Speaker 1: This is what the Flux. I'm Brett and I'm justin add.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, the twenty seventh of January. Jasey Boy nine
Speaker 1: Entertainment may have paid eighty five million bucks this year
Speaker 1: to get exclusive broadcast rights to the Australian Open, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that AO can't use its own tracking data. Okay,
Speaker 1: get this. The OZ Open used tracking data to create
Speaker 1: Nintendo we Like animations of its tennis matches and this
Speaker 1: went bonkers during the tournament. In fact, the first ten
Speaker 1: days of the tournament saw two point seven million viewers
Speaker 1: watch the animated OZ Open game set and Nintendo Wii.
Speaker 1: You can't imagine Nine's happy about this month the man
Speaker 1: Nah Flux fam. It is the last couple of days
Speaker 1: to dive into our academy for the month of January,
Speaker 1: called New Year, New Financially Savvy You. This month it's
Speaker 1: brought to you in partnership with UH and we'll help
Speaker 1: you kick off the new year with a bang. Understand
Speaker 1: where your money's going, where it could be going to
Speaker 1: Make sure to download the Flux app and check out
Speaker 1: the academy this month. Three iconic stories Today Jazzy Boy,
Speaker 1: Let's do it for our first. Rivers, the iconic clothing
Speaker 1: and footwear brand will close all of its retail stores
Speaker 1: across Australia by mid April after it failed to find
Speaker 1: a buyer. Wow E feels like a pretty big name
Speaker 1: to go under be Man, So what is going on here? Well, Jaseyboit.
Speaker 1: Rivers was actually founded back in eighteen sixty three as
Speaker 1: a shoe manufacturer and wholesaler. It opened its first retail
Speaker 1: store in Sydney back in nineteen eighty three when the
Speaker 1: police were singing every breath you Yep. They'd sell everything
Speaker 1: from hiking boots to mountain jackets to dress shoes and
Speaker 1: even Mick Jagger was a big fan of River and
Speaker 1: back in twenty thirteen, Rivers are sold to Specialty Fashion
Speaker 1: Group which is now called City Chic. But this is
Speaker 1: where the decline really started. So Specialty Fashion Group then
Speaker 1: sold Rivers to Mosaic Brands for thirty one mil That's
Speaker 1: the company behind Tiny b Miller's, Rockman's Katies, all your
Speaker 1: old school fan favorites. But last year Mosaic collapsed and
Speaker 1: administrators came in to try and sell each of the
Speaker 1: brands individually. They closed down a range of them. Then
Speaker 1: Katie shut because they couldn't find a buyer, and now
Speaker 1: Rivers is also shutting down. It's one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: six store after failing to find a buyer, and about
Speaker 1: six hundred and fifty people will lose their jobs as well.
Speaker 1: So what is the key learning here? The retail industry
Speaker 1: is notorious for being one of the most challenging industries.
Speaker 1: It's heavily influenced by consumer trends, by economic cycles, and
Speaker 1: of course the rise of e commerce. In fact, Jazzy Boy.
Speaker 1: According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, retail was one
Speaker 1: of the only two industries that saw a decline in
Speaker 1: the number of businesses in twenty twenty four, and the
Speaker 1: other one was forestry and fishing. Now, for traditional brick
Speaker 1: and mortar retailers like Rivers, staying competitive means constantly changing
Speaker 1: with the times so that it be offering new products,
Speaker 1: keeping their prices competitive, and also being in the weird
Speaker 1: and wacky world of social media and branded We've also
Speaker 1: seen other large retailers close over the last twelve months,
Speaker 1: haven't we, Joyboy. We've seen down Ley Sanity close their
Speaker 1: final stores as well as for a scarf they've been
Speaker 1: man Rivers's collapse reminds us that even established brands aren't
Speaker 1: immune to these pressures. For our second story, CNN is
Speaker 1: laying off six percent of its workforce after it continued
Speaker 1: to struggle with low TV ratings against more digitally focused
Speaker 1: news outlets. What the wolf Blitzer is going on here?
Speaker 1: Man more so. CNN short for Cable News Network, is
Speaker 1: the multinational news outlet that was founded in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: and b Man revolutionized the news industry because it was
Speaker 1: the first TV channel to provide twenty four hour news coverage.
Speaker 1: But as the name suggests, Cable News Network really specialized
Speaker 1: in being a cable news network, and as cable or
Speaker 1: PATV has declined globally, so too has CNN's viewership. In fact,
Speaker 1: it had nearly sixty nine million TV households as subscribers
Speaker 1: in the US in twenty twenty three, but that was
Speaker 1: actually down nearly fourteen percent from two years earlier and
Speaker 1: b Man. CNN has now worn that it will cut
Speaker 1: six percent of its workforce as part of plans to
Speaker 1: reshape its business to be more digitally focused. YEAP, CNN
Speaker 1: is planning to create a digital product that will allow
Speaker 1: viewers to stream the channel through multiple online platform In short,
Speaker 1: b Man, CNN has finally realized that it needs to
Speaker 1: shift its focus towards the platforms and products where their
Speaker 1: audiences are moving to, or they risk falling even further behind.
Speaker 1: So what is the key learning here? Digital transformation is
Speaker 1: essential for legacy media to stay relevant. We've seen audience
Speaker 1: habits shift significantly over the past decade. Yep. Even a
Speaker 1: decade ago, consumption of news was typically from a newspaper
Speaker 1: or broadcast TV, but now news is consumed on demand
Speaker 1: on mobile and even through social media platforms. In fact,
Speaker 1: about a third of American adults say they regularly get
Speaker 1: their news from Facebook and YouTube according to Pew Research.
Speaker 1: And here in Australia, twenty percent of people say that
Speaker 1: social media is their main source of news. So for CNN,
Speaker 1: this means leaning into a brand new focus of cutting
Speaker 1: costs in traditional areas while investing heavily in digital growth.
Speaker 1: For our third and final story, open Ai, the creator
Speaker 1: of chat GPT, has launched a brand new product called
Speaker 1: Operator that can perform tasks for you autonomously. First to
Speaker 1: write your work presentation, then it literally does your job
Speaker 1: for you. Things can keep it scary up here, be man,
Speaker 1: so tell me more well, Jesse boy. The open ai
Speaker 1: became a household name back in twenty twenty two when
Speaker 1: it launched the first public version of chat GPT. It
Speaker 1: was a major breakthrough in AI because it allowed everyday
Speaker 1: folk like you and I to actually engage very easily
Speaker 1: in conversational AI. And we know since then the AI
Speaker 1: industry has completely exploded. Yeah, with Admeta and Google and
Speaker 1: Ali Baba, Amazon, Microsoft and every single other tech company
Speaker 1: under the sun try their luck and get involved. But
Speaker 1: now OpenAI has announced it's launching a new product called Operator,
Speaker 1: which is a general purpose AI agent that means it
Speaker 1: can take control of your web browser and actually independently
Speaker 1: perform action. For example, you could tell Operator to plan
Speaker 1: you a date night with your partner and then book
Speaker 1: it in, or you could tell it to purchase that
Speaker 1: shirt that you've been eyeing as soon as it goes
Speaker 1: on sale. The idea is that it's basically your personal assistant,
Speaker 1: and the man AI agents have been pitched as the
Speaker 1: next big thing in AI, so this will be the
Speaker 1: first major test to see how real that actually is.
Speaker 1: Quite huge, Jazzy boy, so tell me, what is the
Speaker 1: key learning here? AA agents could be moving from assistance
Speaker 1: to replacements. Let's be real, we've all heard the fear
Speaker 1: mongering that AI is coming for our jobs, and to
Speaker 1: be honest, so far it hasn't really come to fruition yet.
Speaker 1: But with the rollout of AI agents you can see
Speaker 1: how it could start to take on a whole range
Speaker 1: of human tasks. And the Man Salesforce reckons that teams
Speaker 1: using AI see their sales grow seventeen percent more than
Speaker 1: teams not using AI agents and juse boyd this is
Speaker 1: really just the beginning. Yeah. The global AI agent's market
Speaker 1: size was valued at three point eighty six billion US
Speaker 1: dollars in twenty twenty three, which feels kind of small,
Speaker 1: but it's expected to grow at forty five percent each
Speaker 1: year to twenty thirty so juse boy will be interesting
Speaker 1: to see how quickly consumers take up operator and whether
Speaker 1: it can book my eurotrip for me, Sam. We are
Speaker 1: giving away big, big prizes in the Flux Academy this month,
Speaker 1: all focused on kicking off the new year with a bang,
Speaker 1: so make sure to download the Flex app and check
Speaker 1: out the academy this month. Thanks for listening and we'll
Speaker 1: see you on Wednesday.