Media expert Antony Young rounds up media news from beyond Aotearoa in a regular column for StopPress.
This week:
- ITV in talks with advertisers to run ads during FIFA World Cup drinks breaks.
- Burger CEOs bite back after McDonald’s Big Arch video gets roasted online.
- High-profile radio hosts Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson clash on-air.
- Paramount’s win over Netflix for Warner Bros. Discovery is throwing off a messy set of side plots.
- Laura Maxwell makes a case for journalism as both a public good and a commercial asset.
- Netflix has acquired InterPositive, an AI filmmaking startup founded by Ben Affleck.
ITV considering inserting ads into FIFA World Cup drinks breaks
ITV is in discussions with advertisers about running commercials during the three-minute hydration breaks Fifa will enforce in every World Cup match, with stoppages set for 22 minutes into each half.
Broadcasters can take a full two-minute-10-second ad break, stay fully live or use a split-screen format.
ITV appears to be leaning toward the less disruptive option after feedback on its in-picture Six Nations ads. No doubt, Jodi O’Donnell will be closely watching this development as TVNZ finalises its commercial plan for coverage of the World Cup in June.
Burger CEOs bite back
McDonald’s found itself at the centre of unlikely social media trolling after a month-old Instagram Reel featuring CEO Chris Kempczinski eating the new Big Arch suddenly took off… but not in the way the brand might have hoped.
Commenters piled on, calling the video stiff and inauthentic, mocking everything from his tiny first bite to his use of the word “product” instead of simply saying “burger.”
Rival chains were quick to seize the moment. Burger King CEO Tom Curtis posted his own more theatrical Whopper bite, Wendy’s shared a clip of its US president demolishing nearly half a burger and dipping fries into a Frosty, and A&W Canada went full parody, joking that it too loved this “burger product.”
The real takeaway here is that even CEOs can be useful content creators. McDonald’s insist early sales for the Big Arch are beating expectations.
Breakfast radio duo breakup
The biggest media story in Australia this year landed last week with an on-air clash between the two hosts of the high profile Kiis Kyle and Jackie O breakfast show.
A segment about astrology escalated into a highly personal argument. What began with Jackie O (Henderson) reading from Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s birth chart quickly turned sour, with Kyle (Sandilands) attacking her interest in astrology as making her “almost unworkable” and Henderson firing back that his comments were unfair and a personal attack.
Tim Burrowes’ Mumbrella piece gives an exceptional history of the show, and argues that the collapse of The Kyle & Jackie O Show is more than a talent fallout, it is the trigger for a long tail of legal, commercial and programming chaos across Australian radio. He frames Henderson’s exit as the breaking point after years of tension, a failed Melbourne rollout, rising advertiser pressure, regulatory scrutiny and ARN’s increasingly expensive bet on a national breakfast model.
Meanwhile, Kyle Sandilands’ suspension and possible termination could yet explode into a huge contractual fight over his reported $100m deal. The broader read is that this is not just the end of a blockbuster duo, but a reckoning for the economics and risk tolerance of commercial radio.
More drama and news to follow Paramount: Warner Bros. Discovery deal
Paramount’s win over Netflix for Warner Bros Discovery is already throwing off a messy set of side plots.
Netflix is walking away with a chunky $2.8 billion breakup fee and publicly insisting it can happily move on, while Paramount is pitching its merger with Warner Bros as a chance to shift more “iconic” cable brands into streaming and slow the decline of linear TV.
But the bigger subtext is far less tidy. The combined company is carrying roughly $79 billion in net debt, staff on both sides are bracing for layoffs across its production companies and news divisions including CNN and CBS are facing fresh anxiety about consolidation, editorial independence and who ultimately controls two of America’s biggest journalism brands.
Add in antitrust and regulatory reviews still to come across the US, UK and EU, the deal is starting to look less like a clean victory lap than a long, expensive integration battle with real cultural, political and commercial fallout ahead.
Maxwell backs news over noise
Former popular Stuff and NZME executive Laura Maxwell, now at News Corp Australia is the newly appointed chair of ThinkNewsBrands, making a case for journalism as both a public good and a commercial asset.
In her LinkedIn post, she argues that in a content-saturated, misinformation-heavy market, news still makes people slow down, pay attention and trust what they’re consuming. ThinkNewsBrands’ recent research gives her the numbers to back it up: 78% of Australians see national news publishers as trustworthy versus 36% for content creators, almost two in five use news media to fact-check social content.
Journalism reaches nine in 10 Australians weekly. She also pushes back on the idea that younger audiences have checked out, with the research showing more than half of Gen Z regularly use five or more news sources. The sales pitch is that brands placed in credible news environments benefit from “news trust halo”, with 85% of Australians saying ads in journalism make them feel more confident about a brand.
Argo-rythms come to Hollywood
Netflix has acquired InterPositive, the AI filmmaking startup Ben Affleck founded, in a deal that deepens the streamer’s relationship with Affleck after recently signing a multi-year first-look pact with Artists Equity.
Affleck and Netflix are pitching the company’s tools as production and post-production aids that preserve creative control rather than replace it, but the move is landing awkwardly in a town where unions and below-the-line workers remain highly sensitive to AI’s effect on jobs and their creative bargaining power.
Hollywood workers see it as another sign that automation is creeping closer to core filmmaking work, no matter how carefully the language is packaged.
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