It’s a simple question: When is the spending of taxpayers’ funds on advertising and promotion good and when is it bad?
The answer is very simple too, if you happen to be Rupert Murdoch’s News Crap Australia.
If you spend most or all of you advertising budget with News Crap outlets, then that’s a good thing. But if you don’t, then that’s very, very bad, according to Rupert’s minions in Melbourne who have been shrieking loudly (main picture) ever since Victorian Premier Dan Andrews revealed on Tuesday that his government would no longer automatically be placing ads in metropolitan print media – that’s Murdoch’s The Herald Sun and Nine Entertainment’s The Age.
Andrews has explained that the decision is simply one based on an assessment of what is good value for the taxpayers’ dollars. His government will still be buying ads in online versions of both metro newspapers and will even be buying some ads in hard-copy versions where such ads are required by existing legislation. His government will also still be buying ads in regional and multicultural print newspapers.
But the backlash from News Crap Australia has been swift and harsh (main picture) and over the past two days it has wheeled out all of its usual readership figures showing however many billions, or maybe its trillions, of Victorians just love its hard-copy product.
The Murdoch rearguard effort even roped in sworn enemies in the Nine Entertainment Group by including readership stats for The Age in its stories declaring how wrong Andrews was. (below)
News Crap may well suggest that the Victorian Premier’s decision is payback for the scandalously unbalanced, blatantly pro-Liberal, viciously anti-Labor, personally anti-Andrews stories The Herald Sun published – perhaps excreted might be more apt – during the last Victorian state election campaign. Andrews of course insists it is no such thing.
Our Media Glass House teams here at The Bug headquarters would normally suggest to the Victorian Premier that he should brace for ongoing Murdoch media attacks, but then that’s his default position every day regardless of whatever he says or does on this or any other issue.
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It’s still a simple question: When is the spending of taxpayers’ funds on advertising and promotion good and when is it bad?
The answer is still very simple too, if you happen to be Rupert Murdoch’s News Crap Australia.
Yet again we saw anti-ABC items populating several News Crap outlets this week, this time focussed on Aunty’s budget for advertising and promotion of its output and activities as well as audience research. (below)
It seems that if you are News Crap Australia, then any cent, let alone dollar, spent by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on advertising and promotion – or anything really – is just plain bad.
Our MGH researchers suggest that News Crap Australia’s position holds even if the ABC is buying ads in News Crap outlets for the simple reason that while Rupert Murdoch is happy to take its money, he simply doesn’t believe the ABC should exist.
He dreams of helping to install a compliant right-wing federal government that would either sell the ABC to him or shut it down.
Our MGH researchers also suggest that the latest anti-ABC story, based on information obtained through a freedom of information request, could have been written even before the results of that request was completed, with the general anti-ABC tirade ready to have blanks for the actual figures filled in when they turned up.
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The latest ratings for metropolitan radio stations around the country were released this week and, naturally, in line with its previously referenced anti-ABC stance, News Crap Australia focussed on minuscule shifts in the figures for ABC stations and individual programs in the Melbourne market.
Interestingly, the exact same story on the ratings by The Australian’s James Madden ran in both his direct employer the national broadshit as well as The Herald Sun in Melbourne. (below)
Our MGH teams were always under the impression that the national broadshit was fairly protective of its in-house output, but obviously News Crap’s desire to destroy the ABC overrides any concerns about copy-sharing with a metro turdbloid.
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The Murdoch daily in Brisbane, The Courier-Mail, took a different approach to its reporting of the latest radio ratings.
Unlike the reports that ran in other News Crap outlets that focussed on the ABC, the Brisbane turdbloid’s story canvassed the ups and downs of both the ABC and the commercial stations broadcasting in the city. (below)
But our MGH teams noticed that a hefty slice of the story was devoted to the promotion of the Courier’s own readership figures – like the bleating Herald Sun the Courier made it clear that even the biggest audience of the highest rating Brisbane radio station was “dwarfed” by the trillions of readers that The Courier-Mail itself attracted every single day either in its printed form or online.
Perhaps it’s a panicky effort to prevent the type of advertising spending policy shift seen in Victoria?
But as usual, and in line with the readership stats cited by the Herald Sun to argue with the Victorian Premier’s new ad policy, there was no mention of circulation figures.
If you do the sums, the 2.6 million figure mentioned above for the number of Melburnians who “pick up” the Murdoch or Nine each month, you obtain a fairly meagre figure of just over 40,000 a day for both.
It would be enlightening to know officially how many hard-copies of metro dailies News Crap is actually printing and how many on average are being sold and how many are being given away for free.
After all, as our MGH teams note, how can you publish a readership figure without also revealing a circulation figure?
They’d especially like to know how the withholding of that essential information fits with the News Crap Australia’s often cited “Your right to know” campaign.
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