Media Week: Tynte St’s future, the AFL web
In this week’s column, Nine confirms the date of its CBD move as a buyer closes in on Tynte Street, the tight circle of interests involved in the AFL rights deal, Green conspiracies and much more.
Option on Tynte St as Nine confirms CBD move date
InDaily can reveal that Nine Adelaide will begin broadcasting from its new CBD studios from Monday 21 September.
The station is planning a launch party at 169 Pirie St for early October, with interstate network stars expected to fly in for the opening of what Nine says will be Australia’s most advanced TV studio.
The move to Hindmarsh Square means the end of an era for Adelaide television.
The Tynte Street studios hosted the first television broadcast in South Australia on 5 September 1959, and Nine has been operating from there ever since.
The 6700 square metre site, which borders on Wellington Square, has been on the market since last October, and InDaily can reveal that a developer has taken out an option on the property.
“It’s under option to a purchaser who is going through a detailed planning exercise,” says agent Tony Ricketts from Knight Frank.
Given the zoning, it’s likely to be a major residential development.
Pumping up the AFL deal
After their boss Rupert Murdoch turned up for the announcement, it was inevitable that News Corp newspapers, including The Advertiser, would present the AFL broadcast rights deal as a bonanza for the code and fans.
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It’s certainly going to fill the coffers of the AFL, clubs and players, but is it a massive win for average South Australian footy fans, as the Tiser presented it?
Not really. In fact, it’s pretty much business as usual for those of us who don’t want to pay Foxtel fees – and pretty much the same even if you do.
On free to air, we’ll get an average of “3.5” games a week, all interstate Crows and Power games shown live, and three local games for each SA club will be shown on delay during the season. Foxtel will have the capacity to on-sell an extra Saturday afternoon game to another player, with most pundits predicting Ten will pick up the match.
Nationally, there will be 11 fewer games on free to air TV over the year.
The connections between all of the players in the mega-deal is revealing.
Foxtel, which is part owned by News Corp, is seeking a 15 per cent stake in Ten (pending regulatory approval). The executive co-chairman of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan, has an 8.5 per cent stake in Ten.
The other player in the AFL deal – Telstra – is a part owner of Foxtel.
The streaming service Presto is a joint venture between Seven West Media and Foxtel, Seven being the free-to-air media partner in the AFL rights deal.
So the arrangement is basically a circle of blokes massaging each other’s, um, shoulders.
Murdoch’s grip on Australian media is tighter than ever.
TV veteran wins MacKillop award
Veteran Adelaide television producer Lincoln Tyner has won the top award in this year’s Catholic Archbishop’s Media Citations.
Tyner won the St Mary MacKillop citation for his outstanding contribution to the local media over more than 30 years.
Tyner has worked on many productions for the ABC and commercial networks, but is perhaps best known for his nine historical cricket documentaries for the national broadcaster.
In the ANZAC centenary year, Tyner was been recognised for his work over many years on the local ANZAC Day dawn service and March.
Accepting the award yesterday, Tyner made a passionate plea for South Australians to support local media to stop the seemingly inexorable slide of media jobs to the eastern seaboard.
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Go here to see all the winners.
Naughty corner
Labor MP Michael Atkinson took this online journal to task this week for allegedly “colluding” with the SA Greens to obscure the identity of a potential Senate candidate.
It’s a long story but, in brief, the Greens themselves decided not to release the name of the final candidate at his request.
Nevertheless, InDaily kept digging and, once we’d done the legwork, we published not only the names of all candidates, but also an internal Greens assessment of each of the six hopeful Senators.
We hope this assuages Atkinson’s concerns.
Meanwhile, certain people seem shocked that a news website would publish an internal party document.
This is surprising, but I’ll step out the rationale.
The new Senate candidate will replace Penny Wright, who has chosen to retire mid-term.
This means that the public won’t have the chance to elect a replacement – as convention has it, the SA Greens will select the new Senator.
In a democracy, it is the media’s job to thoroughly scrutinise our politicians – and if the Greens are happy to circulate a written assessment of potential Senators among it members, why shouldn’t the rest of the community be privy to the same information?
After all, the new Senator will represent all of us – not just a small cohort of Greens members.
Top of the class
South Australia has produced an outstanding collection of journalists who have gone on to great things interstate.
One of the most notable, Helen McCabe, was this week given the nod to deliver the ABC’s Andrew Olle Media Lecture – one of the most prestigious gigs in Australian media.
McCabe, the editor-in-chief of the Australian Women’s Weekly, grew up near Hamley Bridge on the Adelaide Plains, and started her career in radio and TV in Adelaide. She was a respected newspaper reporter and editor before joining the Weekly in 2009.
Under her leadership, the magazine has become a source of excellent journalism.
The lecture will be delivered on the evening of 6 November 2015 and broadcast live on ABC NewsRadio from 9pm that night. It will also be televised in November.
Media Week is published each Friday.
