Fire-impacted Bendigo is getting its TV back
It’s a fairly quiet news day with the US off with the Martin Luther King Jr Day national holiday.
So, I thought we’d kick off today’s newsletter with a quick good news story…
Regional Australian broadcaster WIN TV believes that broadcasting will resume in Bendigo later this week following repairs to the Mt Alexander transmission site. (Read more: TV Blackbox)
The transmission site was damaged due to recent bushfires in the area. Friend of ABW Anthony Eales reports that he saw the TV signal drop at 7:15pm while watching the ABC news.
Something that caught my interest with the story is that locals have been able to stream the local news via streaming apps ABC iView and on the 9Now app. While that’s business as usual for the ABC, the regional WIN Bendigo News doesn’t usually get carried by 9Now - it was set up especially for the impacted viewers.
WIN News, as a commercial operation, also has advertising to consider. Because the broadcast was off the air, the only ads being carried through 9Now have been ads booked through Nine Ad Manager, a DIY platform for SMEs who don’t operate at a scale to book ads through a buying agency.
Good to see some aspects of life are getting back to normal out there.
News Desk
David Letterman will host an interview with Zach Galifianakis at this year’s Just For Laughs festival. It’s the first work Letterman has done in Canada since a 1978 stand-up set on variety show 90 Minutes Live. Read: THR
Alex Honnold is the professional rock climber who will climb the Tapei 101 building for Netflix’s Skyscraper Live streamed event on Friday (US time… in Australia we’ll be watching it at noon on Saturday). In this interview he talks about how safe the event is for him (spoiler: he is prepared). Read: Deadline
Australian indigenous broadcaster NITV has announced its slate of programming leading into Monday’s “Australia Day” long weekend. It highlights the stories that speak to tens of thousands of years of continuous culture. Read: TV Tonight
Piers Morgan broke his hip after tripping on a small step. It has landed him in hospital. Read: THR
A second Sphere venue is planned to be built in the US, this time in Maryland. The new Sphere will be much smaller than the one in Vegas, seating just six thousand people.
Doctor Who and The Last of Us director Peter Hoar has opened production company Multitude Productions and has acquired the IP for Blakes 7. The cult UK sci-fi show ran on the BBC from 1979-1981 and was created by Terry Nation. Read: Radio Times
It was an honor just to be nominated
Amanda Seyfried on the value of winning an Oscar:
“why would I need one now?”
I’m sure Seyfried wouldn’t be turning it down if she won, but she had a really pragmatic view of what it means to win an Oscar in an interview with The New Yorker (I picked up the quote from a rewrite at The Hollywood Reporter).
“Do you remember who won in the past ten years? It’s not the win that’s important. It’s the nomination,” Seyfried said. “It does thrust you forward. That’s a fact. Now, do I need one in a week or two or whenever? No, of course, I don’t. Would it be great? Of course it would, for every reason. But it isn’t necessary. Longevity in an actor’s career is designed. Longevity is about deliberate choices to make art among the big commercial things that are fun and pay.”
Trailer Park
This season on HBO’s Game of Thrones: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms…
Indie animated series Iyanu returns for season 2 in Q2 of this year. There’s no one network attached to this - Season 1 of Iyanu is on HBO Max in the US, on Showmax across 44 African countries, ITVX in the UK, ABCiview in Australia, and in the United Arab Emirates and wider MENA region on Ejunior Kids TV and STARZPLAY.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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