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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Fear and Green Summer series. I'm Michael Thompson.

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Speaker 1: Today the global media is changing, So what is in

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Speaker 1: store in twenty twenty six? Tim Burrows is the founder

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Speaker 1: and publisher of media and marketing website Umbrella and the

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Speaker 1: newsletter Unmade. Tim. Welcome back to Fear and Greed.

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Speaker 2: Mickey T. I hope you're slapping on the sun block.

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Speaker 1: As always I do that year round. Tim. Let's start

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Speaker 1: with the Murdoch Empire, shall we. Twenty twenty five you'd

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Speaker 1: have to say was a pivotal year for Rupert and

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Speaker 1: for Lachlan Murdoch in particular. Just give us a bit

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Speaker 1: of a snapshot of where that's at and how it

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Speaker 1: all played out.

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Speaker 2: What A yeah, Yeah, it feels like this really was

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Speaker 2: the year it became official that Lachlan had ascended and

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Speaker 2: had locked it in. That there'd always been a sense

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Speaker 2: that he was gradually getting his hold on the empire

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Speaker 2: as clearly as father Rupert's choice. But there was just

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Speaker 2: this questioning what would happen with the family trust once,

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Speaker 2: you know, one day when he turns one hundred and forty,

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Speaker 2: when when we put Murdock passes away, what would what

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Speaker 2: would happen to the family trust then because the other siblings,

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Speaker 2: so Elizabeth Murdock, James Murdock and Prudence would effectively have

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Speaker 2: had votes that could have could have potentially outvoted Lockland.

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Speaker 2: So if they'd wanted to take the empire further towards

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Speaker 2: the middle rather than that sort of more kind of

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Speaker 2: right Woods direction that for instance, Fox News in the US,

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Speaker 2: which is part of the Fox Court half of the empire,

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Speaker 2: or you know, the publications out of the news Court

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Speaker 2: half of the empire, they could have taken a different direction.

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Speaker 2: But the deal was finally done by the family, so

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Speaker 2: effectively the other three siblings were brought out, Lachlan took

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Speaker 2: on more debt, and now he is very much the

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Speaker 2: future of the business.

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Speaker 1: How important is that to shore that up? And I

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Speaker 1: suppose it's a bigger question about kind of this traditional

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Speaker 1: media mogul model. I suppose whether that is breaking down,

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Speaker 1: or whether it's important to have that size, that scale,

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Speaker 1: and that weight because everything else is dominated by big tech.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Look, I think the influence that News Corp and

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Speaker 2: in the US Fox Corps has is still huge, and

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Speaker 2: in part that's because politicians perceive them to be huge,

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Speaker 2: and that's always been one of the things about the media.

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Speaker 2: It's not just whether there's an audience there or not,

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Speaker 2: it's if the politicians take them seriously. So that's you know,

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Speaker 2: that's super important. You know, it still still has that

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Speaker 2: place and will do I think for the foreseeable future.

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Speaker 1: Let's talk about Hollywood, shall we, because it is an

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Speaker 1: absolute state of flux at the moment, in particular because

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Speaker 1: of the uncertain future of Warner Brothers. Hollywood's problems do

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Speaker 1: they feel kind of structural, structural I suppose, rather than cyclic,

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Speaker 1: or because it feels like this is not so much

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Speaker 1: just a bad period. It is the end of the

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Speaker 1: old business model of the big studios and the theatrical releases.

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Speaker 1: That it is all about the streamers and the growing

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Speaker 1: weight of Amazon, Apple and in particular Netflix.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, we have seen so much change, particularly over the

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Speaker 2: five years obviously with COVID that just broke so many

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Speaker 2: habits of going to the cinema, and even when it reopened,

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Speaker 2: it never came back in quite the same way. And

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Speaker 2: we have a number of players now who are just

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Speaker 2: not as excited about releasing things at the movies. You know,

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Speaker 2: I guess the one which will be most prominently there

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Speaker 2: would be Netflix, who, yes, they've changed their model a

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Speaker 2: few times. They started off actually, as most people would know,

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Speaker 2: I'm sure, as a kind of a male rental DVD service,

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Speaker 2: but then became that first kind of streaming service. So

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Speaker 2: thus far a lot less you know, a lot less

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Speaker 2: committed to theatrical releases, although you know sometimes their stuff

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Speaker 2: gets a very brief release. But we we we saw

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Speaker 2: Netflix emerging as a bidder for Warner Brothers Discovery, which

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Speaker 2: has got such kind of heritage, not just with the

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Speaker 2: Warner Studios TV side, you know, the people who bring

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Speaker 2: us you know, things like Friends or Big Bang Theory,

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Speaker 2: but also kind of that sort of high end television,

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Speaker 2: whether it's you know, things like The Sopranos or Game

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Speaker 2: of Thrones, things like that, and obviously a big film

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Speaker 2: division as well. So so that you know, we went

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Speaker 2: into the end of the year with that one, that

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Speaker 2: one in flux, with the Warner Brothers Discovery board choosing Netflix,

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Speaker 2: but Paramount choosing to not accept the rejection and carrying

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Speaker 2: on fighting for it. So you know, we we'll see

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Speaker 2: that reverberate way into twenty twenty six, and then creating

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Speaker 2: you know, another kind of giant kind of streaming center

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Speaker 2: will inevitably create more kind of of the kind of

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Speaker 2: medium sized companies to come together. In twenty twenty six,

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Speaker 2: I'm sure.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And we did see bringing this Australia into the

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Speaker 1: global kind of picture here. We did see some steps

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Speaker 1: taken in twenty twenty five by the federal government to

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Speaker 1: really help Australian content and Australian creators by forcing the

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Speaker 1: big streamers like Netflix and others to pay or to

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Speaker 1: commit a significant sum to Australian content. That has to help, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Effectively it created a new streaming quota, so all of

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Speaker 2: the streaming players will have to spend a proportion of

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Speaker 2: their revenue on local content. So that will be good

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Speaker 2: for that production sector. For the traditional TV companies in Australia,

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Speaker 2: it may not be so good actually, because suddenly, when

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Speaker 2: they're competing for the services of all of those people

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Speaker 2: in that sector, they're now competing with the streaming players.

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Speaker 2: So it wasn't actually a policy that our existing players

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Speaker 2: particularly wanted, certainly not as it was enacted.

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Speaker 1: No, okay, thirty seconds left. What's the story to watch

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Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six? Is it? About consolidation. Is it

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Speaker 1: just about the constant state of change that we're living

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Speaker 1: in now?

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Speaker 2: Do you know what? I think? It's this race towards

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Speaker 2: everything old being new again, which is a form of consolidation. So,

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Speaker 2: you know, we're seeing those people who felt like the

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Speaker 2: new players, like Netflix being the most of example, getting

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Speaker 2: closer and close to that old models, you know, launching

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Speaker 2: advertising tiers where they didn't have advertising before, buying up

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Speaker 2: old media assets, all of those things. So I think

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Speaker 2: probably the next theme will be the people that we

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Speaker 2: thought of as new media becoming old media and then

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Speaker 2: having to fight AI for attention instead.

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Speaker 1: All right, Tim, thank you for talking to Fear and

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Speaker 1: Great summer series.

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Speaker 2: Always a pleasure and never mature.

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Speaker 1: That was Tim Burrows, founder and publisher of Umbrella and

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Speaker 1: the News that Are Unmade. Don't forget it. Follow on

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Speaker 1: the podcast, new episodes every day during our summer series.

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Speaker 1: Regular shows back from January twelve. I'm Michael Thompson and

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Speaker 1: this is Fear and Great