Media Unmade - Chapter 17: The CBS Shock

Welcome to the latest Unmade podcast. Today’s edition features another extract from the audio edition of my book, Media Unmade, which is published by Hardie Grant and available online and in book stores.In today’s chapter, we enter the final act of Unmade: The Remaking.By 2017, it seemed that Network Ten was becoming a de facto part of the extended News Corp empire, seven years after Lachlan Murdoch first invested. News Corp’s Foxtel had taken a 15% stake alongside Lachlan’s 9%. Foxtel’s sales house MCN had taken over Ten’s media sales, and in turn Ten had taken a 25% stake in MCN. Ten and Foxtel were also co-commissioning shows like Gogglebox.The final hurdle were changes to the media ownership laws, which the Coalition was helpfully working on repealing.But the plan was about to meet a couple of unexpected hurdles. Ten’s directors were fighting a little too hard to avoid calling in the administrators, and content supplier CBS, one of Ten’s biggest creditors, was preparing an alternative plan.The result was a shock change in ownership that few saw coming.If you aren’t yet receiving your own copy of the Unmade email, you can sign up for free.If you enjoy hearing the podcast, please do give it a five star rating on whichever podcasting app you use. That helps other people find it, and gives me some much needed validation.Audio production on Media Unmade comes courtesy of Abe’s Audio, the people to talk to about voiceovers and sound design for corporate videos, digital content, commercials and podcasts.As ever, I welcome your thoughts to [email protected], or via the ugly brown comment button below.Time to let you go about your Thursday. Have a great day.Toodlepip…Tim BurrowesUnmade This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit unmade.substack.com