It’s going to be a big year for Sky News Australia. And I mean that in the way that a big year for Sky News Australia is how it usually operates - with a lot of noise, some decent YouTube numbers, but generally not great viewership numbers.
It is about to face competition for the first time with upstart digital channel ADH TV which is about to supercharge it’s visibility thanks to a partnership formed with Newsmax. ADH will be rebranded as Newsmax Australia and is currently staffing up. It just signed Erin Molan to host a show and I’d wager there will be more to come in the coming weeks. Expect the partnership to be officially unveiled at the end of the week.
And speaking of rebranding, Sky News Australia will be rebranding itself before the year is out with the local license to the UK news brand coming to an end in 2025/2026. With Sky News Australia owned by Murdoch’s NewsCorp Australia, there is a belief that we will see it rebranded as Fox News Australia. That seems unlikely to me as one of the strengths of Sky News Australia is the ability for the channel to parrot right wing talking points on monetised YouTube clips. By offering an unaffiliated brand, it builds the perception (and enhances sharability) that internationally there is support for ‘common sense’ right wing perspectives.
My assumption is that they will want to keep ‘News’ in the title, so, it’ll likely be something like Australian News Channel or Talk News Australia.
Operations for Sky News Australia is also on the move to the NewsCorp Australia offices in Sydney’s Surry Hills.
Yesterday, Sky News Australia announced its 2025 lineup of shows. It’s a lot more of the same. But I was amused to see late night weeknight host Rita Panahi is being given a Friday night 9pm spotlight for her new show titled… wait for it… Lefties Losing It.
Along with the new schedule launch, Sky News Australia is also launching a new app for “Apple TV, Samsung and LG devices, or other devices which use the Android TV operating system.” Users will need a $5 a month subscription to access the app, which offers linear streams of Sky News Australia, Sky News Election Channel, Sky News Weather, and FOX SPORTS News.
Of course, the Sky News Australia channel is the drawcard here, which is already available for free to Samsung and LG TV owners via their FAST channels. The Sky News Australia channel is also widely available for free elsewhere, including across regional Australia via free-to-air services operated by Southern Cross Austereo and selected WIN Television stations, and free via Foxtel’s Hubbl platform.
I’m really not sure who is paying $5 a month for this.
A damn fine TV commercial
I was delighted this morning to see this shared across my socials. It is a series of four commercials from 1992 directed by David Lynch for the Japanese Georgia Coffee. The ads are in English and are set in the world of Twin Peaks. The company was disappointed in the campaign and opted not to continue with a planned second wave of ads.
You can read too many words about these commercials at the Senses of Cinema site.
News desk
There’s talk of BBC Studios India scaling back. Read: Variety
Surprising ad-land news in Australia yesterday with Tim Burrowes announcing yesterday that he is once again a co-owner of Mumbrella (alongside B2B publishers The Intermedia Group). This is very good news. I always liked Mumbrella, but it certainly lost its way when Tim left the publication. Recently it has had a spring in its step once more and I reckon we'll see Mumbrella once again resume a position of being a daily must-read once more. Read: Mumbrella
Bluesky and X have both reconfigured their apps to highlight vertical videos. Read: The Verge
There are hopes within the industry that the release of Grand Theft Auto 6 will see a price point of US$100. Because the game will be so huge, gamers will likely spend whatever it costs, opening the door to other publishers lifting prices on their AAA titles. Read: Dark Horizons
We’re caught in a trap
It’s a firmly established sociological fact that there are two types of people: Elvis people and Beatles people. You can like them both, but you cannot like them both equally. As a younger man, I always leaned as a Beatles guy. But the older I get in life the more I realise I was deluding myself and that I’ve always been an Elvis guy.
I find myself listening to quite a bit of Elvis Presley on my Spotify and a couple of nights ago I noticed that with Spotify now supporting music videos, I could see the clip for his song Suspicious Minds.
What the heck is going on with this clip?
My initial assumption was that much of the clip was a quick AI generated video to take advantage of Spotify’s new video support. But that’s not the case - I see that the official Elvis channel on YouTube posted this over two years ago.
Choices have certainly been made with this video and the, I assume, stock footage that they purchased for it. But… it’s all baffling. Is there a story behind this?
Trailer park
Suits: LA debuts Feb 23 on NBC.
NCIS: Sydney returns for season 2 on 7 February on Paramount+.
1923 returns to Paramount+ for season 2 on Feb 23.
That’s the newsletter for today.
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“Australian News Channel” is, of course, the name of the entity which actually owns operates Sky News Australia. Not sure if that makes it more or less likely they’d rebrand as that.