Media
2Day FM Sydney is ditching its crusty music format for a fresh new one, which is a shock in a market that almost entirely caters mainly to older millennials with "throwbacks" galore. It's gotten so bad that Triple J, a previously 'alternative' station, now
Max launches in Australia March 31, putting Binge in limbo.
There's a a big shake up coming for Foxtel, specifically Foxtel's Binge. Another streaming platform is launching in Australia, with Warner Bros. Discovery today announcing the local launch date for Max. The service will start March 31, but other details are still a little unclear. Previously known as HBO Max, but also confusingly hosting both HBO Originals and Max Originals, the service has been available in the US since 2020.
It looks like the service will launch with exclusive access to HBO programming, as well as other Warner Bros. Discovery properties. Which does might put Binge in a bit of limbo, if we're reading this literally.
Via Whistleout:
A spokesperson for WBD confirmed to WhistleOut that new Warner Bros. and HBO content won't premiere on Binge. Hubbl has started bringing some live and on-demand Kayo Sports over to Binge to add value to the service.
WhistleOut has reached out to Foxtel for comment on what will happen to the existing catalogue of HBO content on Binge.
And from the press release:
As the home of HBO Originals and Max Originals, Max will offer fans culture-defining series including returning seasons of The Last of Us, And Just Like That..., House of the Dragon, Euphoria and Peacemaker as well as highly anticipated new shows such as It: Welcome to Derry and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, from the world of Game of Thrones.
Subscribers will also be able to enjoy recently released theatrical hits from Warner Bros. Pictures, including blockbusters from the last few years such as Barbie, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice and Twisters, alongside treasured franchises including Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the DC Universe. Coupled with all-time fan-favourites including Friends, The Big Bang Theory and Rick and Morty, best-in-class real-life stories across food, home, lifestyle and factual like 90 Day Fiancé and Outback Opal Hunters, as well as family viewing such as Ben 10 and We Bare Bears, Max promises to set the bar for consistently captivating, craveable entertainment.
In addition, WBD also announced a launch partnership with Foxtel, providing Foxtel subscribers with access to the Max app at no additional cost.*
*Requires a compatible Foxtel IQ box. Some customers will need to upgrade their box. Included Max plan is Basic with Ads.
Developing...
TV
While the late-night talk show genre is still alive and well in the US, the format hasn't been very active in Australia in decades. The Late Show, The Tonight Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live and others still grace US screens with timeslots as late as 11:35pm, and even
Graphic Design
The YouTube algorithm fed me some good slop today in the form of US network CBS's 1997 fall campaign, weirdly pitched as "The Address Is CBS". How can an address be a TV channel? Who knows. But watching it back, it is weird to see this
Beats 1
In a world of AI DJs and generated music slop, Apple Music is doubling down on "live" radio - with some of it pre-recorded but still hosted by humans. Apple Music 1 host and Apple Music’s global creative director even commented on Apple Music Radio's
The Verge introduces metered paywall.
Update: The paywall has launched. Via Semafor:
Editor-in-chief Nilay Patel told Semafor that the move was intended to drive additional revenue and insulate The Verge from changes made by social media platforms[...]
“I think it’s a tragedy that garbage is free and news is behind paywalls. I don’t want to make that worse,” Patel said. “I think that The Verge homepage and our news coverage serves a central utility function in our ecosystem.”
The website also hints at future integrations with ActivityPub and Bluesky in an effort to take the focus away from SEO and social-media traffic and make The Verge homepage a platform of its own.
Early benefits include unlimited access to posts, such as paywalled newsletters and metered product reviews and features, limited ads on all Verge content and a physical limited edition magazine. Also the original decentralised solution, RSS, is available to subscribers, with unabridged posts available through RSS readers.
Original post:
According to Semafor, Vox Media's technology website The Verge is going behind a paywall. Some content will remain free:
Beginning this week, the Verge will charge $7/month or $50/year for comprehensive access to the site as well as the already-paywalled newsletters Command Line and Notepad.
Some content and the publication’s homepage, which was redesigned in 2022 to resemble a social feed, will remain free. The Verge is Vox Media’s third major subscription push behind New York and Vox, which launched a membership program earlier this year.
Everything old is new again at Vox Media, which will also be introducing an app for its publication New York Magazine, focused on digital NY Mag subscribers:
It will be the magazine’s second crack at a mobile app; New York first launched an iPhone app in 2016.
A look behind triple j's rebrand at the ABC.
A little over a month ago, ABC youth brand triple j relaunched at its One Night Stand music festival. And it was a pretty big rebrand, touching the logo, typeface and general audio style of the station. A pretty big change is the new "J" audio sting that plays often on the station.
Gloss Australia reached out to the ABC for more details on the sonic rebrand, but didn't hear back. On the visual side of things, Howatson+Company, partnering with the ABC, has more info on the visual changes:
Since 1975, national broadcaster triple j has served as a lighthouse for young Australians, actively pushing culture forward and challenging norms through its disruptive programming, shows and events. Yet for the last 15 years, the brand and logo have remained static. To address this, triple j has partnered with Howatson+Company to reinvigorate the brand for today’s listeners.
To make it, a custom variable typeface was designed that changes based on audio and musical inputs. The type was taught to respond to music and sound using algorithmic machine learning, creating a reactive design.
The brand’s most iconic element, the drum, was also updated to reflect the tastes of the station’s youth audience today, featuring a simplified base designed to reference digital soundbars and incorporate a hidden ‘j’.
The rebrand successfully refreshes triple j’s visual world while preserving its core identity as a champion of youth culture and new Australian music.
The Verge considers paywall.
From Oliver Darcy's media newsletter Status:
As part of the effort, the Jim Bankoff-led digital media conglomerate — which houses widely recognizable brands such as New York magazine, Eater, Vox, SBNation, NowThis, Thrillist, and more — has started exploring the introduction of a pay wall on its popular technology website, The Verge, people familiar with the matter told me.
As Darcy also writes, The Verge has already experimented with some paid newsletters, which are published to The Verge as articles that require a subscription. This new offering could be a bundle and include additional bonus content.
This would fit with previous efforts to bring the focus of The Verge back to its homepage as a central way of accessing its content, as opposed to relying on social media links and SEO for traffic. From 2023:
Post by @reckless1280View on Threads
The upcoming debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is generating significant interest in Australia. Scheduled to air live on September 11 from 11am Australia time, the debate will be broadcast and streamed on a number of local and international networks. The ABC will be broadcasting
Media
The ABC has refreshed its look across ABC TV and the ABC News website this morning. The ABC News app also has a new icon, but not as many changes so far. Starting at 6am with ABC News Breakfast, the new look on ABC TV and the ABC News channel
Polygon continues Vox Media’s switch to Wordpress.
“This migration rests on Vox Media’s front-end platform, Duet — first seen on The Verge, and then Vox.com — coupled with a new, more flexible backend in WordPress VIP,” says Polygon publisher Chris Grant. “Beyond just a redesign, this new site represents a fundamental shift in our product strategy, and our continued investment and confidence in websites and loyal audiences.”
Powered by its migration to WordPress VIP and Vox Media’s front end platform, Duet, Polygon will continue to build out its homepage and website, with new community tools aimed at boosting user experience to follow the redesign.
Vox Media
Design
As its merger with Skydance becomes more and more likely, Paramount Global has shared a possible new logo that tries to mash the two brands together. If I didn't know that bit of context, I honestly wouldn't mind the seemingly old school all-caps font choice. It
"Photographer of Viral Trump Rally Shooting Pic Spills on Historic Moment".
“I shoot politics for a living, man. Every single photo I take people are going to argue about,” Vucci said with a laugh. “I spend my life around a very highly polarized part of our society, so no matter what I do, people are gonna hate it. People are gonna love it. Listen, as long as everyone hates me equally, I’m doing the job.”
Trumpland
Australia
Back in 1992, long before (decent) streaming video on the internet, the Australian Government introduced laws to prevent subscription television from taking over sports broadcast rights ownership. This was before subscription TV was even really a thing in Australia, with Foxtel launching in 1995. But in a world where sports
Gruber, Copyright and LLM scraping.
John Gruber, noted Apple access journalist, is back defending the company after its launch of Applebot-powered Apple Intelligence. There's some interesting treatment of Apple Intelligence and more specifically Applebot crawling the 'public web' and then 'transforming' that crawled content, via this post from Louie Mantia:
From John Gruber today:
It’s fair for public data to be excluded on an opt-out basis, rather than included on an opt-in one [...]
No, no it’s not. This is a critical thing about ownership and copyright in the world. We own what we make the moment we make it. Publishing text or images on the web does not make it fair game to train AI on. The “public” in “public web” means free to access; it does not mean it's free to use.
The idea that being on the public web means that content can be actually taken and recreated with no human contribution is bizarre. If a music video is published on YouTube, does that suddenly mean it is no longer a Copyrighted piece of work? Absolutely not. Does a paywall on a site, like Netflix for example, suddenly mean that the content is different? No.
It's insulting that Apple now claims its crawler is opt-out, after already training its AI on content without warning.
I guess Gloss republishing a quote from Mantia's blog above is also a recreation, maybe some might even say theft or copyright infringement. But I'm adding to it, linking back, and the original article is still its own viable piece. You might want to read the rest, in which case the original creator can receive pageviews.
G/O Media sells Gizmodo.
Keleops publishes four consumer tech websites: Journal du Geek, 01net, Presse Citron and iPhon. Jean-Guillaume Kleis, the chief executive of Keleops, said in an interview on Tuesday that the company had been looking to make an acquisition in the United States for several years and Gizmodo was “an obvious choice.”
G/O Media, owned by private equity firm Great Hill Partners and comprised of former Gawker Media titles, doesn't actually own its namesake publications anymore. The O stood for Onion and the G stood for Gizmodo.
Over the past 4 years the firm has sold ClickHole to Cards Against Humanity, Lifehacker to Ziff Davis, Jezebel, The A.V. Club and Splinter News to Paste, Deadspin to Lineup Publishing, The Takeout to Static Media and The Onion to Global Tetrahedron. All that remains is:
business news site Quartz, African-American culture outlet The Root, gaming site Kotaku, gearhead publication Jalopnik, and commerce site The Inventory.