The world’s second-wealthiest person, Larry Ellison, with billionaire Rupert Murdoch at the White House this year.Credit: Getty
Weiss aligns with both David and Larry Ellison on Israel, the single most contested issue in the media today and for Ellison senior politically, who funded his son’s takeover.
The Palestine issue continues to reverberate in Australian media. This week alone, there have been stories including our coverage of SBS’s Palestine editorial guidance, revelations the ABC’s Lattouf legal bill has reached $2.5 million and the National Press Club allegedly cancelling a guest who planned to talk about Gaza.
Ellison, who made his billions through his technology company Oracle gave Friends of the IDF $26 million, its biggest ever donation in 2017, offered Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli PM a position on Oracle’s board in 2021, and through his foundation donated or pledged $522 million to the Tony Blair Institute since 2021 alone, with the former British PM emerging as the key player in a post-war Gaza.
The CBS eye – will it look down under?
On Background wrote last week that the Ellison team hasn’t turned its attention to Australia, or Ten, which essentially counts as a rounding error on the company’s global finances.
But Ellison’s politics, like any proprietor, must be taken seriously when considering its eventual impact on Australia’s media landscape.
In America, a push to the right, if that’s what will happen, has rationale. Fox News is in the midst of a financial purple patch as advertisers and viewers flock to the network due to the normalisation of its right-wing rhetoric.
It’s a different story in Australia, with most legacy news services that cater to the right largely kept afloat by ageing audiences and wealthy proprietors.
Fox’s Australian equivalent, Sky News Australia has a raft of headwinds, including a rebrand which will redefine the network. It also faces structural challenges to its ageing broadcast audience caused by a decade-long trend of Foxtel declines, and it axed Freya Fires Up, its first attempt to bring in a younger audience after just six shows.
Nine’s talkback stations, including 2GB and 3AW, are also in limbo. They are no longer the force they once were and the company is trying to attract an offer worthy of a sale.
The team behind the once-home to Alan Jones, ADH, are the only potential buyers of Nine Radio to have revealed themselves thus far. They have sidelined a relaunch under the banner of Fox News-alternative Newsmax in favour of working on a radio deal.
Gina Rinehart has been touted as a backer of ADH, though one source in her camp told this masthead this year she rejected the opportunity, but that didn’t stop ADH invoking her name in meetings to help aid their cause, apparently.
Weiss claims to be the centrist warrior who will return CBS to its Walter Cronkite days, but with such a clear-cut set of views, it’ll be interesting to see how that goes.
Split Eurovision
Nothing appears beyond the Israel issue at the moment. As the broadcaster of the globe’s pre-eminent singing and pageantry contest, Eurovision, Israel’s participation in next year’s edition is apparently bringing further headaches for SBS.
With Spain, Ireland, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Iceland all flagging intentions last month to pull out should Israel be allowed to compete next year, SBS viewers have urged the broadcaster to throw their support behind a boycott, while Germany’s chancellor Friedrich Merz this week said he’d boycott the event if Israel was ousted.
Amid the barrage of complaints that typically grace inboxes and mailrooms of all media companies, SBS received about 60 complaints relating to Eurovision and its coverage should Israel be allowed to compete on a single day and that number rolling on through the rest of the month, according to emails seen by On Background.
Losing its Roar
There have been some pretty wild machinations going on in the background of one of Australia’s top read sports websites, The Roar this year, before its editor Tony Harper informed readers this week the site is going dark.
There has been a sale process rolling on in the background for several months, with Roar owner PlayUp and The Sporting News in discussions which appear to have fallen over, while in August, there was a now-deleted article claiming the site had been sold to cosmetic surgery entrepreneur Daniel Corsello for $1.
“Due to issues beyond the control of our editorial team, we are unable to publish content to the site until further notice,” Harper wrote this week.
News is a hard game in 2025. We hope The Roar can find a way to return to publishing soon.
Erik Jensen, poet laureate-in-chief
No one could accuse Schwartz Media of wavering in its arts coverage amid nationwide cuts to culture news. But Schwartz has taken things a step further, with subscribers of The Saturday Paper offered a cut-price deal of $35 for both editions of editor-in-chief Erik Jensen’s own poetry.
A special offer for subscribers of The Saturday Paper.Credit: Schwartz Media
What a deal! Jensen is of course also the chief executive of Schwartz Media, and the offer comes courtesy of Black Inc., Schwartz Media’s sister company.
It gives subscribers an insight into the mind of Morry Schwartz’s top lieutenant during his editing process, with a preview of Jensen’s work The wire hanger.
