying.

In our interview James accepted the premise that Nine might be better off owning an FM radio network that does better in the 25-54 demographic. “Obviously, in the FM environment, it does obviously attract to younger audiences. And there are actually strategically some interesting dynamics there that can work when you think about the sort of drive time integration and what those younger audiences represent.”

By the time the next Nine Upfronts come around, things should be much clearer. The next NRL deal should be done. If Nine is going to buy into FM radio or outdoor, it will have happened. We’ll see.

Leave a comment

Vinyl’s AI bet gets early vote

The investment market appeared to like yesterday’s announcement from Vinyl Group that it intends to use AI to create ten times the amount of content it currently produces, while reducing staff costs. Vinyl shares rose by 4.6%.

Meanwhile, of the bigger stocks, Seven West Media had the best day, improving by 2.2% while its merger partner Southern Cross Austereo lost 0.6%

The Unmade Index closed almost flat for the day, on 472.1 points.

More from Mumbrella

• Vinyl sticks to break-even deadline, aims to use AI to increase content 10x

• ABC admission reignites decades-old ABC paedophile interview furore

• Opinion: Instagram’s new PG-13 content rules will hit adults harder than kids

• Opinion: Why smart marketers should keep measurement simple

  ---

Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio.

Time to leave you to your day. We’ll be back with more soon.

If you happen to be at SXSW Sydney this afternoon, the Mumbrellacast is a late addition to the podcast stage. Our guest will be agency bad boy turned big brand builder Mat Baxter. Hopefully we’ll see you there.

Have a great day.

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella

tim@unmade.media

Welcome to a Tuesday edition of Unmade. The full post is for our paying members. Everyone else will hit a paywall further down.

Below, we look at a set of ratings that make decisions harder rather than easier for programmers deep into radio’s killing season.

Further down on the Unmade Index, the market treats Enero’s ASX update as bad news.

It’s your last chance to sign up to a paid membership of Unmade and lock in all of the current benefits. Next week, we’re going to stop accepting new paying members of Unmade. Instead we’ll be offering membership of an expanded Mumbrella Pro as we bring the two brands closer together.

All Unmade membership perks will be carried across, including complimentary tickets to REmade, Unlock and Compass for our annual paying members. These won’t be available to anyone else as part of the new Mumbrella Pro membership.

Your paid membership also includes exclusive analysis and access to our content archive, which goes behind the paywall six weeks after publication.

Your coupon code for our events is available at the end of today’s post.

Upgrade today.

Subscribe now

The last set of ratings that matter

For a sixth and penultimate time in 2025, radio folk braced for today’s 9.30am release of the radio ratings. In most cases this will be the final data set before decisions are made on 2026 lineups. By the time Survey 7 is released on November 25, most hiring and firing will have been done. And Survey 8’s arrival on January 20 will be little more than a historical footnote.

Certainly it will be the last audience information available to the management of ARN Media before they hold their Upfronts in a fortnight from now.

Kiis decisions

So let’s start there.

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Welcome to a Tuesday edition of Unmade on the day that Southern Cross Austereo and Seven West Media announced their plans to merge.

Today’s post is for our paying members. Everyone else will hit a paywall further down.

It’s your last chance to sign up to a paid membership of Unmade and lock in all of the current benefits. Next month, we’re going to stop accepting new paying members of Unmade. Instead we’ll be offering membership of an expanded Mumbrella Pro as we bring the two brands closer together.

All Unmade membership perks will be carried across, including complimentary tickets to REmade, Unlock and Compass for our annual paying members. These won’t be available to anyone else as part of the new Mumbrella Pro membership.

Your paid membership also includes exclusive analysis, like the piece below, and access to our content archive, which goes behind the paywall six weeks after publication.

Your voucher code for our events is available at the end of today’s post.

Upgrade today.

Subscribe now

A merger of two fading broadcasters, or a portfolio of complementary media brands?

So here we go again. Some 16 months after the collapse of ARN Media’s proposal to acquire Southern Cross Austereo, a new deal is on the block - SCA plus Seven West Media.

There are few genuine mergers - there’s almost always a senior party. In 2018, the coming together of Nine and Fairfax Media was presented as a merger but in truth it was a takeover. Nine was the stock that stayed on the ASX, and became the dominant culture.

In this case, SCA will be the survivor on the ASX, acquiring the shares in SWM. SCA shareholders will get 50.1% of the company; SWM shareholders the other 49.9%.

The combined board will initially consist of four SWM directors and three SCA directors. The announcement that Seven proprietor Kerry Stokes will be the first chair looks like a face-saving device. Stokes will retire at the end of February, which would likely only be weeks after the proposed deal completes. SCA’s current chairman Heath Mackay-Cruise will then become chair of the new business.

Under the deal, the Stokes family holding will drop from proprietor level -

Read more

Read more

Read more

Read more

Welcome to a midweek update from Unmade, dropping a little later than usual to accommodate the reporting embargo around this afternoon’s Amazon’s Upfronts.

Further down, Vinyl Group shares sink to a 12 month low.

To get maximum value from a paid membership of Unmade, sign up today.

Your annual membership gets you tickets to October’s Unlock conference on marketing in the nighttime economy; and to Unmade’s Compass end-of-year roadshow.

You also get access to our paywalled archive.

Upgrade today.

Subscribe now

‘We are ready now’: Willie Pang on Amazon’s entry into the Australian advertising environment

What was most notable about this afternoon’s Upfront with Amazon Australia was not so much the content, but the fact that they decided now is the time to hold such an event.

This week was something of a coming out moment for Amazon’s local operation. It seems like longer ago, but Amazon only launched its Australian website in late 2017, with a local Amazon Ads team starting a couple of years later.

This week was the most industry-facing Willie Pang has been since becoming Amazon’s country manager two years ago. On Monday we recorded the podcast interview published alongside this post. Yesterday he presented the keynote at REmade, our retail media conference. And tonight he was on stage at Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion, talking to the biggest industry audience Amazon has yet addressed in Australia.

As Pang put it in our interview: “It took us a couple of years there to build, to scale, and we feel like we are ready now.”

The increased profile is a function of the inexorable progress being made by Amazon. Back in 2023 it passed the threshold as Australia’s most visited online retail destination. And last year, came the big move - the arrival of an ad tier on Amazon’s Prime Video.

Unlike other streaming services, the default for users is that advertising tier. That instantly made Amazon one of the biggest players in Australia’s connected TV ecosystem.

In our interview, Pang claims a five million total audience, although I think I detected a reticence to expand on where that number comes from. That was answered in this afternoon’s presentation, with the asterisk “Amazon internal”.

Pang said there have been talks with ratings body OzTam. Good. I suspect the market will want independent audience verification.

Amazon’s challenge now is to get that audience actually watching more Prime Video content.

That was a shortcoming revealed at tonight’s event. It was an upfront with very few local upfront content announcements. We already knew that Amazon has the ICC cricket and NBA basketball rights. The only new local announcements were a second season of comedy drama Deadloch and an as-yet-untitled AFL documentary from the production team behind Netflix’s F1 series Drive to Survive.

Prime’s content strategy is global rather than local.

Not returning, by the looks of it is the Australian edition of workplace comedy The Office. The reviews for the first season were rotten.

Instead, the focus was on Amazon’s claim to all parts of the marketing funnel, backed with some tech updates. “Full funnel” was the most frequently used phrase of the afternoon.

Pang also appears to be coming to the market with more humility than some of the players Amazon is seeking to displace (Cartology in the retail media space, and Google in the online space spring to mind). Says Pang in our interview: “We would love for brands, marketers, agencies to perceive us as firstly, humble and hardworking. And second, that we’re here to deliver incredible results and value.”

He repeated the words “humble and hard working” on stage this afternoon too. That’s a smart position. The message: ‘We can do the same stuff as Google and Meta but we’re nicer’ might well resonate locally.

I suspect that the market will soon be talking about Amazon’s demand side platform Performance+ campaign optimisation tool and its audience discovery tool Brand+, in the same breath as Meta’s Advantage+ and Google’s Performance Max. The naming convention certainly suggests that’s the aim.

Amazon’s DSP now extends across premium partners including Netflix along with Prime, the Amazon retail platform and the company’s live streaming platform Twitch.

A decade ago, the conversation was what Amazon would do to the market when it finally arrived. Without a shadow of a doubt, Amazon is now here.

Leave a comment

Vinyl Group hits one-year low

Music publishing and platforms company Vinyl Group took the biggest tumble on the ASX today as its share price fell to the lowest point in more than a year. Vinyl lost 4.4% to land on a market capitalisation of $119m.

Meanwhile Southern Cross Austereo lost 1.7% and Ooh Media lost 1.6%.

Among the broadcasters, Seven West Media had the best day, gaining 3.7%.

The Unmade Index lost 0.21%, closing on 477.6 points.

Leave a comment

More from Mumbrella:

• How Commonwealth Bank slowly became a national media network

• ‘This is hate, pure and simple’: Muslim pork ad pulled from awards

• Opinion: Why trust actors but not AI?

• ASX-listed Lifestyle Communities launches new brand platform

Today’s podcast was edited by Abe’s Audio. Time to leave you to your evening. We’ll be back with more tomorrow.

Have a great night

Toodlepip…

Tim Burrowes

Publisher - Unmade + Mumbrella

tim@unmade.media

Welcome to a Tuesday edition of Unmade. Today’s full post is for our paying members

Today: Could TikTok be the Murdoch empire’s biggest deal yet?

It’s your last chance to sign up to a paid membership of Unmade and lock in all of the current benefits. Next month, we’re going to stop accepting new paying members of Unmade. Instead we’ll be offering membership of an expanded Mumbrella Pro as we bring the two brands closer together.

All Unmade membership perks will be carried across, including complimentary tickets to REmade, Unlock and Compass for our annual paying members. These won’t be available to anyone else as part of the new Mumbrella Pro membership.

Your paid membership also includes exclusive analysis, like the piece below, and access to our content archive, which goes behind the paywall six weeks after publication.

Your voucher code is available at the end of today’s post. If you want to go to REmade, you’ll have to get a move on. It’s today

Upgrade today.

Subscribe now

TikTok is the deal that could remake the Murdoch empire once again

That was unexpected.

Could the Murdoch empire be about to become an owner of TikTok?

According to Donald Trump, Lachlan and Rupert are in the frame.

Over the weekend, Trump said in an interview with Fox News (owned by News Corp’s sister business Fox Corp): “I hate to tell you this – a man named Lachlan is involved. You know who Lachlan is? That’s a very unusual name, Lachlan Murdoch.

Read more

Read more