Media News You Need to Know
CNN cuts international revenue chief; BBC and others commit to TikTok; what is a "drongo"; Meta funds Australian journalism, for now.
CNN sheds international revenue chief
In the ongoing shake up of CNN and its satellites around the world, CNN’s head of international revenue Rani Raad is out after 25-years at the company.
I worked with Rani and had some successes and some clashes. (He, of course, was far more influential). No one could question his profound commitment to the brand and its journalism — as well as financial success — and the flabbergasting contacts he exploited, especially in the Middle East.
In my view, this extends a progressive weakening of the influence and internally perceived importance of CNN International which has seldom been understood properly by those in charge of the US brand. CNNI is far more up-market, far stronger on brand advertising and creativity, but risks losing that identity in my opinion.
Former CEO Jeff Zucker loved international and admired the BBC World brand but he too progressively chipped away at the cost and talent establishment overseas. One can only hope his successors appreciate the value of the astounding reporting team linked to CNNI — especially on television where they have a far larger footprint than their relatively small number would suggest.
Serpentine gallery, London (Photograph: Peter Bale)
BBC News goes all-in on TikTok having hesitated
BBC News makes a big commitment to TikTok having been cautious about investing on the platform, The Press Gazette reported. It’s created a team to develop its presence on the Chinese-owned platform, having decided it is an important way to stay relevant as a public broadcaster to a younger audience.
I admit to worrying that we are all piling in again to the “next Facebook” but I do understand this attempt to pursue a younger audience. It does appear unfortunate however that it coincides with the BBC World Service closing its Arabic radio service after 85-years, a serious negation of the BBC’s influence and British soft power.
I thought this interview with Channel 4 chief executive Alex Mahon, fresh from a triumph in seeing off bonkers Conservative plans to privatise the public broadcaster, made some interesting points about the value of reaching out to audiences where they are, even when they are not on your platform or presumably not yet.
“You’ve got to fish where the fish are. You can’t pretend you will drag young people to the ways that we’ve historically done business,” she told a public-facing website run by accountancy and consultancy firm PWC.
A fabulous little media story in New Zealand with an etymological twist
Drongo is an old Australian term, loosely describing a moron or stupid person. Most people under 70 may never have heard of it or certainly not used it.
Auckland mayor Wayne Brown, 76, still has it in his lexicon and deployed it in a message to tennis buddies — leaked to the New Zealand Herald — apologising for not being able to turn up to play because he had “to deal with media drongos over the flooding”. Four people have died in that flooding and he’s had to declare a state of emergency. The drongo question is a storm in a teacup but it does betray the disdain he’s shown since being elected last year — accepting only two of more than 100 interview requests and clearly holding city and national media in contempt.
That might be fine — and understandable to many of his age and political inclination who see the media as whining, self-interested, vain, liberals — if he had twinned turning his back on media with a sensible outreach directly through social media. He didn’t so the media is taking every opportunity of kicking him.
The rather wonderful Macquarie Dictionary “insult of the week” blog: defines the word this way: “drongo is a slow-witted or stupid person: a fool. This great Australian insult was originally an RAAF term for a raw recruit. It first appeared in the early 1940s, but its origin reaches back to the name of the racehorse Drongo, who ran around in the early 1920s….”
Staying in Australia, Meta — the owner of Facebook — is still honouring its commitment to support journalism in the country as part of its settlement with the government and the industry arising from a competition inquiry and legislation aimed at defending the media industry from platform dominance by it and Google.
“Fifty-two news publishers and independent journalists will be awarded AU$5M in funding from the Meta Australian News Fund, in the latest round of a AUD$15M three-year investment in partnership with the Walkley Foundation,” the Walkley non—profit journalism group announced in a statement.
Almost everywhere else in the world Facebook has closed its news operations and ended its quite extensive programmes to support journalism.
Thanks for getting to the end of the latest (third) edition of this newsletter now that I have moved it over from Revue. I am grateful and slightly embarrassed by those of you who have pledged future funding. For now, I am finding my way, but I am grateful for the enthusiasm and for any feedback on what I can usefully do with this.
Media News You Need to Know
Astute observation that Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown would have fared better in shunning msm if he had embraced socmed.