What is the cost of “buying” the Australian media? The coverage given to Baz Luhrmann’s Australia starring Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman is as good a place to start as any.
The Australian media allowed themselves to be manipulated into handing out tens of millions of dollars of free publicity for a movie coming from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp studios at 20th Century Fox.
The News Ltd papers, Foxtel and other outlets would have been commanded to promote the movie extensively anyhow but on Tuesday night we saw Nine’s A Current Affair devote the whole program to the Sydney premiere of the movie:
The Nine Network and 20th Century Fox did a promotional deal for on-air free plugs, access to stars and exclusive shots from the movie over the past month or so. So that’s why we saw an “exclusive” interview on 60 Minutes on Sunday night — exclusive my hat — it was paid for content:
That’s why ACA has run the odd segment full of authorised shots from the producers and not an original picture generated by ACA in the report. Cut from the deal, rival Today Tonight attempted a spoiler from the “Red Carpet”.
The ABC was just as bad: Kerry O’Brien had one of his tie-off interviews on The 7.30 Report last night with director Baz Luhrmann that was at least interesting when compared to the tosh served up earlier by Tracy Grimshaw on ACA.
The evening news broadcasts in Sydney on Tuesday night carried reports of the red carpet event. But this morning, the ABC’s highest rating radio current affairs program, AM, had as its lead story, a report on the premiere of Australia in Sydney last night.
Spoon fed and lazy would be a better description for the way the media has fawned over Australia.
Not too bad considering these days the preferred method of getting publicity is to “accidentally” have naughty photos of yourself “stolen” from your laptop or mobile phone.
Having said that, if Nicole wanted to do that I think she could still pull it off. I wouldn’t mind if she tried, at least.
Not to mention Lateline, with Tony Jones.
He wasted an awful lot of time conducting an
interview with two “so-called” film critics. James Valentine and Andrew Urban.
All three should hang their heads in shame.
Waffling on for ages, without offering any real criticism of the film.
They were clearly not game to call it a dog,
just in case they lost their next freebie to the red carpet.
When a film requires this sort of hype to get it launched, you can generally bet
it’s an absolute stinker.
Golly! Some of those poor, unintelligent and unsophisticated plebeians out there must be a shocking nuisance to the cognoscenti and exquisitely sensitive souls who read Crikey and the mainstream press. Fancy giving attention to such a vulgar, popular art-form, directed by an acknowledged no-hoper, starring two insignificant international film stars and heaven only knows how many other incompetent Australian actors, employing hundreds of useless and over-rated technicians and skilled artisans who would otherwise be flush with work, and which doesnt even draw on some sort of mythical imagery and tale-telling invention about an acknowledged ugly landscape sans any redeeming features, whatsoever. Phew! It’s a good thing that nothing much is dependent on this film’s financial success, given the robust state of Australia’s film industry and the economy, generally, and that most others weren’t fooled, as were the plebs, by the risible efforts to offer some sort of relief from the persistent gloom of the last few months. However, if the 7.30 Report and A.M., particularly, persist in noticing this sort of tomfoolery, instead of, say, the life-cycle of the aardvark, or the anguish of successive, nonetity political types and political would-be’s, I’ll be writing to the Minister and demanding an inquiry into the ABC’s squandering of taxpayer funds and its blatant bias in favour of the hoi polloi.
Dont forget the many many thousands of taxpayer dollars that the federal,Qld and N.T governments gave to this production. And that new tourism Australia add which looked more like a trailer for the movie than a tourism promotion. Maybe we should all get a free ticket
With so many utterances of the word “Crikey” in the movie, I’d have thought your treatment of the movie would have been a little more favourable…. I mean you obviously have paid for advertising?