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00:00There are new calls to action this morning for a nationwide shift in spending habits
00:23to support Australian-made products.
00:25Now, the Back Australia campaign is highlighting how everyday buying choices
00:29can boost local jobs and industries, adding $16 billion to the economy.
00:35Hello, welcome to Media Watch. I'm Linton Besser.
00:38And yes, it's time once again to drape ourselves in the flag and pour pocket money into Aussie
00:43businesses to rescue the country's future, with News Corp's capital city tabloids leading
00:49the charge.
00:50Let's Back Australia!
00:52PM and business leaders pledge to help us rebuild our great nation.
00:57With pages and pages of rah-rah for a restoration of good old Aussie made.
01:03Return to a nation that makes things. Buying local could generate an extra $16 billion.
01:10All of it proudly supported by a list of everyone's favourite companies, from retailers to boot
01:17fitters to one of the big four banks. The impassioned campaign led by News Corp personality Joe Hildebrand,
01:24who appeared not just on the News Corp-owned Sky News, but also on Rival 7, along with some
01:31back Australia livery and Westpac-supplied stats.
01:34We need to be able to make stuff here, not just for the sake of our economy, but for the
01:40sake of our national security and our sovereignty as well.
01:43With a whole week of nightly packages on Seven featuring local businesses, as well as campaign
01:49partners like Twiggy Forrest and Harvey Norman boss Katie Page. And a week of green and gold
01:56banners splashed through the pages of the tabloids.
02:00News Corp has said its campaign had its genesis in feedback from readers eager to back Australian
02:06companies, and well may that be the case. But it is also plain to anyone with half a grey
02:11cell that this was also a mega money spinner, designed to salvage News Corp's ailing balance
02:18sheet, and which the Australian Financial Review pointed out somehow overlooked several tenets
02:24of modern economics.
02:26Australia's economic future depends not on romanticising industries the world has long since left behind,
02:33but embracing innovation, competition and openness.
02:37Despite his investment in famed local bootmaker RM Williams, Andrew Forrest, as well as Dick Smith
02:43and Katie Page were in the eyes of the financial press a curious trio to help push Australia's
02:50return to manufacturing. And why might that be?
02:53Smith made millions selling repackaged Chinese electronics, Page makes a fortune selling Chinese
03:00and Korean TVs and gadgets, and Forrest is a billionaire because China buys his iron ore by the tonne.
03:07Back Australia also provided a glowing halo for sponsors who've suffered the odd reputational hiccup,
03:15including Qantas, fined for the illegal sacking of staff, Westpac in trouble for alleged insider trading,
03:23and Coles, which was recently found to have underpaid staff to the tune of tens or even hundreds of
03:29millions of dollars. With his usual subtlety, Crikey's Firebrand, Bernard Keane, put it this way.
03:36Doubtless all are grateful to News Corp for helping them whitewash their reputations.
03:41Come to think of it, are all of these sponsors really so dinky-dye? What about Cadbury,
03:48which is owned by multinational confectionary colossus Mondelez? Or Vodafone, whose majority
03:54owners are variously domiciled in Britain and the Cayman Islands? Or, dare I ask, News Corporation,
04:02which, despite all them fighting words, is in fact an American company headquartered in Manhattan,
04:08as this exchange on Sky News rather delicately acknowledged? So we should say one thing,
04:15that is News Corporation is a global business. How do you reconcile that with a backing Australia
04:21campaign? Oh, our origins are in Australia. Now we are, regardless of where we operate in the world,
04:27we are, you know, quartered here. Nice save, Michael. It might also be worth pointing out that
04:34neither News Corp nor Vodafone has deigned to pay any corporate income tax in Australia
04:40for the better part of a decade. To back Australia, the least a corporation can do is pay its basic
04:46corporate income tax to help fund essential public services, rather than abusing loopholes
04:51to shift profits offshore. Economists have told Media Watch the News Corp campaign suffered a couple of,
04:57shall we say, blind spots, which... Ignore the economic reality about the cost of living.
05:04The confection of buying Australian made quickly disappears when your money doesn't stretch as far
05:09as it did. And, as Saul Eslake explained, a larger manufacturing sector would mean... Our overall
05:16standards of living would be lower. Why would we want to do that? Just for whatever warm inner glow
05:22might be generated from knowing that we were making more stuff? These are, of course, mere inconveniences,
05:29which could never have stood in the way of this freight train of sponsored content. In fact,
05:34campaigns like this appear to have become a core feature of the tabloid's business model,
05:39with no fewer than four other examples in the past year alone, where news pages, once sacrosanct,
05:46were happily transformed into rallying cries for energy, insurance, education and mining industries,
05:53and which have raked in millions. A spokesperson for News Corp told us...
05:58Back Australia is not calling for a simplistic cross-the-board resurrection of the manufacturing industry.
06:04It is advocating for governments at every level to get policy settings right,
06:09to unleash investment and innovation in areas where Australian enterprises can win.
06:15We asked Seven News if its stories were also sponsored, and a representative told us...
06:20Our involvement was purely editorial. No payment, no sponsorship,
06:25just stories we covered because they mattered to our audience.
06:29Last month, News Corp filed its latest financial results, and they weren't pretty.
06:34..with falls in circulation, advertising and subscription revenue,
06:39and an after-tax loss of more than $27 million.
06:42So whatever merit there might be in this patriotic feel-good campaign,
06:47let's not mistake this for anything but a cash grab by a 20th-century newspaper business
06:53doing what it must to survive in the 21st.
06:58And now to the gorgeous New South Wales town of Coffs Harbour,
07:02where FM radio lovers were delivered this midday bulletin last Thursday
07:07by Triple M's local newsreader.
07:09Hey, I'm Tessa Randello with your local headlines.
07:12A Mid-North Coast nurse is in the running for Senior Australian of the Year.
07:16She also brought the New South Wales Riverina its midday news some 900 kilometres away.
07:21Hey, I'm Tessa Randello with your local headlines.
07:24And miraculously, three and a half hours up the highway in the New South Wales town of Orange too.
07:30Hey, I'm Tessa Randello with your local headlines.
07:34A driver's been charged after a collision with an e-bike.
07:36Yes, last Thursday, Southern Cross Australia newsreader Tessa Randello,
07:41who is actually based in Sydney, voiced as many as 39 bulletins across four local regions.
07:48The day before, she was bringing the news of North Queensland to Townsville.
07:53Townsville's 102.3.
07:55Hey, I'm Tessa Randello with your local headlines.
07:58And Cairns.
07:59Rangers have trapped and removed a crocodile after a teenager was attacked at a beach on the weekend.
08:04For the past few weeks, Tessa Randello has been made to voice more bulletins in more regions.
08:10And she's not the only Southern Cross Australia newsreader doing so because the company's razor gang has been busy slashing staff across its brands, including Triple M, the hit network and on-demand audio platform Listener, leaving the few remaining newsreaders to voice scores of regional bulletins.
08:30Carathas, Triple M.
08:32Hey there, Brianna Redhead with your local headlines.
08:35Brooms, 102.9.
08:37Triple M.
08:38Brianna Redhead with your local headlines.
08:40Esperances, 747.
08:43Geraldton's, 98.1.
08:45The Goldfields.
08:46Brianna Redhead with your local headlines.
08:48But if you're stressed just listening to Brianna Redhead's output, don't be.
08:53Because at staff briefings last month, Southern Cross executives unveiled their secret weapon in the fight against, well, labour costs.
09:02Yes, artificial intelligence, of course.
09:05Which requires staff only to...
09:08Select what you were interested in, how long you'd like the broadcast to be, and it would populate a couple of lines for each story.
09:15The tool, promoted by management as a panacea, scrapes local news from the internet, compiles bulletins and, yes, writes stories.
09:24The way it was explained to me was that it would be scripting for us, spitting out stories for us that we would then check.
09:30I don't think any of us trust it, but we don't have much choice.
09:34And what of the company's pride in delivering local news to regional listeners?
09:39Nah, SCA couldn't give a rats.
09:42With insiders telling us that at one recent staff briefing, Chief Operating Officer Stephen Haddad announced the company only did news because it's required to by law.
09:52The Broadcasting Services Act, which requires SCA's regional radio stations to broadcast at least 62 and a half minutes a week of local news,
10:01is considered such a pain in the arse that SCA has been looking to replace its cumbersome journalists with robots for some time.
10:10That was always the plan.
10:11One of the things we tried to work out was how much optimisation of AI can there be.
10:16The outcome was a head count reduction.
10:19Because real people filing real news have to...
10:22Phone the police and hospitals and obtain court documents.
10:26The aim was to automate all of that and generate it using AI,
10:30and then you create scripts, use synthetic voices, so it's already in the morning.
10:34Southern Cross Austereo's AI ambitions date back to at least 2021,
10:40when the company laid out millions of dollars to take an interest in three separate AI plays.
10:45Source AI, New York company Frequency, and Melbourne AI outfit Sonnet.
10:52The radio company has been making steady progress into a synthetic future,
10:57with AI already driving its fuel watch segments, and with many of its weather reports voiced not
11:04by Sydney news lead Amy Goggins, but by a digital clone of her voice.
11:09Mostly fine for the rest of today in Mackay.
11:12The company's formal AI policy assures us human connection remains at the core of its audio output,
11:19which is a great comfort. Particularly as SCA's management is all a lather at the prospect of
11:24yet more clones. SCA has plans to create podcasts using AI content and voices,
11:31and aspirations that if the talent can't make it in for a last minute VO change,
11:36or weekends or public holidays, then to have the talent's voice cloned.
11:40It's already thinking about how to structure employment contracts to get voices cloned.
11:46Some SCA insiders are horrified at the rollout of the AI tool, fearing breaches of copyright,
11:53and unwitting defamations. But of course, the company offered us this rather soothing assurance.
11:58All bulletins continue to be fact-checked, edited and read by journalists based in our
12:04provincial and metro hubs across the country. The job cuts come as SCA prepares the ground for
12:10its proposed Seven West media merger, with pledges to squeeze even more serious savings from the
12:17combined business. The media game is so tough these days that AI must indeed appear like a holy grail
12:25to bean counting executives, especially looking to do away with expensive and often mouthy journalists.
12:31But anyone who really believes audiences will blithely accept the undeclared use of AI voices
12:38as an acceptable replacement for trained journalists is living in a fantasy land. And helping, by the way,
12:45to hurry on an information apocalypse where trust in the news is but a quaint relic of the past.
12:51And now, Network 10's not-so-new current affairs experiment, which four months in has struggled to get out of first gear.
13:00Channel 10 will trim its underperforming current affairs program, 10 News Plus, from one hour to 30 minutes,
13:07as part of a broader overhaul of the network's 2026 line-up.
13:11Launched to great fanfare, 10 News Plus was an attempt to refashion television current affairs by going back to basics.
13:19If it affects your life, we'll ask the tough questions.
13:22Join us for more than just the headlines.
13:25Poached from Rival Network 7, hosts Amelia Brace and Denham Hitchcock promised in-depth reporting
13:32and a big picture perspective on the news of the day. The program opened strongly with the story of
13:38an Australian woman jailed overseas and occasionally shone, like in July when it scooped its rivals,
13:45landing an interview with Green's candidate and protester Hannah Thomas, whose treatment by police
13:50is now the subject of a criminal prosecution. But pitted against 7 & 9's 6pm news bulletins,
13:57which together typically attract more than 2 million viewers, 10 News Plus was swiftly looking more like 10 News Minus.
14:05In its first week on air, the show averaged just 211,000 viewers nationally. Four weeks later,
14:12its audience had dwindled to 149,000. Meanwhile, the program was pummeled by its critics, maligned for
14:20its terrible ratings, and sledged by a panellist on the show that 10 News Plus had replaced.
14:26That show, The Project, was cancelled in June, after Network 10's boss Beverly McGarvey decided she could
14:33no longer afford to pay its external production company, Roving Enterprises, nor the hefty salaries
14:39of its star panellists. But the show was axed with no firm plan as to what would replace it. And when
14:46the news division proposed a half-hour current affairs program, at one-sixth the cost of the project,
14:53McGarvey loved it so much she insisted it be stretched to 60 minutes with no additional resources.
15:00But is returning the show to its original 30-minute format going to work? Not everyone is convinced.
15:08The 10 network has long been associated with light entertainment. 10 News Plus is the exact
15:13opposite. It is like Goldie Hawn suddenly deciding to do Shakespeare. While media economist Peter Cox
15:20offered this remarkable declamation. No longer should all networks be required to provide a news
15:26service as part of their broadcasting license. 10 News should be dropped altogether.
15:33Not sure we agree, Peter. 10's news boss, Martin White, told us the show was attracting a growing
15:39online audience, adding... When it comes to ratings, we're aware of the challenges,
15:44but it's not all about linear TV in this era of storytelling. A half-hour slot will suit the core
15:49DNA of the Bulletin better. We certainly hope that's the case, because Australia's news media landscape
15:55needs more, not fewer, serious journalists trying to do serious things. Which is why 10 must, in 2026,
16:04stand by its commitment to give this show every chance at success. And that's all from us tonight.
16:10Be sure to check us out on ABC iview, as well as YouTube, Facebook and X. You can find full
16:16statements on our website. And don't forget to send us your tips. I'll see you next week.
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