Hello 'News24,' hello My Boys 'Who Needs?' and hello to the 'adults' at Netflix
For some time now I have been very curious about the required rebrand of Sky News Australia.
Despite the similarity in brand name, Sky News Australia hasn’t had a link to the Sky News service in the UK for getting close to a decade now. Following the sale of the business to Comcast back in 2018, Sky News Australia was licensing the brand. But, as with every license, the time was coming up for renewal and Sky News wasn’t keen to see that marketplace confusion.
What is interesting to me about Sky News Australia is the way that the channel, which doesn’t have much of a viewership in Australia, has amplified its voice on social channels. It’s a bigger YouTube brand than it is a TV network, with impact felt not just locally, but also in territories like the US.
Part of the value of Sky News Australia has been in talking talking points from conservative opinion talk networks like Fox News in the US and filtering them through a local perspective and “washing” them with an international news brand.
So, that brand is important to the long-term online video presence of the network.
On Friday afternoon, Sky News Australia held a function (no, I wasn’t invited, but the Prime Minister was) where it announced the new brand for the channel would be News24.
Sky News Australia CEO Paul Whittaker said the move pays homage to the legacy of News Corp’s founder Sir Keith Murdoch, and his son and longtime media baron Rupert Murdoch, who set up Sky News 30 years ago.
Like the recent rebranding of MS NOW in the US, there was always going to be a mocking of the new name regardless of what it is. Being so ideologically positioned, any rebrand by a channel like this will become part of the jostling of the culture war.
In Australia, much of the derision came from the name sounding a lot like the public broadcaster’s 24-ish hour news channel, which was once branded as ABC News 24. They’re now just branded as ABC News. It seemed ironic that Sky News Australia would emulate the brand of its local competition in the Australian market – especially considering the criticism of the ABC regularly made by the likes of Sky News Australia and the Murdoch-owned The Australian newspaper.
While I get the eyebrow raise that the News24 rebrand by Sky caused, I was mostly just focused on the idea of branding any news service now as ‘24.’ That just seems so old-school broadcast in its thinking. With so much of the value of Sky News Australia now delivered through the non-linear YouTube and other digital platforms, being 24 hours a day is just a given.
Here’s a very low-res promotional image from the Sky News Australia article about the relaunch:
As Amanda Meade noted in The Guardian last month, Sky News Australia had registered six brands with IP Australia: Australian News Channel, Australian Agenda, Agenda, Australia Channel, Australian Election Channel, and our favourite, Lefties Losing It.
Australian News Channel / ANC to me made a lot more sense for the channel, its purpose, and a digital future. Instead, Australian News Channel remains just the parent company of Sky News Australia / News24. It is a subsidiary of News Corp Australia (or “News Australia” as they sometimes like to refer to themselves).
Buy a round for the latest TV rewatch podcast
About a week ago I was caught with a tinge of nostalgia for 00s sitcom My Boys. Now, if you don’t know My Boys, that’s understandable.
In the US, it ran between 2006-2010 on cable channel TBS. Here in Australia, the show was the sort of filler bought as part of a package of shows that got dropped into random timeslots - I know I caught it at 11am on a Saturday at some point.
My Boys ran for 49 episodes across four seasons and was sort-of a rebuke of Sex & The City. It starred Jordana Spiro as PJ Franklin, a sports journalist in Chicago who spends her free time hanging out with a group of average schmo dudes playing poker and drinking at the local bar. It’s a pretty fun hang-out comedy that flew under the radar, but built a solid fandom. It’s one of those shows with a pretty loyal fan following, despite not really been available all that much in the years since.
While I don’t connect with the sports fandom part of the show, I always felt it was pretty relatable and captured the spirit of being in your 20s and early 30s, hanging out all the time with friends in bars as the pressures of adulthood are swirling somewhere above your head..
The show starred a who’s who of people you kinda know from seeing around the place over the years. The biggest break-out star was Reid Scott, who we’ve seen since go onto lead roles in Veep and Law & Order. And for the first three seasons the show had comedian Jim Gaffigan in a supporting role.
Purely through coincidence as I began my rewatch of the show (I’d only planned to watch one or two episodes, but now I am ready to press play on season three), two of the stars of the show Michael Bunin and Jamie Kaler have launched a rewatch podcast.
It’s titled Who Needs?, which is a subtle phrase repeated through the show (with characters always asking the question when heading off to the bar to buy another round), and has the two stars bringing back cast and crew to discuss the show episode-by episode. They’re four episodes in, with episodes releasing mid-week.
Beyond the simple idea of Bunin and Kaler as amiable, decent dudes reflecting on past glory with the show, what makes the show compelling is the good-humoured honesty of the stories the pair are telling.
It’s not just them being honest about shenanigans and relationships, but there’s real insights into the nature of the Hollywood system grinding actors like these two through the system. In the most recent episode, for example, Bunin recounts auditioning for his recurring role in Superstore (a role for which My Boys co-stars Jamie Kaler and Kyle Howard were also up for) and landing it after he hadn’t worked much for a decade.
The podcast is, quite obviously, really a for-the-fans-only project, but if you’re not already a fan of My Boys, it’s maybe something you need to change about your life.
(If you do press play on the below pilot episode, the usual pilot caveats apply for this sort of show… it gets better a few episodes in once the characters are better established… plus the show eventually loses the dopey Sex & The City-style narration).
Netflix narrative
As we close in on the end of the seven day period for Paramount to deliver Warner Bros its best and final offer (issued on Tuesday last week), we still haven’t seen the obligatory Wall St Journal article revealing that Paramount has delivered that offer and now Netflix is considering a counter-offer. That suggests to me that Paramount still haven’t made that offer yet.
And so, the fight to establish narratives in the media continues between both Netflix and Paramount.
The narrative that I’ve liked from Netflix is its continued efforts to act like the grown-ups in the room. There’s this constant message of: “We went in and looked at the numbers, then made an offer that we thought was appropriate. Warner Bros agreed and accepted.” It’s really hard to fight that sort of narrative because it distills it all down to a simple idea of being a professional and clean process.
Ted Sarandos walked the red carpet at the BAFTAs in London today and delivered the logical Paramount slam that furthers that grown-up, professional narrative:
“The one thing I would like in this process is: ‘If you wanna try and outbid our deal … just make a better deal. Just put a better deal on the table. Don’t make up stories, don’t [spread] misinformation about market share. Just put a better deal on the table and see if you can win.’”
Two things strike me as interesting about this:
The first is that it is an attitude that just exudes BDE.
The second is that this really marks a perception shift from Netflix – a decade ago it was very much the young turk in the room acting as disruptor. But, here we are in 2026 and it is a company that is trying to act like the Netflix Daddy. It’s the grown-up business that purports to be looking out for the best interests of Hollywood.
Meanwhile, Paramount is being seen in the press as acting impulsively, with junior Ellison needing money from his Dad to pay for his vanity business. Then there’s all of those leaked texts from the initial bidding period with WBD going quiet ahead of announcing Netflix as the winner, with Ellison looking like a desperate and ignored spurned lover.
Are any of these narratives fair and accurate? It’s irrelevant in the world of establishing a narrative. Netflix certainly seems a lot more like a steady hand during this entire process.
Meanwhile, the clock is ticking towards Tuesday…
Related:
Netflix is now the subject of a Department of Justice antitrust probe. Read: Deadline
Trump has warned that there will be consequences if Susan Rice isn’t dumped from the board of Netflix following her interview on a recent podcast. She sits on Netflix’s nominating and governance committee. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear her announce a decision to stand down. It’s a headache Netflix doesn’t need. Read: The Guardian
Project screen format education
In an effort to get screen culture sites to amplify the presence of Project Hail Mary film directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller in the promotional lead-up to the release of the sci-fi film, Amazon MGM released this odd video of the co-directors experiencing their movie in the 12 different formats that the movie will screen in cinemas in.
Those formats include Standard, Premium Large Format, 5 Perf 70mm, D-Box, 4DX, MX4D, HDR by Barco, Screen X, Dolby Cinema, Standard IMAX, Digital IMAX, and IMAX 70mm Film.
It kind-of has me wanting to see the film in 4DX.
The video is actually a pretty good guide on what is different about each of those film formats - if you’re a normal person who doesn’t really pay all that much attention to this sort of thing, it is a breezy explainer.
News Desk
Filming is underway on season 3 of Wednesday for Netflix. Read: Dark Horizons
RIP Anna De Peyster. The former journalist, one-time wife of Rupert Murdoch, and mother of James, Elisabeth, and Lachlan, passed at age 81. The couple were married for 31 years. Read: ABC
Over the weekend one-time Grey’s Anatomy star Eric Dane died at the age of 53. Anna Spargo-Ryan wrote a piece for The Guardian about how his “McSteamy” character brought a stronger romanticism to the show than initial love interest “McDreamy.” Read: The Guardian
Rick Porter writes that the recent revival of the US pilot season seems to be less about hearing the beating drums of a revival, but an increasingly loud death rattle. Read: THR
When Scrubs returns this week, it will ignore that the season 9 reboot of the show ever happened. Read: Deadline
The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli says that if the show eere made today, immigration would be a bigger theme of the show and that most of the characters would probably be Trump supporters. Read: The Independent
Joe Brumm will executive produce new Hulu adult animated show Deano. It will be produced by Hooligan Animation, which ABW notes is NOT the Bluey production company Ludo. I once had lunch with Hooligan’s Nathan Mayfield and Tracey Robertson… really lovely people as I recall. Read: Variety
And another Brisbane production… Hunter Page-Lochard and Kat Stewart will star in new ABC crime series Fortitude Valley. Read: IF
The claim that upcoming BBC spy drama Honey is quietly a prequel to Killing Eve has not been refuted by the BBC. First-look photos of the show were just released. Read: Radio Times
Trailer Park
Strip Law is streaming now on Netflix.
An uptight lawyer and a Vegas magician take on the city's most outrageous cases in this new adult animated comedy now streaming on Netflix.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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